Grand Narratives in Critical International Theory (Rethinking Political and International Theory) [1 ed.] 1032118393, 9781032118390

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‘This path-breaking book, which cuts across large swathes of IR, moves the non-Eurocentric historical-sociological agenda several notches along by achieving two colossal objectives: first, in confronting the stubborn, ossified binary between Eurocentric universalism and supposedly “non-Eurocentric” cultural relativism; and second, in transcending the Eurocentric poststructuralist/critical trope that grand narratives are inherently Eurocentric.’ John M. Hobson, University of Sheffield, UK ‘In this exceptionally well-written, scholarly volume, Saramago tackles head-on the seemingly intractable problem of reconciling the need for de-centred, cosmopolitan reflexivity in international theory with the critical impetus for a more secure means of orientation towards the development of human societies. The latter undertaking, characteristically, has necessitated “grand” conceptual architecture and universal models of analysis which inevitably express certain social and epistemic contingencies, classically those of a Eurocentric character. Pieceby-piece, Saramago convincingly builds the case for a historical-sociological alternative to this impasse through reframing the problem in a radically processual, synthetic, and empirically-grounded manner. The critical project, indeed, the grand narrative of emancipatory critique this engenders, is here effectively transmuted into an analysis of emergent social dynamics, their myriad forms of historical expression and variation, and an investigation of the conditions under which the human capacity for self-determination might expand or decline. This outstanding contribution to debates in the field is essential reading for scholars of international relations, sociology, and a range of cognate disciplines.’ Jason Hughes, University of Leicester, UK

Grand Narratives in Critical International Theory

Critical international theory has the task of providing orientation to human beings in better understanding their conditions of existence, how those conditions came to assume their contemporary characteristics, and what immanent potential they might hold for emancipatory transformation. The argument in this book is that this task of orientation is indissociable from a reliance on grand narratives that capture the main features of the long-term process of human development. And yet, many of these grand narratives also tend to reproduce Eurocentric worldviews that undermine critical international theory’s reliability as a means of orientation. In this book, André Saramago provides an innovative answer to the problem of orientation with which critical international theory is confronted. Through an indepth engagement with the work of Jürgen Habermas, Karl Marx, and Norbert Elias, he recovers a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives that avoids a reproduction of their Eurocentric shortcomings. In the process, he improves critical international theory’s role as a means of orientation by making it better theoretically equipped to capture the interweaving of the historical development of the human capacity for self-determination in the four key dimensions of human existence: people’s relations with themselves as individuals; social relations at both the intra- and inter-societal levels; and people’s relations with non-human nature. This book will appeal to all students and researchers interested in interdisciplinary and critical approaches to the study of world politics, long-term processes of social change, and human-nature relations, working within or across the fields of International Relations, Sociology, Political Theory, and related areas of inquiry. André Saramago is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra and Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. His research focuses on the intersection of critical international theory, historical sociology, and environmental politics. He is the editor of Non-Human Nature in World Politics: Theory and Practice (with Joana Castro Pereira, 2020), and his research has been published in journals such as Historical Social Research, European Journal of International Relations, and International Relations.

Rethinking Political and International Theory Series Editors: Keith Breen, Dan Bulley and Susan McManus

Committed to show you in what ways traditional approaches in political and international theory may be applied to 21st century politics, this series will present inventive and pioneering theoretical work designed to build a common framework for the latest scholarly research on political theory and international relations. Intended to be international and interdisciplinary in scope, the series will contain works which advance our understanding of the relevance of seminal thinkers to our current socio-political context(s) as well as problematize and offer new insights into key political concepts and phenomena within the arena of politics and international relations. Revolutionary Subjectivity in Post-Marxist Thought Laclau, Negri, Badiou Oliver Harrison Human Rights, Human Dignity, and Cosmopolitan Ideals Essays on Critical Theory and Human Rights Edited by Matthias Lutz-Bachmann and Amos Nascimento Creativity and Limitation in Political Communities Spinoza, Schmitt and Ordering Ignas Kalpokas Human Dignity Perspectives from a Critical Theory of Human Rights Edited by Amos Nascimento and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann Grand Narratives in Critical International Theory André Saramago

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Rethinking-Political-andInternational-Theory/book-series/ASHSER1348

Grand Narratives in Critical International Theory André Saramago

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 André Saramago The right of André Saramago to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9781032118390 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032118406 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003221777 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003221777 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

Contents

Introduction

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The problem of orientation in critical international theory Introduction 4 Orientation, grand narratives, and critical international theory 6 The Eurocentric critique of world politics 9 The possibility of a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives 13

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A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative Introduction 25 A theory of moral and social evolution 25 Universal communication community 34 The cosmopolitan constitutionalisation of world politics 38 Orientation in history 42

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The materialist-emergentist conception of history Introduction 47 Humans in nature 48 Objective ethics 51 A general theory of human development 54 Orientation and emancipation 59

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Class struggles and utopian limitations Introduction 66 The critique of capitalism 67 The interweaving of multiple forms of class struggle 74 Utopianism and social monopolies 81

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Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives Introduction 89 Process sociology and critical theory 91 Symbol emancipation and the triad of controls 93 On the concept of civilisation 98 Civilising processes as grand narrative 101

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Critical orientation in world politics Introduction 113 From the triad to the tetrad of controls 114 Class struggles in inter-societal relations 118 Socialisation and planned interdependence 124

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Concluding remarks

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Bibliography Index

139 151

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Introduction

This book is about the role of grand narratives in critical international theory. Grand narratives are here defined as perspectives that seek to identify the main social dynamics shaping the long-term development of human societies. Grand narratives have come to be viewed with suspicion within critical international theory to the extent that they are understood as inherently reproducing forms of Eurocentrism that make them inadequate as a means of studying world politics and their emancipatory potential. In critical assessments, this Eurocentrism has been argued to be present in both the Kantian-Habermasian and the neo-Gramscian traditions of critical theory. The Kantian-Habermasian approach has been charged with Eurocentrism to the extent that it relies on a stadial grand narrative that reproduces the stages through which Western societies have developed as the yardstick by which to measure universal human development. On the other hand, the neo-Gramscian approach has been charged with Eurocentrism by the way it adopts a diffusionist model that places Western societies as the centre of historical development and sees non-Western societies as either passive adapters or resistants to Western modernity but lacking autonomous agency. These criticisms have led to attempts to diminish critical international theory’s reliance on grand narratives. These attempts have assumed the form of either an emphasis on reflexivity that tries to disclose the unacknowledged forms of oppression that might be hidden in critical theoretical frameworks, or of a growing emphasis on shorter-term historical and contemporary analyses of social practices, seeking to identify their critical-emancipatory potential. However, despite their important contribution for the development of a more reflexive and historically-grounded critical international theory, both approaches are insufficient. The emphasis on reflexivity leads to increasing philosophical abstraction and a disconnect between theory and practice, while the emphasis on short-term historical and contemporary social practices, by not framing these in a wider account of human development, runs the risk of becoming locked in particularistic society- and time-bound perspectives. Hence, both approaches, by themselves, can lead critical international theory to lose its capacity for critical judgement. This book proposes an alternative answer to the challenges posed by grand narratives in critical international theory. It argues that critical international theory cannot do without grand narratives as these are essential to adequately answer DOI: 10.4324/9781003221777-1

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Introduction

the problem of orientation with which critical international theory is confronted. This problem refers to the way critical international theory’s capacity to identify the potential gathered at each historical juncture for an expansion of human selfdetermination, and to orientate human beings concerning the types of political agency that are required for its actualisation, depends on its concomitant capacity to develop theoretical frameworks that capture the main dynamics of historical development from a more cosmopolitan perspective. These two aspects are fundamentally intertwined to the extent that the disclosure of the potential for an expansion of human self-determination depends on the understanding of the emergent capabilities of human beings throughout the history of the species. Without the search for a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation that permits identifying those capabilities, critical international theory loses its capacity for the critical judgement of specific historical junctures. As such, from a critical international theory perspective, the abandonment of grand narratives is no less a source of disorientation than their Eurocentrism. This book provides a theoretical avenue that permits a recovery of the critical role of grand narratives without reproducing their shortcomings. It does so via an in-depth engagement with the work of Jürgen Habermas, Karl Marx, and Norbert Elias from which arises the proposal for a reconstruction of what the book calls a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising. This approach is based on the deployment of what the book calls process-concepts, as an alternative to the stadial conception of human development that can be found in the Kantian-Habermasian critical theoretical tradition. As is explained throughout this book, process-concepts permit an alternative, historical-sociological, approach to grand narratives that is focused on conceptually capturing the main social dynamics shaping the long-term development of all human societies, but which can assume highly varied time- and society-specific expressions. By identifying these emergent social dynamics, this approach recovers the search for a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition that is oriented to disclosing the universal potentialities opened by human history, namely the historical development of the human capacity for self-determination. But at the same time, this approach maintains a connection with the concrete historical experiences of human beings by analysing how these universal social dynamics assume different context-specific expressions. Hence, an assessment becomes possible not only of how the long-term multilinear development of the human species led to contemporary conditions of existence in different contexts but also how these conditions express different patterns of the human capacity for self-determination and hold different immanent potentials for its further development in the context of multiple possible futures. Such an approach permits an answer to the problem of orientation that avoids a reproduction of Eurocentrism to the extent that its identification of the universal social dynamics common to all human societies does not confuse their specific expressions, such as those found in the development of Western societies, with a universal measure by which all human societies can be assessed. It thus avoids the disconnect between theory and practice posed by an emphasis on reflexivity, the risks of contextualist relativism entailed in the focus on shorter-term analyses

Introduction 3 disconnected from the assessment of the wider process of human development, and the Eurocentrism of Kantian-Habermasian and neo-Gramscian critical theory. It is a form of critical international theory that is, simultaneously, cosmopolitan, nonteleological, non-Eurocentric, contingent, open-ended, and historically-embedded. This argument is developed in the following six chapters. Chapter 1 addresses the problem of orientation in critical international theory and the role of grand narratives in its context. It considers the criticism of Eurocentrism in grand narratives and makes the case for an alternative approach to their recovery, providing a short summary of the main argument of this book. Chapter 2 discusses the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas to identify its main features and shortcomings and establish the main framework of comparison to which the book’s proposed historical-sociological approach constitutes an alternative. Chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated to discussing Karl Marx’s critical theory as a precursor to the more adequate, historical-sociological, approach to grand narratives that is proposed in this book, while also considering why that potential was not fully actualised in Marx’s work. Finally, Chapters 5 and 6 provide a discussion of how Norbert Elias’s process sociology provides the necessary conceptual apparatus to carry out a reconstruction of the historical-sociological approach to grand narratives whose potential could already be found in Marx’s critical theory. Such a reconstruction permits the development of a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation through a recovery of the role of grand narratives in critical international theory. Any human endeavour is inherently a social activity, and this book is no exception. The list of individuals who in some way influenced its production, and to whom an appreciation would be in order, is too long to reproduce here. Let me just briefly mention a few of its most direct influencers. To my mother and father, Antónia and Álvaro Saramago, for their constant support and encouragement. To Beatriz Alcobia for her friendship, support, and orientation in life and thought. To Mário Lopes, Fábio Descalço, Ana Valente, Isabel David, Nuno Canas Mendes, Samuel de Paiva Pires, Nuno Jerónimo, Joana Castro Pereira, João Terrenas, Alex Hoseason, Bleddyn Bowen, Danita Catherine Burke, Danielle Young, Lorena De Vita, Lydia Cole, and Markus Göransson for their friendship and for having in some form or other shaped my path. To Raquel da Silva, Bernardo Teles Fazendeiro, Sofia José Santos, Daniela Nascimento, Maria Raquel Freire, Paula Duarte Lopes, Teresa Cravo, Lícinia Simão, José Manuel Pureza, and João Rodrigues for their friendship and encouragement. To Kamila Stullerova for her friendship, guidance, enthusiasm, and supervision of the PhD project of which this book is an outcome. A special thank you is owed to Andrew Linklater, not only for his guidance as a supervisor but also for the many conversations, his trust, friendship, and for opening the vistas of possibility. Finally, thank you to Liliana Valente, for her constant love, friendship, humour, support, and encouragement, for the ever-ongoing conversation, and also for the patience and endurance. Liliana is the constant source of inspiration, and this book is dedicated to her.

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The problem of orientation in critical international theory

Introduction One of the central tasks of critical international theory is the provision of theoretical frameworks on the basis of which people might come to better understand their conditions of existence, how those conditions came to assume their contemporary characteristics, and how they might attain a greater degree of conscious and collective control over their future development.1 Hence, critical international theory possesses a fundamental orientating role, in the sense that it provides a standpoint from the perspective of which people might orientate themselves in understanding their conditions of existence and the progressive or regressive potential, immanent in those conditions, for a future expansion or retraction of their capacity for conscious self-determination. However, this role confronts critical international theory with a fundamental problem. To provide adequate orientating frameworks, critical theorists must be able to, at least partially, detach from particularistic time- and space-bound perspectives in order to discern progressive or regressive patterns in human history and its possible futures. They must develop what can be characterised as a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition. Cosmopolitan here does not refer to a specific political perspective or programme but rather simply to the attempt to attain a more detached and universal perspective on the human condition, which is less bound to specific contexts. But the attainment of such a cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation is also always necessarily bounded and limited by the historical and spatial positionality in which embodied human beings, and critical international theorists by extension, find themselves (see: Kurki, 2015, 2020). There is thus a fundamental tension between critical international theory’s need to search for a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition, as a function of its role as a means of orientation, and the capacity of critical international theorists, as embodied human beings, to detach themselves for their specific temporal, spatial, and social contexts. The argument of this book is that this is a tension that cannot be solved, but rather demands that critical international theorists live within that tension and acknowledge its existence in the answers they provide to the problem of orientation.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003221777-2

The problem of orientation in critical international theory 5 This chapter analyses the adequacy of different answers to the problem of orientation within the critical theoretical tradition. Its main argument is that the problem of orientation requires that critical international theory relies on grand narratives of human development to attain a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation. However, the approaches to grand narratives that have hitherto been predominant in the field, either within the Kantian-Habermasian or the neo-Gramscian traditions, have proven inadequate. Be it because of a reliance on philosophy of history, transcendental categories, stadial conceptions of history, or a diffusionist model of social development, these approaches tend to reproduce forms of Eurocentrism and to pose a separation between the theoretical account of human development and actual empirical history that ultimately undermines critical international theory’s role as a means of orientation. One of the reactions to the inadequacy of such grand narratives has been a growing concern with reflexivity, which seeks to identify underlying, and frequently unacknowledged, forms of exclusion and oppression structuring critical theoretical thinking. However, the growing concern with reflexivity, while helping avoid the trap of Eurocentrism, has also led to an increasing reliance on philosophical abstraction that compromises critical international theory’s connection between theory and practice. Critical international theory thus continues to find itself incapable of adequately responding to the critical challenge raised by E. H. Carr (2001), and later by Robert W. Cox (1981), of maintaining a mutually constitutive synergy between realistic historical analysis and aspirations for societal change. This conclusion opens the way for the central argument of this book concerning the need to develop an alternative answer to the problem of orientation; one that consists in a form of grand narrative theorising that attains a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition through the identification of the historicalsociological processes that are universal to the development of all human societies, and that simultaneously traces how these processes can assume extremely varied expressions in different societal and temporal contexts. Such an approach retains a connection with empirical history while opening the possibility of a postEurocentric form of grand narrative that improves critical international theory’s role as a means of orientation. The discussion in this chapter is developed in three sections. Section ‘Orientation, grand narratives, and critical international theory’ discusses the problem of orientation in critical international theory and its relationship with cosmopolitanism and grand narratives. Section ‘The Eurocentric critique of world politics’ addresses the role of grand narratives as an answer to the problem of orientation in both the KantianHabermasian and the neo-Gramscian traditions in critical international theory and considers their shortcomings. This section also discusses how the reflexivity turn, while safeguarding critical international theory against the trap of Eurocentrism, has entailed a growing retreat into philosophical abstraction, theoretical fragmentation, and separation from practice, which compromises its role as a means of orientation. This leads to a discussion, in section ‘The possibility of

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a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives’, of the possibility for an alternative approach to the problem of orientation. This is done via an exploration of recent historical-sociological approaches to critical theorising that open the way for the post-Eurocentric approach to grand narratives that is proposed in the rest of this book; one on the basis of which it becomes possible to provide a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation to the extent that it relies on a permanent connection between theory and empirical history and avoids the reproduction of forms of Eurocentrism. Orientation, grand narratives, and critical international theory The notion of orientation assumes an important role in the history of political thought. Kant (1991b) argues that human beings need to orientate themselves in thought in the same way they need to do so spatially. In the absence of spatial directions, orientation in thought depends on ideas that serve as a compass that orientates the capacity for judgement. Here, he mentions the ‘rational belief’ in an intelligent and limitless creator, who is the source of ultimate morality and good, as one such orientating idea. Only on its basis, Kant (1991b: 245) argues, can people orientate their judgement of everything that is limited in accordance with the conception of a universal and timeless moral law. The categorical imperative, for example, fulfils this orientating function to the extent that it permits to assess the morality of the maxims that regulate behaviour through the test of their universality (Kant, 1991b: 245). However, the notion of orientation also assumes a central role outside the field of speculative thought. As Hutchings (2011: 192) notes, Kant is particularly concerned with ‘the impossibility of discerning an ethical direction (progressive, regressive, static) to human history on the basis of empirical evidence’, because it makes it impossible to exercise critical judgement in the analysis of history and discern its possibilities for moral progress. This is a difficulty that can be characterised as a problem of orientation. In other words, the incapacity to discern a pattern to history derives from human beings’ own embedded perspective in that history, being as they are always limited in their points of view by their social, temporal, and spatial positioning. The possibility for critical judgement is thus to be found in the search for another standpoint of orientation, one that permits a more ‘universal’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ perspective, not locked to the more restricted and circumscribed perspectives of particular human beings, societies, or social groups (Kant, 1991a). Hence, similarly to the way in which the rational belief in an intelligent and limitless creator and in a timeless moral law provides orientation concerning one’s behaviour, the critical judgement of history can be oriented by a rational belief in its progressive movement. For critical judgement to be possible, history must be conceived of as the process through which people progressively become more rational and develop increasingly more universal perspectives that recognise the moral law and permit the actualisation of their inherent capacity for freedom as rational beings (Kant, 1991a).

The problem of orientation in critical international theory 7 Kant (1991a) notes that it is not possible to prove this teleological movement through an analysis of empirical history. Its teleological character should not be taken literally, as describing the actual movement of history, but must instead be understood as serving two orientating purposes. On the one hand, it constitutes a way of navigating through the chaotic history of the species, so that it can be intelligibly organised in such a way that highlights the ordered character of the progressive improvement of reason. On the other hand, it serves a moral purpose to the extent that it helps people achieve a more cosmopolitan perspective on their conditions of existence, guided by the belief that, despite human failings and historical mistakes, the species moves inexorably towards a future condition of freedom, morality, and universal expansion of sympathy across borders. The teleological character of Kant’s solution to the problem of orientation thus fulfils ‘heuristic and moral purposes’ (Williams, 2001: 721). The search for a more cosmopolitan perspective as a standpoint of orientation is thus inherently connected with the disclosure of a grand narrative of human development. Grand narrative here is understood as the means through which the critical theorist establishes ‘linkages’ between the apparently disparate aspects of human historical development (Lyotard, 1988; see also: Lyotard, 1984; Browning, 2000). It relates to the attempt at attaining not only a ‘sense of the architecture of the human past, why parts of it are different from others, and how they all fit together’ but also how the human past structures the present and possible futures of the species (Sherratt, 1995: 1). The reliance on grand narratives to attain a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation thus possesses an inherent normative dimension (Beardsworth, 2011: 13). The critical thinker cannot privilege the point of view of certain human groups over others. She or he seeks a universal perspective that inherently relativises differences, be they of an ethnic, gender, class, national, religious, or ideological character. In the process, such a perspective denaturalises historically built frontiers, seeing them as historically contingent and artificial forms of division of an underlying common humanity. As such, the cosmopolitan solution to the problem of orientation has inherent implications for the development of a critical approach to the study of world politics. As much is discernible in the critical turn in International Relations which identifies clear limitations in the mainstream theoretical approaches of the discipline, such as neorealism and neoliberalism, as standpoints of orientation. These approaches are locked in what has been described as a form of ‘presentism’; i.e., the conviction that world politics can be explained through an analysis of their contemporary characteristics alone and that the focus of the discipline should be on the discovery of the transhistorical social laws underlying the interactions between societies (Buzan and Little, 2000). This type of approach is locked in the characteristics of the present as its standpoint of orientation and, consequently, tends to exclude from the analysis the notion of change. It assumes that the contemporary characteristics of world politics – such as the acknowledgement of the sovereign state as the predominant form of political community, or the condition of anarchy in international relations – are essential and immutable characteristics of

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the human condition (Buzan and Little, 2000). The dominant theoretical schools in International Relations are thus revealed as incapable of recognising the ‘singular’ character of contemporary world politics, while they obscure their past (Hobson, 2010: 10). In this manner, they are revealed as inadequate standpoints of orientation, rather constituting a frequent source of disorientation, to the extent that their assumptions about the immutability of world politics block the possibility of critical judgement concerning the potential for transformation and for the development of more rational and collectively self-determined forms of political organisation. In contrast with dominant International Relations theories, critical international theory seeks to improve the discipline’s role as a standpoint of orientation by placing the notion of change at the centre of its approach. It seeks to develop a ‘theory of history’ in the sense that it is concerned with the ‘continuous process of historical change’ (Cox, 1981: 129). This implies the search for a more cosmopolitan perspective on the basis of a grand narrative of human development; one that recognises that all perspectives, including its own, are inherently circumscribed by the historical conditions under which they are produced (Cox, 1981: 130). It is self-reflexive about its own conditions of knowledge and about the place it occupies in space and time, constantly recognising the limited and circumscribed character of its perspectives. Through such reflectivity, critical international theory seeks to attain a ‘perspective on perspectives’, a more cosmopolitan point of view that functions as a more adequate standpoint of orientation (Cox, 1981: 128). Critical international theory thus seeks the development of a ‘conceptual system that is concerned with the species as a whole’ (Linklater, 1982: 16). Such cosmopolitanism carries ‘revolutionary’ normative implications, to the extent that it seeks a ‘politics of impartiality’ that takes into account all human beings, irrespectively of the society or the time period in which they live (Linklater, 1982: 49). Any solution to the problem of orientation in critical international theory thus can be said to possess two dimensions, defined by Seyla Benhabib (1986: 142) as, respectively, the ‘explanatory-diagnostic’ dimension and the ‘anticipatoryutopian’ dimension. The first focuses on the development of theoretical frameworks capable of capturing the main dynamics of human historical development from a cosmopolitan perspective. These frameworks fulfil an orientating function to the extent that they provide an explanation of the main social processes that have shaped the historical development of the political, economic, social, and emotional life of the species (Linklater, 1982: 49). The second is focused on the identification of the potential gathered in the present by these long-term social processes for the development of forms of social organisation that permit an expansion of human self-determination. In other words, critical international theory seeks to assess what the analysis of the past and present reveals about the future possibilities of the species in what concerns human beings’ capacity to exercise a greater degree of conscious and collective control over their conditions of existence. This dimension has an orientating function to the extent that it helps people understand how, and through what forms of political agency, they might come to realise the immanent potential in their social relations for a further actualisation of self-determination in history.

The problem of orientation in critical international theory 9 This second dimension is inseparable from the explanatory dimension to the extent that critical international theory does not seek to produce a moralist manifesto in favour of a utopian world, disconnected from the empirical history of humanity. Without the explanatory dimension, critical theory dissolves into mere normative philosophy; while if it excludes the anticipatory dimension, it is not distinguishable from other theories that seek normative neutrality in their analysis of the social world (Benhabib, 1986: 142). Critical international theory thus seeks to position itself between the empirical and the normative, between the explanatory analysis of the historical conditions of human existence and the anticipatory projection of the emancipatory potential that these conditions have gathered from the perspective of a cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation (Beardsworth, 2011: 13). However, the reliance on grand narratives by critical international theory also poses several challenges that can ultimately undermine its adequacy as a means of orientation. The next section discusses some of these challenges to argue that the approaches to grand narratives that have become predominant in the field, namely inspired by the Kantian-Habermasian and neo-Gramscian traditions of critical theorising, ultimately reintroduce forms of Eurocentrism associated with 18th- and 19th-century European grand narratives that compromise critical international theory’s orientating role. The Eurocentric critique of world politics Two of the most prominent schools of thought in critical international theory follow, respectively, the Kantian-Habermasian and the neo-Gramscian traditions of critical theorising, both of which rely on different approaches to grand narratives as an answer to the problem of orientation. The Kantian-Habermasian approach, which is discussed in greater depth in Chapter 2, follows Habermas’s attempt to recover Kant’s rational belief in the progressive character of history in the context of a theory of social and moral evolution that captures the universal logical pattern of development of human competences, such as reason and morality, without assuming that this logic is reproduced in concrete events in history (Habermas, 1979: 8). In this context, sociological considerations are not ‘called for’, because ‘they fall short of the level of abstraction on which the structural conditions of possibility of learning processes relevant to evolution must be given’ (Habermas, 1979: 28). A theory of social and moral evolution conceptualised in this manner fulfils an orientating function to the extent that it provides a cosmopolitan perspective on the universal pattern of development of human competences. From this perspective, it becomes possible to identify ‘innovative potential’ at certain historical junctures, without seeking to ‘explain’ the formation of that potential. According to Habermas (2003), the hitherto most advanced disclosable stage in this sequence of human competences is the modern ‘post-conventional’ stage of moral orientation. At this stage – and on the contrary of what occurs at a previous ‘conventional’ stage of moral development – people are no longer capable of accepting the validity and legitimacy of social norms purely through appeals to group loyalty or the argument that these norms are expressive of the culture of their political communities

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(Habermas, 2003). Instead, in the absence of the immediate legitimacy of social norms derived from cultural loyalty, their legitimacy can now be attained only through the rationally compelling character of their content. A rationality whose assessment requires the discursive consensualisation of these norms by all who stand to be affected by them, a principle captured in the Habermasian (1987, 2003) notion of ‘discourse ethics’, which becomes the only criteria of legitimacy that is valid for human beings at a post-conventional stage of moral orientation. Discourse ethics are thus the ‘zenith of a post-conventional morality’; the only criteria that is left – once religion and culture have lost their unquestionable character – for people to orientate themselves in the assessment of the legitimacy and reasonableness of the social norms that regulate their collective life (Linklater, 1998: 91). Immanent in Habermasian discourse ethics is thus the vision of a ‘universal communication community’ that poses the species as the ultimate legitimate constituent (Habermas, 2003). This vision has become the standpoint of cosmopolitan orientation for much of critical international theory inspired by Habermas’s work (see: Linklater, 1982, 1998; Hoffman, 1987, 1991; Risse, 2000). The universal communication community constitutes the cosmopolitan point of view that is immanent in the grand narrative of the logic of development of human moral competencies and that permits a critical judgement of world politics. It constitutes what Linklater (1998: 48) calls a ‘procedural ideal’ a standpoint of critique that assesses the validity and legitimacy of social norms not in accordance with their content but rather with the procedure through which they were consensualised and adopted. The argument is that if, from a procedural point of view, all norm consensualisation processes include all of those who stand to be affected by them, then there is a high probability that their content also enjoys not only legitimacy but is assessed as fair and rational by all those who are involved in the decision-making process (Linklater, 1998: 92). The establishment of discourse ethics as a standpoint of orientation frames, for example, Linklater’s (1998) critique of the sovereign Westphalian state as a form of political community that is incapable of fulfilling the legitimacy criteria of human beings at a post-conventional stage of moral orientation. The restriction of domestic decision-making processes to national citizens is identified as being incompatible with the principles of discourse ethics, given how they necessarily exclude all non-nationals that frequently are also affected by the norms consensualised within the borders of the state (Linklater, 1998: 56; see also: Linklater, 1982: 12). Furthermore, Linklater (1998: 47) criticises the sovereign state not only for being a particularistic form of political community, but also for being, in a way, too ‘universalist’. Here, he refers to the way states seek to erase all identity expressions that deviate from the culturally defined national standard. In this manner, the Westphalian state is a form of political community that not only separates its citizens from the rest of humanity – converting them into potential enemies of the rest of the species – but that also seeks to homogenise its population according to a single national and cultural standard (Hutchings, 1999, 2000). The sovereign state can thus be described as a limited, particularistic, exclusivist and potentially oppressive form of political community that better expresses a conventional stage

The problem of orientation in critical international theory 11 of moral orientation, but that is no longer adequate for the post-conventional moral competencies found in the personality structures of modern individuals. But immanent in post-conventional orientations is also the potential for a transformation of the sovereign state into a ‘post-Westphalian’ form of political community (Linklater, 1998: Ch. 6; see also: Shapcott, 2013). A political community that shares sovereign competencies with supranational organisations responsible for consensualising transnational social norms between all those that might be affected by them, and that delegates decision power towards local and regional levels of political organisation. Such a transformation came to be understood by Habermasinspired scholars as part of a wider transformation of world politics towards a form of post-national deliberative cosmopolitan democracy that would create a network of decision-making processes at various levels (Held, 1995, 2010; Beardsworth, 2011). In the process, human beings would acquire the political and institutional means necessary to expand their conscious and collective control over the global social processes that have escaped the control of sovereign states. However, the Kantian-Habermasian answer to the problem of orientation has also been criticised for its reliance on a grand narrative structured by philosophical history and transcendental categories that detach it from a concern with actual empirical history to rather focus on the identification of an abstract pattern of progress in human development. The approach is thus charged with uncoupling itself from the study of the historical activity and struggles of concrete embodied human beings in a manner that leads it to reproduce forms of Eurocentrism that ultimately undermine its adequacy as a means of orientation in the critical study of world politics. Kantian-Habermasian critical international theory has been argued to ‘rely on the assumption that there is fixed and linear “logics of development” (…) that determine the fundamental formative stages through which human societies must go’ (Schmid, 2018: 202; see also: Fluck, 2012; Schmid, 2023). In this way, it ‘reproduces some of the more questionable features of the orthodox Marxist philosophy of history that [it] had set out to distance [itself] from in the first place’ (Schmid, 2018: 203). Amongst these characteristics is ‘the notion that human history can be read as an inherently directional and progressive unfolding, to be reconstructed retrospectively as a moral-learning process’ (Schmid, 2018: 203, emphasis in original). This has two main consequences, in Schmid’s (2018: 203, emphasis in original) assessment: on the one hand, ‘it lends itself to a triumphalist and undialectical reading of history that highlights its successes while removing its ambivalences’ and, on the other hand, ‘it supports the belief that the future course of history can be speculatively predetermined by means of a normative theory of legal and moral evolution’. Kantian-Habermasian critical international theory is thus seen as responsible for promoting a separation between theory and practice by interpreting historical events according to its pre-established theoretical framework, characterised by a linear sequence of stages of development. The empirical history and social struggles of concrete human beings are interpreted as progressive or regressive, as having critical emancipatory potential or constituting setbacks in the march of

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progress, in accordance with the way in which these can or cannot be framed in the a priori established stadial grand narrative of human development, in the form of a theory of social and moral development (Sherratt, 1995: 10). In this context, ‘the idea of moral progress is elevated to the status of an absolute, a meta-narrative principle that overrides the need for substantive, critical analysis’ (Schmid, 2018: 203). By adopting a cosmopolitan standpoint of critique based on a philosophicaltranscendental framework that separates itself from empirical inquiry, KantianHabermasian critical international theory ends up imposing a ‘unilinear conception of socio-historical development’ whereby history becomes simply the ground on which the philosophical framework is illustrated (Anievas, 2010: 153). History is seen as ‘unfolding through an inherent teleological structure’, with key historical events being translated into a ‘unilinearity of successive levels of moral development’ while ‘the unequal, multilinear and interactive nature of social development is (…) neglected’ (Anievas, 2010: 154). The stadial grand narrative underlying Kantian-Habermasian critical international theory thus reproduces a form of Eurocentrism to the extent that the privileged cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation for the critique of world politics, the stage of post-conventional moral development, is understood as being most fully expressed in the personality structures of modern Western individuals. The West becomes the ‘meridian of the present’; the point of view that has attained the more advanced stage of moral development and that, consequently, provides the more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation for the critique of world politics (Hutchings, 2011: 196). From that perspective, non-Western societies that have followed alternative paths of development are inevitably classified as occupying more primitive stages on the same progressive road through which all societies travel towards post-conventional modernity or as incurring in some kind of error (Hutchings, 2011). A perspective that can lead to the conclusion that ‘spatio-temporally distant people (…) [are in] need of education to set them right’ (Hutchings, 2011: 194). But the problematic reproduction of Eurocentrism is not limited to the KantianHabermasian approach to grand narratives and the problem of orientation in critical international theory. The other major critical theoretical tradition in International Relations, neo-Gramscianism, has also been found to express a form of ‘subliminal Eurocentrism’ (Hobson, 2007, 2012: Ch. 10). While expressly critical of Western imperialism, neo-Gramscianism also relies on a grand narrative that reproduces the perspective of a self-generating West that projects its global power outwards through a ‘one-way diffusionism’ (Hobson, 2007: 93). Neo-Gramscian critical international theory adopts a more historical and less philosophical approach in its grand narrative of human development than Kantian-Habermasian critical international theory, emphasising the role of domestic and transnational class struggles in shaping state structures and world orders (Cox, 1987, 1996; Gill, 1990; Robinson, 2005). However, neo-Gramscianism still orientates its critique of world politics from a cosmopolitan perspective that derives from a grand narrative of Western ascendency and diffusion, in the context of which Western domestic class struggles and their transnationalisation assume a central place. In that grand narrative, non-Western societies tend to adopt the role of either passive adapters

The problem of orientation in critical international theory 13 or counter-hegemonic resistants vis-à-vis Western global hegemony which is understood as the predominant history-shaping force (Hobson, 2007: 93). This reliance on the conception of a hegemonic diffusionist West also seems to drag neo-Gramscianism back into the confines of philosophy of history and a stadial conception of human development with the West representing both the centre of the process and the image of the future for non-Western societies whose agency as anything other than resistants or adapters disappears from view (Devetak, 2018: 142; see also: Devetak, 2017). This problematic relationship between grand narratives and Eurocentrism has thus led to a growing suspicion of grand narratives in critical international theory. This suspicion is part of what has been described as a tendency within contemporary critical international theory to delve into increasingly abstract philosophical inquiries into the consequences for critical analysis of the frequently unacknowledged assumptions underlying critical theoretical frameworks (Kurki, 2011: 136). This concern with reflexivity (Hamati-Ataya, 2012; Guzzini, 2013; Amoureux and Steele, 2015; Neumann and Neumann, 2015), with the normative, ontological, and epistemological consequences of the situatedness of knowledge and of the perspectives from which critical theorists think world politics, has made a fundamental contribution to critical international theory in its various feminist (Ackerly and True, 2008; Tickner, 2011), critical realist (Patomäki and Wight, 2000; Joseph and Kurki, 2018), constructivist (Lynch, 2008), or post-colonial (Blaney and Tickner, 2017) persuasions. But it has also come at the cost of an increasing concentration of critical international theory in meta-theoretical inquiry and a focus on a ‘rather narrow and “technical” set of philosophical questions at the expense of broader political questions’ (Kurki, 2011: 136). In the process, the concern with reflexivity, as a reaction against the enduring Eurocentrism of critical approaches to world politics, has also carved out a moralintellectual space focused on philosophical debate and increasingly disconnected from empirical and historical analysis. It has led to critical international theory becoming increasingly fragmented into distinct and self-contained approaches that adopt what Marysia Zalewski (1996: 351) has described as a ‘spirit of jousting verging on the hostile’ in their mutual criticisms of how their respective philosophical assumptions reproduce forms of Eurocentrism and inadequate standpoints of orientation. Increasingly lost from view is the vision of critical international theory as a diverse but collective endeavour, an ‘open-front’ fight against unreflexive positivism (Kurki, 2011: 137), concerned with providing means of orientation that help human beings understand their past and present conditions of existence and the immanent potentials these gather for future emancipatory change. The possibility of a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives The perceived plunge of critical international theory into ever-deeper philosophical abstraction has led to calls for the need to re-ground critical theorising in historically oriented forms of knowledge that reconnect it with the ‘broader experiences

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of everyday life that make the international possible’ (Caraccioli, 2018: 34). Critical international theory is perceived as in need of recovering ‘worldly relevance’, while retaining the lessons of the reflexive turn (Hom, 2017). Several avenues towards the reconnection with empirical practice have been opened. These range from calls of greater engagement with practitioners and policy makers (Kurki, 2011; Bridoux and Kurki, 2014), to reflections on the critical potential of experiences of exile (Beattie, 2015) or teaching and pedagogical activities (Hom, 2017; Caraccioli, 2018). It entails calls for the need to rethink the place of human beings in international relations (Jacobi and Freyberg-Inan, 2012, 2015) and attempts to provide historically grounded discussions of key critical concepts previously discussed in a philosophical mode (Hoseason, 2022). A trend can thus be identified towards the development of a critical international theory that, while not dismissing the importance of philosophical inquiry, forefronts historically grounded and practice-oriented approaches that seek to disclose the emancipatory potential in everyday political and social life (Saramago, 2020). One of the main exponents of what might be called the post-philosophical trend in critical theorising is Richard Devetak (2011, 2017, 2018; Devetak and Walter, 2016). Devetak (2018) has been critical of critical international theory’s growing tendency towards philosophical abstraction. Such an approach, he argues, ‘requires treating the structures and practices of international relations as abstract principles detached from empirical political history’ and inherently considers ‘political structures, whether domestic or global, as reflections or realizations of normativephilosophical principles rather than contingent historical products’ (Devetak, 2018: 154). From that perspective, the determinants for the success of any critical emancipatory project can be assessed ‘simply by reflecting on philosophical principles independently of empirical political realities; that is, on the basis of dialectical philosophy’; an approach that implies the ‘most optimistic utopianism’ (Devetak, 2018: 154). Critical international theory’s tendency to separate itself from empirical history into increasingly more abstract meta-theoretical debates is thus understood as fundamentally compromising its role as a means of orientation to the extent that it entails a radical break between theory and practice. The alternative of a more historical and sociological approach to critical theorising has been explored by Devetak (2018: Ch. 5) in his attempt to recover what he describes as an ‘alternative critical tradition’ which, he argues, can be found in the ‘rival Enlightenment’ that developed in the context of Renaissance Humanism, Absolutist historiography, and the civic histories of the Enlightenment. This rival Enlightenment is argued to contain the necessary elements for the development of a critical international theory in ‘historical mode’ (Devetak, 2014, 2018). An approach that abandons the transcendental categories of philosophy to instead focus on capturing the dynamics of empirical history and the way it is shaped by the historically contextualised concerns and social struggles of concrete human beings. Such an approach is argued to permit capturing the emergent contextual ethics in different historical contexts as a criterion of critical orientation. In other words, it captures how the historical expression of critical orientations can be understood not as ‘reflections or realisations of normative-philosophical principles’ but rather

The problem of orientation in critical international theory 15 as ‘contingent historical products of legislators, diplomats, jurists, and bureaucrats engaged in the activities of statecraft’ (Devetak, 2018: 155). From this perspective, then, the attainment of a critical standpoint of orientation depends not on an a priori exercise of philosophical abstraction in the mind of the critical theorist in search of a cosmopolitan point of view but is rather understood as something arising from the historical process itself, as an outcome of the emergent ethical criteria of concrete human beings engaged in concrete struggles and historical challenges in specific contexts, namely in the context of the exercise of state power and the challenges it poses to civic government and civil life. Devetak’s project for a critical international theory in historical mode thus constitutes a fundamental contribution to the post-philosophical trend in critical international theory. It is an approach that seeks to address the problem of orientation by abandoning the need for grand narratives to attain a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation, substituting them with contextualist historical analysis of the ethical criteria orientating different historical moments and contingent social struggles. However, while Devetak’s approach ensures the connection between theory and practice that has been broken by an increasingly abstract and philosophical critical international theory concerned with the trap of Eurocentrism, it is open to discussion whether it provides an adequate historical-sociological answer to the problem of orientation. Although Devetak’s project is still in its initial stages of development, and thus might be too soon for a fair assessment, hitherto, his historical-sociological approach appears to avoid the problems of grand narrative universalism to potentially fall back upon contextualist relativism. In other words, how does Devetak’s critical approach assess between competing ethical claims, be it those of competing social groups within a society or those in the relations between Western and non-Western societies? Following his contextualist approach, it is unlikely that Devetak will want to universalise the ethical values disclosed by Western political elites as a standpoint of orientation, thus reproducing a form of Eurocentrism. But are there criteria to critically assess the validity of competing ethical standpoints originating in different cultural backgrounds, and defended by competing social groups and political communities, or are these assessed as equally valid if judged as such in their respective cultural backgrounds? So far, Devetak’s approach remains ambivalent on how it navigates between the extremes of Eurocentric universalism and relativist contextualism in its answer to the problem of orientation. A similar observation can be made of other attempts to historicise critical international theory by focusing on the activity of policy makers (Kurki, 2011) or the critical potential of pedagogical activities (Caraccioli, 2018). These approaches privilege context-specific perspectives. In the process, by eschewing the search for a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation, they avoid the Eurocentric danger of grand narratives but substitute it with an opening to forms of contextualist relativism that can also undermine critical international theory’s role as a means of orientation. The question follows then, whether it is possible to conceive of an approach to the problem of orientation in critical international theory that simultaneously avoids the pitfalls of Eurocentric grand narratives, the abstraction of purely

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philosophical inquiry, or the limitations of relativist contextualism. The purpose of this book is to provide a possible answer to this question. It does so by proposing a reconstruction of a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives whose origins can be traced back to the critical theory of Karl Marx, who, however, failed to actualise that potential in his work. This potential in Marx’s work is then salvaged through an engagement with the process sociology of Norbert Elias which, concomitantly, draws to the forefront the frequently undertheorised critical potential of Elias’s work. The outcome of this endeavour is the proposal for a reconstructed historical-sociological approach to critical theorising that relies on a grand narrative of human development that permits the attainment of a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation on the human condition while avoiding the trap of Eurocentrism and retaining a connection between theory and practice. In the development of its proposed reconstruction of a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising, this book is significantly inspired by the work of Andrew Linklater. As discussed above, the first phase of Andrew Linklater’s work was heavily influence by a Kantian-Habermasian approach that led him to reproduce the problems of a philosophical-transcendental answer to the problem of orientation. But the later phase of his work, predominantly influenced by Norbert Elias, provides important resources for the development of the type of historical-sociological approach that is argued for in this book as providing a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation (on Linklater’s process sociological turn, see also: Devetak, 2018: 145). This is particularly evident in Linklater’s (2011, 2016, 2021) research about the long-term historical development of what he called ‘cosmopolitan harm conventions’. In that project, Linklater relies on process sociology’s specific historicalsociological approach to grand narrative theorising, which is focused not on disclosing the stages of human development using the methods of philosophy of history – as occurs within the Kantian-Habermasian tradition on which Linklater previously relied – but rather on understanding what are the main social dynamics shaping the long-term development of all human societies. This entails disclosing what Elias (2012: 99) calls ‘social universals’ or the ‘universals of human society’. These social universals are captured by Elias in the form of what this book calls process-concepts, i.e., concepts that, rather than expressing categories or stages that are assumed to structure the path that all human societies must travel in their historical development, instead seek to capture those dynamics of social development that are transversal to all human societies, but which assume highly varied time- and society-specific expressions. As is discussed in greater details in Chapter 5, an example of such a processconcept is Elias’s (2012) notion of the ‘triad of controls’. This concept refers to the way in which all human societies, to ensure their continued survival and reproduction, need to constantly develop some pattern of control in three essential dimensions: (1) control over non-human complexes of events – that is, control over external non-human nature, so as to protect themselves from natural threats and transform nature into that which is required for the satisfaction of human biological and social needs; (2) control over interpersonal relationships – that is, control over

The problem of orientation in critical international theory 17 social processes via the establishment of norms that regulate social life; and (3) control of human beings over themselves as individuals – that is, control over their internal drives and impulses as a prerequisite to live in society. These three dimensions of control ‘are interdependent both in their development and in their functioning’, being that, for example, ‘the extension of control over nature is directly interdependent with changes in both self-control and in control over interpersonal relations’ (Elias, 2012: 152). The triad of controls is thus described by Elias (2012: 99) as one of the ‘universals’ of human societies to the extent that, though the specific pattern that the triad assumes in different societies and historical contexts varies greatly, all human societies, on penalty of collapse, must engage in some pattern of the triad to ensure their survival. As Linklater (2019: unpaginated) underlines, all societies must guarantee that first, in infancy every person undergoes a process of acquiring control over [their] ‘animalic’ drives or biological impulses in order to become a functioning member of society. Second, [that] people in groups engage in restraining each other’s capacity for threatening or violent or other forms of harmful behaviour if they are to live together amicably. Basic social taboos are integral to all forms of life for that reason. [And] third, controls over non-human nature are an inextricable part of the quest to satisfy basic needs (as are forms of self-control and associated restraints between those concerned). The triad of controls thus constitutes a process-concept that can be the basis of a grand narrative that is focused not on tracing the stages of human development through which all human societies must pass – and that, consequently, tends to universalise the path of development of a specific society and is liable to reproduce forms of Eurocentrism – but is rather focused on identifying the emergent social dynamics shaping long-term processes of human development. These social dynamics are understood to assume a wide range of specific expressions depending on the historic, spatial, and societal contexts in which they express themselves. Consequently, this approach to grand narrative theorising opens the way for the development of a multilinear and open-ended grand narrative of human development that traces how the triad of controls assumes different expressions, in different temporal contexts and in different societies, along multilinear paths of development which, furthermore, interinfluence and interpenetrate each other. As Chapters 5 and 6 show, the triad of controls is just one of several such universal process-concepts proposed by process sociology, other examples being the notions of ‘monopoly mechanism’ or ‘survival units’. This approach to grand narrative theorising permits an alternative, historicalsociological, answer to the problem of orientation to that of stadial grand narratives or that of historical contextualism. By identifying the emergent historical-sociological dynamics shaping long-term processes of human development, it recovers the search for a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition that provides both explanatory and anticipatory orientation. Identifying the underlying universal social dynamics shaping the development of human societies permits recognising

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their context-specific expressions while framing these in a wider understanding of the overall pattern of the historical development of human capacities. Hence, an assessment becomes possible not only of how the long-term multilinear development of the human species led to contemporary conditions of existence in different contexts but also how it gathered immanent potentials, both in those different contexts and at the level of universal human capacities, that open multiple potential pathways of future development. From that perspective, then, it becomes possible to provide more adequate orientation that helps human beings both understand how their specific conditions of existence came to be what they are and what are the possible futures immanent in those conditions and in the historically developing transversal capacities of the species. Such an approach avoids being locked either in the perspective of the historical context of specific societies, or in the abstract universalisation of the point of view of Western modernity, while maintaining an intimate connection between the theoretical assessment of the main dynamics shaping the long-term process of human development and actual concrete empirical history. This argument is illustrated with particular clarity by Andrew Linklater’s latest work. While Linklater does not directly engage with the problem of orientation in the terms discussed in this book, he deploys process sociological process-concepts in the context of what he has described as a ‘sociology of global morals with emancipatory intent’ (Linklater, 2007). In its context, Linklater (2011) assesses how, throughout the long-term process of human development, different political communities established different institutions and norms that embody specific ‘harm conventions’ that promote different patterns of the triad of controls regulating their members’ capacity to cause harm to each other, to members of other political communities, and to non-human nature. Linklater’s argument is that all human societies need harm conventions defining patterns of the triad of controls that ensure their survival and reproduction, although the actual historical expressions of these harm conventions vary widely in society-specific ways and develop in a multilinear manner. But their historical emergence and development also express the universal development of a human capacity to exercise self-control over the forms of harm human beings are capable of inflicting to each other and to other species. Linklater (2011: 8) is thus interested in tracing the interplay between the development of society-specific harm conventions and the historical emergence of what he designates as ‘cosmopolitan harm conventions’. In other words, in tracing the slow and convoluted development of international norms and institutions that seek to establish minimum criteria of co-existence between human societies, each with their society-specific harm conventions, in the context of a process characterised by harsh asymmetries of power and conflicts between different worldviews. The historical emergence of such cosmopolitan harm conventions is expressive of the historically developing capacity of human beings, transversal to the species, to both learn how to tame their more violent impulses and to universalise their perspectives in the search for harm conventions that are acceptable to different societies with different worldviews and cultural backgrounds. It thus exhibits the immanent potential, within the long-term process of development of the species, for the development of cosmopolitan harm conventions that have ‘the purpose of

The problem of orientation in critical international theory 19 protecting all people from unnecessary harm, irrespective of their nationality, ethnicity, citizenship, class, race, gender, sexual orientation and so forth’ (Linklater, 2011: 8). A protection that, furthermore, is increasingly recognised as in need of being extended to non-human species (Linklater, 2021: 247–248). Such an approach to a grand narrative of human development is thus potentially capable of, simultaneously, tracing the multilinear development of harm conventions in society-specific contexts, thus avoiding universalising a Eurocentric standpoint of orientation, while maintaining the capacity to critically assess between competing worldviews and immanent possible futures by exhibiting a normative preference for those harm conventions that further develop the historically emergent human capacity to develop patterns of the triad of controls that reduce unnecessary harm to all human and non-human life. Furthermore, it is an approach that consistently maintains a connection with actual empirical history, in all its contingency and multilinear expression, rather than substituting it with an abstract linear stadial account of human development. There are, however, limitations to Linklater’s historical-sociological answer to the problem of orientation. Several criticisms have been raised, namely concerning how Linklater maintains a predominantly anthropocentric perspective (Taylor, 2017; Hoseason, 2018) or how he fails to develop a more adequate sociological analysis of global capitalism (Schmid, 2018). But the criticisms that are most relevant in the context of this book are those that consider Linklater has actually not escaped the confines of Eurocentrism. While the content of these critiques varies, their common feature is the idea that Linklater’s analysis of the historical development of harm conventions does not take sufficiently into account the agency and role of non-Western political communities and social groups in the shaping of those norms (Çapan, 2017; Chong, 2017; Go, 2017; Lawson, 2017; Ling, 2017). Indeed, Linklater’s initial investigations into harm conventions, either in The Problem of Harm in World Politics: Theoretical Investigations (2011) or in Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems (2016), tend to focus predominantly on the development of harm conventions within European international societies and on the contribution of European and Western political communities to that process. However, it could also be argued that the critique of Eurocentrism partially misses the mark (Saramago, 2022). On the one hand, a lot of the critiques fail to grasp the role of process-concepts in Linklater’s approach to grand narrative theorising, and how these two books are examples of society-specific analyses of the development of Western harm conventions and are not intended as a general narrative of human development. On the other hand, as John Hobson (2017) has suggested, a potential reply to these criticisms is that Linklater’s (2011, 2016) work can be interpreted as reproducing a form of ‘critical Eurocentrism’, which intentionally tones down non-Western voices to emphasise the centrality of Western imperialism and global hegemony in the process of constitution of contemporary global international society (see also: Wallerstein, 1997; Linklater, 2017). However, Linklater’s (2021) more significant reply to these criticisms came in the form of The Idea of Civilization and the Making of the Global Order, where he deploys the same historical-sociological approach to trace not only non-Western reactions

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to Western ‘civilising offensives’ but also how non-Western societies were active agents in the shaping of an ongoing ‘global civilising process’ in the context of which it is possible to trace the historical emergence of ‘cosmopolitan harm conventions’. This later study shows how Linklater has taken on board the arguments of his critics and further actualised the post-Eurocentric potential of his approach. However, this potential also remains undisclosed and undertheorised in Linklater’s writings. Linklater never expressly discussed the different philosophicaltranscendental and historical-sociological approaches to grand narratives, nor the implications of the way his critical theory moved from one approach to the other throughout his career. Hence, his mobilisation of a historical-sociological form of grand narrative, based on process-concepts rather than on a stadial conception of human development, remains undertheorised in his later work. This has the consequence that, even within The Idea of Civilization and the Making of the Global Order (2021), Linklater’s adoption of a more cosmopolitan but post-Eurocentric standpoint of orientation is not sustained, occasionally falling back into Eurocentric diffusionist models of global development, in which non-Western societies are primarily understood as reacting against an expanding West, rather than agents in their own right. Hence, it can be argued that Linklater opened the way for the development of a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives, with his later work being an example although with occasional contradictions. But by not expressly theorising such an approach, not only did Linklater occasionally lose sight of its potential, but critical international theory remained without access to the theoretical foundation required to develop such an approach in a coherent and sustained manner. This book seeks to provide a clarification of that theoretical foundation, in the process proposing a reconstruction of a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives as a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation. This argument is developed in the next five chapters. Chapter 2 revisits Jürgen Habermas’s philosophical-transcendental approach to grand narratives to clarify what are its shortcomings and to establish it as the main referent approach to which the one proposed in this book constitutes an alternative. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss Karl Marx’s critical theory to highlight its potential for a more adequate, historical-sociological, means of orientation, while also discussing why that potential was not fully actualised by Marx. Finally, Chapters 5 and 6 move to a discussion of Norbert Elias’s process sociology that highlights how it can be read from a perspective inspired by Marx’s critical theory and in such a way that permits an approach to grand narratives and critical theorising that overcomes the shortcomings, and actualises the potential, of Marx’s work, while drawing out the critical potential in Elias’s own writings. Note 1 An earlier version of this chapter has appeared in Saramago (2022). The author would like to thank the European Journal of International Relations for authorization to partially reproduce the content of that article here, which was originally entitled ‘PostEurocentric grand narratives in critical international theory’.

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Risse T (2000) ‘Let’s argue!’: Communicative action in world politics. International Organization 54(1): 1–39. Robinson WI (2005) Gramsci and globalisation: From nation-state to transnational hegemony. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 8(4): 559–574. Saramago A (2020) Reality-congruence, emancipatory politics and situated knowledge in international relations: A process sociological perspective. International Relations 34(2): 204–224. Saramago A (2022) Post-Eurocentric grand narratives in critical international theory. European Journal of International Relations 28(1): 6–29. Schmid D (2018) The poverty of critical theory in international relations: Habermas, Linklater and the failings of cosmopolitan critique. European Journal of International Relations 24(1): 198–220. Schmid D (2023) The Poverty of Critical Theory in International Relations. Cham: Springer. Shapcott R (2013) From the good international citizen to the cosmopolitan political community. International Politics 50(1): 138–157. Sherratt A (1995) Reviving the grand narrative: Archaeology and long-term change. Journal of European Archaeology 3(1): 1–32. Taylor N (2017) The problem of nuclear harm for Andrew Linklater, Lorraine Elliott and other contemporary cosmopolitans. Global Society 32(1): 111–126. Tickner JA (2011) Dealing with difference: Problems and possibilities for dialogue in international relations. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39(3): 607–618. Wallerstein I (1997) Eurocentrism and its avatars: The dilemmas of social science. New Sociological Bulletin 46(1): 21–39. Williams H (2001) Metamorphosis or palingenesis? Political change in Kant. Review of Politics 64(3): 693–722. Zalewski M (1996) ‘All these theories yet the bodies keep piling up’: Theories, theorists, theorising. In: Smith S, Booth K and Zalewski M (eds) International Theory: Positivism and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 340–353.

2

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative

Introduction This chapter discusses Habermas’s critical theory as a philosophical-transcendental means of orientation. Its purpose is to clarify the philosophical structure of critique proposed by Habermas, which has become so influential in contemporary critical international theory, and how it relies on a grand narrative of human development that poses a radical separation between theory and practice, i.e., between the philosophical assessment of the logical structure of human development and the actual history of embodied human beings. Furthermore, this grand narrative sustains a transcendental normative standpoint of orientation that also separates the criteria for critical judgement from the actual concrete living experiences of human beings. Consequently, Habermas’s critical theory is revealed as an inadequate answer to the problem of orientation both in its explanatory and anticipatory dimensions. This chapter thus serves to establish the point of contrast with the argument for a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising that is developed in the rest of the book. This chapter is divided into four sections. Section ‘A theory of moral and social evolution’ discusses Habermas’ critical theory as an attempt at a reconstruction of historical materialism and considers his answer to the explanatory dimension of the problem of orientation in the form of a theory of moral and social evolution. Section ‘Universal communication community’ addresses Habermas’ answer to the anticipatory dimension of the problem of orientation by discussing his conception of discourse ethics as a cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation. Finally, Sections ‘The cosmopolitan constitutionalisation of world politics’ and ‘Orientation in history’, respectively, consider how Habermas’s critical theory orientates his analysis of contemporary world politics and discuss the shortcomings of his philosophicaltranscendental approach to the problem of orientation. A theory of moral and social evolution Habermas develops his critical theory in reaction to what he sees as the shortcomings of Marx’s work and the way these have negatively affected the development of the critical theoretical tradition. According to Habermas, the deep pessimism DOI: 10.4324/9781003221777-3

26 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative that came to characterise Frankfurt School critical theory, expressed with acuity by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (2002; see also: Jeffries, 2017), to whom rationalisation is equated with the expansion of logics of administrative control over social life, is directly traceable to Marx’s conception of reason. To Marx, reason and its historical development are expressed via labour and the development of the forces of production, i.e., the expansion of human control over non-human nature. It is to labour, more specifically, purposive conscious social labour and productive activity that Marx traces the distinction between humans and non-human species. However, Habermas (1991b: 134) considers that the notion of social labour ‘cuts too deeply into the evolutionary scale’ and reveals a one-sided emphasis on production that limits Marx’s conception of reason. It ignores how not only humans, but also other species of hominids, were distinguishable from other animals by the fact that they too carried out social labour. Hominid hunting bands also made weapons and tools, cooperated through a division of labour, and distributed the products of their productive activity amongst the members of the group in an organised manner. Hence, Habermas (1991b: 135) considers that the concept of social labour is suitable for ‘delimiting the mode of life of the hominids from that of the primates; but it does not capture the specifically human reproduction of life’. Instead, humans are distinguishable from other animals in that they are the first known species on the planet to have developed forms of linguistic communication that permit the development of social organisation based on multi-dimensional role-taking. While other animals are locked in modes of social interaction in which every member of a group is assigned ‘one and only one status’, humans can linguistically establish common norms of social regulation and behavioural expectation that permit the same individual to possess more than one social role (Habermas, 1991b: 136). Hence, human existence is characterised by the possibility of linguistically establishing a system of social roles based on intersubjective recognition of expectations of behaviour, and not purely on the affirmation of individual status through contingent personal characteristics, such as physical strength or the capacity to physically overwhelm and punish others. Consequently, the defining feature of the species, to Habermas, is how, throughout its long-term process of development, there occurred a progressive ‘linguistification’ of social life that integrated the formation of human motives for action in the ‘symbolic world of interaction’ (Habermas, 1991b: 136). With the development of linguistically mediated social interactions, learned and symbolically transmitted forms of behaviour became, for the first time, the predominant mechanism of evolution of the species. While the evolution of other animals continued to be predominantly shaped by biology, and the hominid stage of development was shaped by both biological and sociocultural evolution – that worked together through the simultaneous development of the brain and forms of proto-language – in the human stage sociocultural evolution came to assume the predominant role, far outpacing biological evolution. Considering this analysis, Habermas (1991b: 137) concludes that the ‘specifically human’ form of life only emerges with the development of language and, as such, Marx’s emphasis on

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative 27 productive activity must be complemented by an analysis of the role of language in the long-term process of human development. The next chapter discusses the adequacy of Habermas’s assessment of Marx’s materialist conception of history and the role of the interplay between biological and sociocultural evolution in its context. For now, it is enough to note how Habermas’ understanding of Marx’s work and its supposed inadequate understanding of the role of symbolic communication and learned behaviour in human evolution leads him to argue for the need to ‘reconstruct historical materialism’; a project understood as taking ‘a theory apart and putting it back together again in a new form in order to attain more fully the goal it has set for itself’ (Habermas, 1991a: 95). Fundamental for this reconstruction is the awareness that whereas Marx localized the learning processes important for evolution in the dimension of (…) technical and organizational knowledge (…), in short, of productive forces, there are good reasons to assume that learning processes also take place in the dimension of moral insight, practical knowledge, and the consensual regulation of action conflicts. Habermas (1991a: 97) Hence, what Habermas conceives of as Marx’s one-dimensional conception of reason, as expressed and developed via labour and productive activity, needs to be substituted by a two-track model of social development. One that comprehends it as occurring, simultaneously, in two dimensions, respectively, ‘purposive-rational action’ and ‘communicative action’ (Habermas, 1991a). Purposive-rational action refers to the application of reason in two areas of social existence. On the one hand, to the development of the efficiency of technical means and, on the other hand, to the choice of suitable means for the accomplishment of any given task. While the former is expressed in the form of technological development at the level of the forces of production, the latter is expressed in organisational choices such as the organisation of the labour force in the productive process. As such, collective learning at the level of purposive-rational action, means a ‘heightening of productive forces’ through the development and application of ‘technical-organizational knowledge’ (Habermas, 1991a: 117). Purposive-rational action is thus predominantly concerned with the ‘truth’ of validity claims, i.e., with the adequacy of knowledge claims about the empirical conditions of the labour process and how those permit the further development of the forces of production. Communicative action refers to the application of reason to the linguistic establishment of mutual understandings about social norms that integrate behavioural expectations and define social roles. Collective learning at the level of communicative action entails the development of ‘moral-practical knowledge’ which, embodied in social norms, expresses the common dominant understandings regarding prevalent social roles and behavioural expectations. Communicative action is thus predominantly concerned with the ‘rightness’ of social norms, i.e., with their intersubjectively and linguistically established acceptability (Habermas, 1991a: 117).

28 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative From the perspective of the problem of orientation, Habermas’s critique of Marx implies that an adequate means of orientation cannot rely only on an assessment of the development of the human powers of control over nature as the main mechanism of social evolution. Rather, it requires an understanding of how development in the sphere of purposive-rational action is always combined with development of a moral-practical sort and its embodiment in social norms and behavioural expectations. Habermas thus maintains the Marxist claim about the central role of social labour in human development, arguing that the social organisation of labour and distribution precedes the emergence of linguistic communication. But he also argues that, by itself, the concept of social labour is insufficient to explain the dynamics of human development and that the specifically human mode of life can only be adequately characterised if this concept is joined by that of intersubjectively and linguistically established behavioural roles and norms of social action. Hence, both ‘production and socialisation’ are of ‘equal importance’ for the reproduction of the species (McCarthy, 1982: 238). Habermas’s reconstruction of Marx’s critical theory as a grand narrative that captures the role of both production and socialisation in human development has implications for the explanatory and anticipatory dimensions of the critical project. The rest of this section is focused on discussing these implications for the explanatory dimension, while Section ‘Universal communication community’ discusses the anticipatory dimension of Habermas’s answer to the problem of orientation. Habermas’s (1979: 42) approach to a grand narrative of human development expressly seeks to avoid what he perceives as the tendency of the critical theoretical tradition, expressed, for example, in Kant and Marx’s works, to write ‘macrohistories’ of a ‘generic subject’. Be it Kant’s proposal for a universal history from a cosmopolitan perspective or Marx’s historical materialism, both tend to interpret history as the long-term progressive path of a single macro subject, the human species. Grand narratives of a macro subject inevitably imply the need to ‘abstract’ from the convoluted and complex character of events in actual empirical history in order to trace its overall ‘progressive’ or ‘regressive’ tendencies. The problem with such an approach, according to Habermas, is not necessarily the abstraction itself, but rather the tendency to then ‘transpose’ it into the actual ‘writing of universal history’, interpreting human historical development ‘as if’ it reproduces the progressive tendencies that are theoretically disclosed. Such an approach inevitably becomes an artificial imposition on the convoluted and complex character of actual empirical history (Habermas, 1979: 42). Instead, Habermas (1979: 8) proposes a strict theoretical distinction between the ‘logic’ and the ‘dynamics’ of human development which, he argues, permits a more intelligible understanding of its logical structure without, however, assuming that this structure is necessarily reproduced in the actual course of historical events. A more adequate approach to a grand narrative of human development is to understand it not as a representation of the actual course of human history, but rather as an expression of the logic of development of ‘universal competences’, such as structures of consciousness and learning processes (Habermas, 1979: 8). A theory of social evolution should thus capture the universal logical pattern of emergence

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative 29 and development of human competences without, however, assuming that this logic is reproduced in the actual historical course of events. As such, Habermas (1979: 28) argues, sociological considerations are not ‘called for’ in a theory of social evolution, because ‘they fall short of the level of abstraction on which the structural conditions of possibility of learning processes relevant to evolution must be given’. According to Habermas (1979: 40), such an abstract evolutionary theoretical framework requires no historical analysis to support it, but also cannot be turned into ‘history proper’. In the framework of evolutionary social theory, the development of human competences must be conceived as abstract transitions to new learning levels (which can perhaps be visualised as stages of development in the educational process of the human race), but they cannot, without endangering the categorical framework and thus also the explanatory power of theory, be translated back into the achievements of actors and reinterpreted into a history that is borne by actors. Habermas (1979: 40) As such, Habermas’ grand narrative assumes the form of an evolutionary social theory that cannot be understood as expressing the ‘macro-history’ of a ‘generic subject’ (Habermas, 1979: 42). Rather, by recognising that the ‘bearers of evolution’ are human societies themselves and the human subjects integrated in them, it occupies the position of an abstract model of the ‘rationally reconstructible pattern’ of the logic of development of human competences. If this evolutionary logic is ‘separate from the events with which the empirical substrata change, we need assume neither the univocity, nor continuity, nor necessity, nor irreversibility of the course of history’ (Habermas, 1979: 42). The theory expresses only the ‘logical’ sequence of stages of human competences, in accordance with the rationally reconstructible pattern of development of ‘anthropologically deep-lying general structures’ which emerged in the phase of hominisation and determine the conditions of human social development (Habermas, 1979: 42). Such sequence of stages describes only the ‘logical terrain’ in which the emergence and development of human competences occurs, as well as the general direction that it assumes, but ‘whether or when new structural formations develop depends on contingent circumstances’ that cannot be captured by the theory (Habermas, 1979: 42). It can be argued that Habermas is here clearly striving for the development of a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation that avoids the pitfalls of philosophical history discussed in Chapter 1. Jørgen Pedersen (2008: 474), for example, notes how Habermas’s theory of social evolution is based on a distinction between the developmental logic that societies ‘can follow’ and the historical path they actually ‘do follow’. The latter ‘depends on various empirical factors’, whereas the former is ‘universal’. Habermas’s thesis is that development does not ‘necessarily take place in a concrete society’, but if such development should take place, ‘it follows a certain logic’. This permits Habermas to claim that social evolution

30 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative ‘possesses an element of universality’, and that any society that develops will do so ‘according to a reconstructed developmental logic’. As such, all developing societies must ‘move in the same way’ in relation to different stages that are ‘hierarchically ordered’. To Habermas, the evolutionary logic of social development is thus ‘universal’, but there is ‘no given necessity as to how a given society will develop’ historically, and it is this position that distinguishes Habermas’s approach from a Kantian philosophy of history, where this connection of necessity is made (Pedersen, 2008: 474). However, as is argued throughout the rest of this chapter, Habermas ultimately fails in this endeavour as his attempt to trace the logic of development of universal competences actually reinforces the structuring role of philosophical abstraction in his critical theoretical project. The philosophical framework that Habermas develops, which identifies the abstract logical structure of the stages of social and moral development of the human species, leads to a further separation of his critical theory from actual empirical history and to a reinforcement of a conception of history as the ground for the actualisation of philosophical-transcendental categories. From the point of view of Habermas’s answer to the problem of orientation, empirical historical events come to be judged as progressive or regressive, or even as relevant, in accordance with their fit in the a priori established philosophical framework. This has serious consequences for the orientating role of critical international theory in both its explanatory and anticipatory dimensions, namely reproducing the shortcomings of philosophical-transcendental means of orientation identified in Chapter 1. Habermas’s (2003: 25) understanding of the logic of development of moralpractical knowledge is inspired by Lawrence Kohlberg’s work on the acquisition of universal competences at the level of individual moral development (see: Kohlberg et al., 1983). Like Habermas, Kohlberg is not focused on understanding the empirical processes through which the stages of moral development are manifested but is instead interested in providing an analysis of the logical pattern of this development. As discussed above, Habermas considers that communicative action entails collective learning processes that produce moral-practical knowledge, which is embodied both at the level of individual perspectives and worldviews and at the level of social norms and institutions that expresses different stages of development of people’s common understandings regarding their social roles and acceptable behavioural expectations. Following Kohlberg’s analysis of moral development, Habermas argues that the development of communicative action and moral-practical knowledge follows three main logical stages: the pre-conventional, the conventional and the post-conventional (Habermas, 2003: 123). In the pre-conventional stage, individuals obey social norms out of fear that not obeying them might entail sanctions imposed by a higher authority. At this stage, the rightness of social norms is assessed in accordance with the extent to which these are the product of an external authority that has the power to compel behaviour. In the conventional stage, individuals obey social norms out of personal loyalty and belonging to the particular social groups that enact them. At this stage, the rightness of social norms is assessed as being an inherent property of those

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative 31 norms, as expressions of a society’s culture and tradition. In the post-conventional stage, individuals become capable of stepping back from the perceived inherent legitimacy of authority and from their personal group loyalties to assess the acceptability of social norms in accordance with principles that have been deliberatively established to hold universal validity. At this stage, social norms lose their quasi-natural validity and require justification from processes of universalisation of points of view. Their rightness is assessed in accordance with the extent to which they embody universal principles whose acceptability needs to be assessed in processes of communicative deliberation involving all persons likely to be affected by them. Building upon Kohlberg’s stages of individual moral development, Habermas observes that these different stages of moral-practical knowledge are embodied not only at the level of individual perspectives and structures of consciousness but also in the social norms and institutions of human societies. As such, the stages of moral development also manifest themselves as different ‘principles of social organisation’, as societies draw upon, and institutionally embody, the moral-practical knowledge that is made available at the level of their individual members’ worldviews in order to expand their adaptive capacity to contingent or unforeseen developmental problems (Habermas, 1991b). On this basis, Habermas develops a theory of both moral and social evolution that understands both individuals and societies as the bearers of collective learning processes. In this context, he observes that it is often the case that individual perspectives and consciousness structures express higher stages of development of moral-practical knowledge than those that are embodied in social institutions and norms (Habermas, 1991b: 158). Hence, in order to rationally reconstruct the several stages of social development, Habermas suggests a distinction between: (a) individual worldviews and structures of consciousness and (b) social institutions and norms. With such a distinction in mind, he proposes a model of the history of the species that places the long-term process of evolution of human societies in an ascending scale of logical stages of social development. Habermas distinguishes four main stages of social evolution: Neolithic societies, early civilisations, developed civilisations, and European or Western modernity. Neolithic societies are characterised by (a) conventional worldviews expressed in mythology and the compelling power of tradition and religion; and (b) pre-conventional legal regulation of conflicts through an authority focused on the assessment of action consequences and compensation for resultant damages. Early civilisations express (a) conventional worldviews still present in the compelling power of religion and tradition, which now also serve legitimation functions for the occupants of positions of authority; and (b) conventional legal regulations tied to the figure of the ruler who administers and represents justice. Furthermore, the regulation of conflicts undergoes a transition from compensations to punishment for the violation of social norms. Developed civilisations are characterised by (a) post-conventional worldviews that question the inherent validity of tradition and religion; and (b) conventional morality that detaches from the person of the ruler and becomes expressed in social

32 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative norms that, while dependent on tradition and religion, are systematised in a codified system of law. European or Western modernity is characterised by (a) post-conventional worldviews grounded in universal principles intersubjectively assessed on the basis of processes of linguistic deliberation and consensualisation; and (b) postconventional morality separated from general, formal, rationalised law which embodies social norms that are considered legitimate to the extent that they derive from universalistic principles. The most distinctive feature of the modern stage is thus the uncoupling of moral standpoints of orientation from structures of authority and personal group loyalty in a manner that opens the way for individuals to attain a more detached, and eventually more universal, perspective on their conditions of existence. A perspective that becomes capable of integrating the points of view of other people who might find themselves not only within but also outside each individual’s particular political community. Habermas’s ascertainment of the logical stages of social development can thus be read as a progressive process of universalisation of people’s perspectives and standpoints of orientation towards increasingly more cosmopolitan points of view.1 At this point in the argument, Habermas (1991b: 160) notes that while it is possible to identify the logical sequence of stages of moral and social evolution, this sequence itself does not explain the mechanisms through which a society evolves between stages. To provide an account of such mechanisms, Habermas further complements his theory of moral and social evolution with an interpretation of processes of social learning that borrows conceptually from Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann’s work on systems theory (see: Heiskala, 2007; Harste, 2021). Integrating systems theoretical concepts with the theory of moral and social evolution permits the constitution, within a single theoretical framework, of a two-track model of human development that simultaneously encompasses learning processes at the levels of purposive-rational action and communicative action. Systems theory leads Habermas to conceive of human societies as social systems that, at any moment in time, are at a certain stage of moral and social evolution expressed in their principle of social organisation. This stage defines their degree of adaptive capacity to contingent problems. Hence, within each stage, individuals undergo collective learning processes at both the level of purposiverational and communicative action that open the way for the development of new stages of technical-organisational and moral-practical knowledge. While the latter is embodied in individual worldviews and consciousness structures, the former is applied to the growth of the forces of production, but only within the limited range circumscribed by the prevalent principle of social organisation. According to Habermas (1991b: 160), the moral-practical knowledge present in individual perspectives represents a ‘cognitive potential’ that can be socially used to expand a society’s adaptive capacity, to the extent that it is ‘institutionally embodied’ in a manner that changes the prevalent principle of social organisation. As such, the

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative 33 principle of social organisation that defines the stage of evolution of a society frequently lags behind the cognitive potential that has been acquired by its individual members. The existent principle of social organisation can thus become a barrier to social evolution whenever ‘system-threatening problems’ arise that exhaust the boundaries of social adaptive capacity that it establishes. These developmental problems can be triggered by the endogenous dynamics of the social system, or by exogenous factors related to the environment of the social system, in the form of either its relations with external non-human nature or with other social systems. When such problems are posed, societies can evolve by institutionally embodying the cognitive potential, in terms of moral-practical knowledge, that is already present in their members’ worldviews and consciousness structures (Habermas, 1991b: 160). Such institutional embodiment represents the development of a new principle of social organisation and the establishment of a new stage of social evolution. This new principle widens the range of possibility of a particular society, increases its adaptive capacity to contingent problems and permits the further implementation of available technical-organisational knowledge at the level of the forces of production. The new principle of social organisation then constitutes the new boundary condition within which new processes of collective learning can occur at the level of both purposive-rational and communicative action. According to Habermas (1991a: 123), his theory of moral and social evolution thus permits a reconstruction of Marx’s critical approach in a manner that overcomes its over-emphasis on production. By combining, in a single theoretical framework, an explanation of the logic of development of both purposive-rational action and communicative action it preserves Marx’s insights regarding the role of productive activity in human development while opening the way for a recovery of the analysis of Kantian themes such as the role of linguistic communication, moral development, the constitution of political communities, and their cross-border interactions and encounters in the long-term history of the species. Furthermore, Habermas argues that his theory of moral and social evolution, with its clear distinction between the logic and the dynamics of human development, is capable of providing a model of the logical developmental structure of human development without having to interpret human history as necessarily following its sequence of linear progressive stages. As such, it overcomes the shortcomings of philosophical history. Finally, Habermas considers that, despite the abstract character of his theory of social evolution, it preserves the essence of Marx’s historical materialism in the sense that it remains materialist and historically-oriented. It remains materialist insofar as ‘it makes reference to crisis-producing developmental problems in the domain of production and reproduction’, and it remains historically-oriented to the extent that it ‘seeks the causes of evolutionary changes in the whole range of contingent circumstances [of societies]’ (Habermas, 1991a: 123). Hence, from this perspective, Habermas’s critical theory, with its reliance on a grand narrative in the form of a theory of moral and social evolution, can be understood as an attempt to update Marx’s critical theory and its ambition to capture

34 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative the dialectical movement of human history. While Marx found the resources for the expansion of the limits of possibility of social systems at the level of the forces of production and purposive-rational action, Habermas’ theory of moral and social evolution identifies the role that communicative action plays as the main regulatory mechanism of social evolution. As is discussed in greater depth in the next chapter, Habermas’ interpretation of Marx’s critical theory actually fails to capture some of its complexity, namely in what concerns the role of ideas in human development, even if Habermas is correct in pointing out that the dimension of what he designates communicative action remains undertheorised in Marx. Furthermore, the philosophical basis on which Habermas seeks to overcome Marx’s shortcomings is also problematic as an answer to the problem of orientation. As is discussed at the end of this chapter, Habermas’s theory of moral and social evolution ultimately comes to constitute a philosophical-transcendental framework that conditions the reading of history in ways that, even if unintentionally, reduce it to a kind of theatrical stage in which the a priori established plot of social and moral evolution is played out. History becomes the vehicle for the expression of the transcendental categories defining the abstract stages of moral and social development. In this manner, Habermas’s attempt at a reconstruction of historical materialism, while adequately aimed at some of the shortcomings of Marx’s work, ends up opening up another, and potentially even more problematic, set of theoretical problems that ultimately entail a strict separation between theory and history and undermines critical theory’s task of orientation. But before moving to the critique of Habermas’s critical project, it is worth exploring in greater depth its anticipatory dimension, followed by a discussion of its contribution for the development of critical international theory. Universal communication community Habermas’s reconstruction of historical materialism also provides an answer to the anticipatory dimension of the problem of orientation that is argued to overcome Marx’s shortcomings in this regard. According to Habermas (1991a: 96), Marx’s critical theory lacks clarity concerning the normative criteria that should orientate critical judgement. It is oriented to ‘criticise immanently’ the normative content of the ruling bourgeois worldview of the day, which entailed disclosing how its ideals of freedom and equality could not be historically actualised in the context of capitalist society (Habermas, 1991a: 96). The argument is that such an approach has become impossible to maintain given how bourgeois consciousness became ‘cynical’ and its ideals have ‘gone into retirement’ in the context of a modern capitalism that has abandoned the need to hide its quest for capital growth under the cover of the supposed universality, freedom, and equality of its social relations (Habermas, 1991a: 97). While the universalistic value system of bourgeois society, expressed in civil rights and the right to participate in political elections, has been established in modern welfare states, these have come to function on the basis of a ‘formal democracy’ that ensures ‘generalised mass loyalty’ but also

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative 35 an effective ‘independence’ of administrative decision-making from the specific interests of the citizens (Habermas, 1991a: 97). Modern welfare states are thus ‘democratic in form but not in substance’. This could not be otherwise, as ‘genuine participation’ of citizens in democratic processes would bring to consciousness the ‘contradiction’ between socialised production and the continued private appropriation and use of surplus value (McCarthy, 1982: 368; see also: Staats, 2004). In this manner, Marxian immanent critique is supposedly faced with the unavailability of any norms or values that can provide a standpoint of orientation for the critique of modern capitalist societies. In this context, Habermas proposes a reconstruction of the anticipatory dimension of the critical project based on his dual grand narrative of purposive and communicative action via a recovery of Kant’s notion of the categorical imperative, now in the form of ‘discourse ethics’ (Bordum, 2005). However, this recovery is ultimately found inadequate on two accounts. First, as is discussed in the next chapter, it departs from a reductionist account of Marx’s critical theory that fails to capture its actual answer to the anticipatory dimension of the problem of orientation in the form of what will be referred to as ‘objective ethics’. And second, Habermas’s proposed alternative only reinforces the philosophical and abstract character of his critical theory, in ways that further uncouple it from the analysis of empirical history and compromise its role as a means of orientation. The anticipatory dimension of Habermas’s critical project is premised on the argument that communicative action entails linguistic interactions between people directed towards the achievement of mutual agreements regarding the validity claims advanced by participants in dialogue. There are three types of possible validity claims: claims to truth, claims to rightness and claims to truthfulness, respectively concerning whether the speaker refers to something in the objective world, to something in the social world, or to something in her or his own subjective world (Habermas, 2003: 58). With the purpose of analysing how Habermas’s work can be read as an answer to the problem of orientation, the discussion here focuses mainly on his analysis regarding claims about the rightness of social norms. In this context, an important distinction is established between ‘communicative’ and ‘strategic’ action (Habermas, 2003: 58). Whereas in the former each social actor seeks to rationally compel the others to agree with her or his validity claims on the basis of the force of the better argument, in the latter, each social actor seeks to influence the behaviour of others by means of the ‘threat of sanctions or the prospect of gratification’ in order to cause the interaction to continue as she or he desires (Habermas, 2003: 58). Strategic action is thus constantly ‘distorting’ communicative action by establishing forced agreements between people based on relations of power that prevent the collective, consensual and self-determined regulation of social norms and conflicts (Habermas, 2003: 58). Moral-practical learning, in Habermas’s assessment, entails the progressive differentiation between communicative and strategic action and the substitution of the latter by the former as the predominant mode of assessing the rightness of social norms. Hence, at a post-conventional stage of moral development, the rightness of validity claims can only be secured on the basis

36 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative of intersubjective communication that permits the free agreement of all those involved in the deliberation process, detached from considerations regarding their respective social positions and intersubjective relations of power, which become perceived as distortions of the deliberative process (Habermas, 1991a: 120). Post-conventional worldviews are thus associated with modes of mutual attunement between people oriented towards the universalisation of perspectives based on the progressive elimination of strategic action from processes of consensualisation of social norms. Immanent in such a universalisation of perspectives and growing reliance on communicative action, argues Habermas, is a set of a priori presuppositions that determine the rightness of such deliberative processes of consensualisation of social norms. These preconditions entail that: Every subject with the competence to speak and act is allowed to take part in a discourse; everyone is allowed to question any assertion whatever; everyone is allowed to introduce any assertion whatever in the discourse; everyone is allowed to express his attitudes, desires and needs; no speaker may be prevented, by internal or external coercion, from exercising his rights as laid down above. (Habermas, 2003: 89) In empirically contingent historical processes of deliberation these ideal presuppositions are constantly distorted by strategic action associated with more parochial and particularistic points of view; however, they remain the transcendental preconditions of a truly valid common agreement and of the rightness of social norms. The development of communicative action thus entails the progressive historical disclosure of these transcendental presuppositions in individual perspectives and consciousness structures and their embodiment in principles of social organisation. According to Habermas (2003: 65), the transcendental presuppositions of communicative action that are disclosed at a post-conventional stage of development can thus be codified in the form of a maxim, a ‘universalisation principle’ which establishes that for a norm to be valid all affected [by this norm] must accept the consequences and side effects that its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests (and that these consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities of regulation). In Kantian fashion, the principle of universalisation – also known as the ‘all-affected principle’ – constitutes a transcendental ethics as an anticipatory standpoint of orientation which establishes the preconditions of human self-determination in the form of a set of procedural principles that the deliberation of social norms has to embody in order for these norms to represent a truly universal agreement and thus enable human beings to collective and consciously control their conditions of existence by living under the law they give themselves. It presupposes the ideal projection of a ‘universal communication community’ which includes all beings

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative 37 capable of reason and which overcomes particularistic points of view by implying the ‘universal exchange of perspectives’ (Habermas, 1987: 94). In this context, Habermas expressly seeks to recover Kant’s categorical imperative as a standpoint of orientation in the form of the all-affected principle and the projection of a universal communication community found in the transcendental presuppositions of communicative action. However, he also notes an important difference in relation to Kant. The fact that communicative action is orientated towards consensual agreements as the result of deliberative processes implies that the idea of a universal communication community must serve as a ‘guiding thread’ for the actual empirical ‘setting up’ of discourses that must be carried through ‘in fact’, i.e., that have to be empirically and historically actualised (Habermas, 2003: 67). Unlike Kant’s categorical imperative, the transcendental preconditions of communicative action cannot be satisfied by a ‘monological mock dialogue’ but demand the actualisation of historical conditions that approximate the transcendental ideal. Hence, to the all-affected principle, Habermas (2003: 67) adds a second principle, that of ‘discourse ethics’ that states that ‘only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse’. Discourse ethics thus shift the emphasis ‘from what each can will, without contradiction, to be a general law, to what all can will in agreement to be a universal norm’ (Habermas, 2003: 67). The ‘aim’ of discourse ethics is thus to ultimately ‘remove’ all modes of exclusion that obstruct the goal, potentially never realisable, of global norms that ‘rest upon the consent of each and every member of the human race’ (Linklater, 1998: 93). By reading Habermas’s work as an answer to the problem of orientation it becomes evident that his discourse ethics constitute a philosophical-transcendental answer to its anticipatory dimension. They project a philosophically ascertained transcendental ideal of a universal communication community that defines the optimal conditions under which human beings actualise their capacity for selfdetermination. In this manner, they constitute a transcendental ethics as an anticipatory standpoint of orientation from the perspective of which the critical judgement of actual historical conditions of existence can be carried out by comparing those conditions with the transcendental ideal. Hence, despite Habermas’s claim that discourse ethics abandon the inadequacy of Kantian monological transcendentalism by demanding actual engagement in practical discourse, the structure of his answer to the anticipatory dimension of the problem of orientation remains rooted in philosophical transcendentalism. Habermas’s approach is still clearly permeated by a dualism between the transcendental ideal of discourse ethics and the dimension of contingent history where strategic action and historical events distort the actualisation of its principles. The projection of an ideal universal communication community to be approximated in empirical processes of deliberation thus fulfils the same orientating role in Habermas’s approach, and establishes the same type of dualism, as does the categorical imperative in Kant’s critical theory. Furthermore, despite Habermas’s discourse ethics exhibiting an awareness of the developmental character of the universalisation of perspectives, this awareness is still framed by a theory of social and moral evolution that conceives it as a process entailing a

38 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative linear sequence of stages. Even though Habermas argues that the analysis of the developmental logic of moral-practical knowledge is not intended as an account of the actual course of human history, it still constitutes the theoretical lenses through which it is observed and thus still entails the danger, discussed in Chapter 1, that affects philosophical-transcendental answers to the problem of orientation, namely a structurally in-built tendency to dismiss paths of human self-expression that do not follow its linear and teleological model of the species’ history. So far, this chapter discussed how Habermas’s critical theory, self-described as a reconstruction of historical materialism, can be read as an answer to both the explanatory and the anticipatory dimensions of the problem of orientation. The next section considers how Habermas’s theoretical framework can orientate a critical analysis of world politics in a way that sets the stage to discuss, in the final section of this chapter, the limitations of Habermas’s approach to grand narrative theorising. The cosmopolitan constitutionalisation of world politics This section discusses how Habermas’s critical judgement of world politics is oriented by his theory of moral and social evolution in a way that makes it incapable of developing a sociological analysis of the relations of power that structure world politics. Habermas can only rely on the search for empirical evidence that points to the potential historical actualisation of the transcendental principles of discourse ethics as a measure of the progressive potential of world politics. Locked from view is an analysis of relations between human communities and social groups, and how these are shaped by concrete contests of power, that orientates an identification of the progressive potential that might lie immanent in specific historical junctures for the expansion of human self-determination. The lack of such a sociological account ultimately subsumes Habermas’s analysis of empirical history to a linear and teleological conception that hides from view alternative paths of social development and their emancipatory potential. According to Habermas (2001: 49) the historical liberalisation of financial markets, especially since the end of the Cold War, permitted capital movement to integrate national economies into a global capitalist market that escapes the national control of welfare states. With the growing intricacy of the global webs of capital flows, the autonomous systemic dynamics of capitalism were unleashed from the boundary conditions established by national democratic publics and became capable of developing of their own accord in conditions of greater autonomy. The capacity to freely move capital across the networks of the global economy means that, increasingly, important areas of society are submitted to relations based on money as the main means of social integration. This permits multinational companies to withhold investment in certain states or social areas – blocking access to important sources of state revenue through taxation – unless states undergo reforms that make their internal conditions more appropriate to the needs and interests of capitalist corporations. States are increasingly compelled to compete with each other in making themselves attractive to global business interests, namely, through the privatisation of areas such as healthcare and education, the reduction of

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative 39 salaries, the extension of working hours, and a combination of increased taxation for citizens with a reduction of corporate taxes (Habermas, 2001: 79). These policies imply that states’ bureaucracies and governments, in responding to the imperatives of global capitalism, become predominantly a channel for the introduction of strategic action into the communicative context of nationally-based deliberative public spheres. Perceived as such, state representatives lose the democratic support of their citizens and face a combination of a legitimacy crisis with a public debt crisis, given the lack of funds to maintain the state’s social functions (Habermas, 1973). Growing global interdependence thus creates a developmental problem that exhausts the adaptive capacity of the principle of social organisation of welfare states. Such a situation, argues Habermas, highlights the need for the development of a new principle of social organisation of world politics that expands states’ adaptive capacity and recovers people’s ability to exert democratic control over the capitalist systemic contexts that have now become global (Habermas, 2006: 155; see also: Verovšek, 2021). In this context, Habermas (2006) notes that a new principle of social organisation already lies immanent in the post-conventional personality structures and worldviews of modern individuals and the more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition these imply. A new social principle that institutionally embodies such immanent cosmopolitanism would open the way for forms of post-national democracy that ensured the extension of the communicative power of deliberative publics to world politics. However, the actualisation of such a principle of social organisation is also constantly hindered by the drag-effect of more involved and society-bound perspectives that continue to block the path towards the embodiment of more cosmopolitan standpoints of orientation in the institutions that structure world politics. An example of these blockages is the hegemonic behaviour of countries such as the United States of America and its competition with other emergent and resurgent great powers, such as China or Russia, which point to a permanence of behavioural patterns in world politics that intensify rather than address the developmental problems posed by global interdependence (Habermas, 2006: 148). The continued reliance of the great powers on their military, technological and economic superiority to create a global order compatible with their more ethnocentric interests constitutes an expression of the historical possibility for the emergence of what Habermas calls an ‘imperial alternative’ to the collective regulation of the global web of humanity. The most likely future outcome of this alternative is the emergence of a ‘Schmittian’ global order, characterised by the ‘alarming prospect of competition among hemispheres’ (Habermas, 2006: 148). Such a global order would, in effect, undermine the possibility of collective control over the process of globalisation, as the unplanned dynamics arising out of great power competition would push people and states into patterns of interaction not intended by any of them, and with potentially harmful implications for all participants. The alternative to the Schmittian global order is to be found in the actualisation of the cosmopolitan principle of social organisation that lies immanent in the postconventional worldviews of modern individuals. This actualisation implies the

40 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative ‘political constitutionalisation of world society’, which can be conceived as a reconstruction of Kant’s project for perpetual peace in light of the innovations that have occurred in the legal domestication of state power since Kant’s time (Habermas, 2000; see also: von Bogdandy and Dellavalle, 2009). In Habermas’s reading, Kant adopts the proposal for a non-coercive and voluntary League of Nations as a surrogate to the ideal transcendental model of a world federation as a consequence of Kant’s realistic recognition that states would not accept any compromise of their absolute sovereignty (Habermas, 2000). However, in Habermas’s assessment, the Kantian League of Nations concedes too much autonomy to state sovereignty and ignores the possibility of controlling the arbitrary power of states through the reinforcement of the inherent legitimacy and compelling character of international law via the extension of the democratic influence of deliberative publics to the level of world politics (see: Lundestad and Mikalsen, 2011). Even in the absence of a supranational monopoly of violence ensuring the application of international law, states frequently and voluntarily comply with international law as a consequence of their recognition of its inherent legitimacy as an embodiment of not only inter-state strategic agreements but also of principles that are assumed to hold universal validity to all human beings and which have already been the result of a long historical process of consensualisation within and between states. At the level of world politics there thus occurs what Habermas (2006: 134) refers to as a ‘decoupling’ of law and state power. These innovations in international law and its applicability show that it is possible to curtail the autonomy of state sovereignty – and even open the way for international interventions envisioning the protection of human rights – without a world state. Instead, the ‘domestication’ of world politics can be achieved through a reinforcement of the legitimacy of international law by making its constitution dependent not only on decision-making processes between sovereign states but also on the deliberative consensualisation between world citizens (Habermas, 2006: 134). Following these observations, Habermas argues that it is possible to conclude that a non-coercive and voluntary League of Nations is not the only alternative to a world federation of states. Rather, the cosmopolitan condition envisioned by Kant can be achieved through the political constitution of world society in the form of a multi-level political organisation that encompasses all possible levels of human interdependence and which, while lacking the character of a world state, is ‘embedded within the framework of a world organisation with the power to impose peace and implement human rights’ (Habermas, 2006: 136). Different competencies should fall onto each of these levels. The ‘supranational’ level of the United Nations (UN) should be circumscribed to functions of securing peace and promoting human rights while the intermediate ‘transnational’ level should address ‘global domestic problems’ such as the regulation of the capitalist global economy and the protection of non-human nature (Habermas, 2006: 136). According to Habermas (2006: 136), only great powers such as the United States of America, Russia or China have the necessary capacity to operate at the transnational level and establish continental regimes regulating economic, social and environmental policies in their respective areas of the globe. Consequently, to further give shape to this politically

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative 41 constituted world society, states in the various regions of the world would have to unite to form continental regimes ‘on the model of the European Union’ (Habermas, 2006: 136; see also: Verovšek, 2011; Heins, 2016). Moreover, each of these levels needs to be regulated by international norms that are constituted on the basis of deliberative processes involving a ‘dual constitutional subject’, i.e., both the states and the citizens of the United Nations (Habermas, 2006: 141). In this manner, international norms come to possess the required legitimacy to curtail the arbitrary autonomy of state sovereignty while the national deliberative public spheres of each state can extend their communicative control over systemic contexts, such as the global capitalist economy and the inter-state system, which have escaped the regulatory capacity of welfare states. Habermas’s proposal for the political constitution of world society thus inaugurates a new principle of social organisation for world politics based on which the developmental problems posed by human global interdependence can be addressed. World politics would, under these conditions, transition to a ‘cosmopolitan condition’, as the world organisation would enact norms that would be the product of processes of deliberative consensualisation between the world’s states and the world’s citizens, and thus historically approximate the actualisation of the principle of discourse ethics and their projection of an ideal universal communication community (Habermas, 2006: 141). According to Habermas (2012: 54), the decoupling of law and state power can already be discerned in the current institutional framework of the United Nations, while the actualisation of a dual constitutional subject requires the attribution to every single human being on the planet of the status of world citizen and the constitution, parallel with the General Assembly, of a world parliament composed of their elected representatives. Habermas maintains that the world parliament would not transform the United Nations into a world republic but would reinforce the democratic legitimacy of cosmopolitan law by making world citizens, alongside with states, one of its two constitutional subjects. Under these conditions, cosmopolitan law would not subordinate national state law or modes of life. On the one hand, member states, as the second constitutionfounding subject, would be able to protect their internal orders from cosmopolitan law that did not meet the standards of civil liberties that have already been historically achieved at the state level. On the other hand, the lack of a supranational monopoly over the means of violence means that the world organisation would have to rely on ‘national monopolists’ in the fulfilment of its tasks, including those envisioning the implementation of coercive measures to sanction the violation of cosmopolitan law (Habermas, 2012: 58). The world organisation would thus restrict itself to the tasks of maintaining peace and protecting human rights, leaving decision-making processes related to economic, social, or ecological problems to the transnational level of world society. This division of tasks derives from the argument that issues related to economic, social, or ecological problems, while expressing a ‘shared abstract interest’ of all human beings, necessarily imply answers that relate to particular conceptions of the ‘good life’ (Habermas, 2012: 63). These are issues whose answers involve the

42 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative self-affirmation of particular cultural and political identities and, as such, while admitting of collective answers between people who share common cultural backgrounds – as part of their collective history and belonging to a particular region of the globe – are not liable to be addressed by truly universal decisions arising from global processes of deliberation between world citizens. Consequently, these issues should be dealt with at the transnational level, where continental unions of states in the same cultural areas can potentially come closer to common agreements on preferable ‘ways of life’ (Habermas, 2012: 63). The same judgement cannot be applied to issues of world peace and human rights, as these express an a priori general interest shared by the world’s population ‘beyond all politicalcultural divisions’ in the avoidance of violence and in the expression of solidarity with ‘everything that has a human face’ (Habermas, 2012: 64). They possess an inherently universal character, to the extent that shared human vulnerability to war and violence is a common feature of the species. As such, the discussion of these issues is liable to produce truly cosmopolitan answers, arrived at through global processes of consensualisation of norms involving world citizens and all the states into which humankind is divided. The world organisation, Habermas argues, must thus restrict itself to those issues that admit of universally shared human interest. Orientation in history At first glance, Habermas’s writings on world politics might appear a compelling critical account of the contemporary conditions of human existence and associated immanent potentials for emancipatory change oriented by his grand narrative of human moral and social development. And yet, on closer inspection these writings reveal exactly the limits of Habermas’s answer to the problem of orientation. Contending power relations between social groups are virtually absent from Habermas’s account and have been reduced to a clash between abstract concepts such as the dynamics of a global capitalist system and deliberative public spheres. The critical assessment for the immanent potential for emancipatory change relies not so much on an analysis of the agendas of competing social groups and societies, and how these relate to shifting power relations, but rather on the disclosure of the extent to which existing institutions embody the transcendental preconditions of discourse ethics. Hence, while Habermas explicitly seeks to overcome the shortcomings of Kant’s philosophy of history by relying on a distinction between the logic and the dynamics of history in his critical theory, that distinction also raises ‘some problems of its own’ (Hutchings, 1996: 71). In particular, the abstract logical framework of social evolution is incapable of justifying its own status as a means of orientation; if there is no guarantee that history will follow its logical direction how then can it be justified that it should provide the orientating standard on the basis of which the analysis of the dynamics of history should be conducted? (Hutchings, 1996: 71). As such, like with Kant’s philosophy of history, Habermas’s choice for the theory of social and moral evolution as the framework through which to analyse empirical history ultimately depends only on the critical theorist’s subjective

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative 43 judgement. Habermas’s writings on world politics exhibit with particular clarity this very ‘particular relation between the empirical (…) and the moral’ that is posed by his theory of moral and social evolution, in ‘which the latter is carried through, but also shapes, the former’ (Hutchings, 2011: 195). The most problematic consequence of this relation is that historical analysis becomes necessarily oriented by an abstract and unilinear conception of the moral path of social evolution, which claims universal validity. This means that, even though Habermas expressly recognises the multilinear path of the empirical dynamics of human history, his analysis of the long-term process of human development is necessarily orientated by a unilinear and teleological conception of what is the progressive sequence of stages that must be empirically reproduced in order to approximate the moral ideal of discourse ethics. Hence, Habermas’s work, when read as a means of orientation, necessarily implies an assessment of some human societies as more ‘mature’, ‘progressive’ or ‘morally-adequate’ than others, which are considered ‘immature’, ‘morally backward’ or even ‘failed’ (Hutchings, 2011: 196). This raises several of the problematic consequences already discussed in Chapter 1, namely the way Habermas’ philosophical-transcendental approach to grand narratives tends to reproduce a form of Eurocentrism that characterises Western modernity as the ‘grown up’ part of the world and locates alternative paths of social development as necessarily ‘backward in the progressive workings of history’ (Hutchings, 2011: 193; see also Anievas, 2010; Schmid, 2018, 2023). Here it is enough to reinforce these criticisms, and especially those that point to the disconnect between theory and practice implied by Habermas’ critical theory.2 Such a disconnect leads Habermas’s considerations on concrete history, as is exhibited with particular clarity by his writings on world politics, to assume an essentially utopian structure. In other words, they rely on a prior definition of the form a cosmopolitan constitution of world politics should assume to be compatible with the principles of discourse ethics, and then read empirical history in such a way that permits identifying the immanent potential for the actualisation of that ideal. In this manner, Habermas’s critical analysis of world politics ends up showcasing how deeply his critical theory has ‘detached itself from the real historical process’ (Honneth and Joas, 1988: 160). It does so to the extent that it must ‘abstract’ from the events and experiences of social groups in order to ‘penetrate historical happenings’ and get at the ‘cognitive infrastructure’ of historical development (Honneth and Joas, 1988: 164). Habermas’s analysis of empirical history thus becomes oriented to ‘finding historical evidence’ that substantiates the hypothesis of the logical framework of social evolution. A consequence of this approach is that the critical theorist ‘loses sight of historically innovative action that expresses itself in social movements without responding directly or intentionally to a [developmental] problem threatening society’ (Honneth and Joas, 1988: 165). Hence, the ‘actual history’ of human societies and social movements becomes ‘insignificant’ when compared with the ‘logical sequence’ of the stages of social evolution. Habermas’s critical theory becomes ‘so remote’ from ‘real historical happenings’ that it can hardly be ‘translated back’ into an analysis of the concrete historical dynamics and relations of

44 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative power between social groups and political communities shaping the actual process of human development (Honneth and Joas, 1988: 166). This conclusion points to the inadequacy of Habermas’ philosophicaltranscendental approach to grand narratives and critical theorising as an answer to the problem of orientation in both its explanatory and anticipatory dimensions. The anticipatory dimension relies on an abstract transcendental assessment of the ideal conditions of communication, while the explanatory dimension assumes the form of an abstract reconstruction of the logical stages of moral and social evolution in the disclosure of those ideal transcendental conditions. Both dimensions of Habermas’s critical theory are thus disconnected from any relationship with actual empirical history. This has necessary consequences for the adequacy of Habermas’s critical theory as a means of orientation. The historical dilemmas, struggles, and challenges facing human groups become irrelevant from the perspective of Habermasian critical theory, except as vehicles for the actualisation of an a priori established path of development. This means that the capacity of Habermas’s grand narrative to connect with concrete social groups and provide prospective orientation to their emancipatory struggles is virtually non-existent. Such a disconnect, ultimately reduces critical theorists oriented by Habermas’ critical theory to the role of elaborators of grand utopian emancipatory schemes that lose sight of concrete historical struggles and actually existing historical potentials for emancipation if these fall outside the Habermasian conceptual scheme. However, despite the shortcomings of Habermas’s critical theory, its starting point is relevant for any attempt at recovering grand narratives in critical international theory. Such a recovery needs to start with a reconstructive engagement with Marx’s work that identifies its potential for the development of a critical international theory capable of helping human beings better understand their conditions of existence, how these came to be what they are throughout the long-term process of human development, and how this process has gathered immanent potentials in the present for the future expansion of human self-determination. However, that reconstructive engagement with Marx’s original insights needs to be carried out on a different theoretical basis than the one pursued by Habermas. It needs to avoid renewing transcendental abstract theoretical schemes that open the door to a split between theory and practice, or even to the Eurocentrism that still affects much of contemporary critical international theory in both its Kantian-Habermasian and neo-Gramscian versions. The remainder of this book provides such an engagement. Notes 1 However, modernity does not represent the end point of human development. On the one hand, individual worldviews and consciousness structures still express influences of pre-conventional and conventional forms of respect for authority and group loyalty, which frequently clash with the post-conventional orientation towards universalistic principles. On the other hand, future stages of development of moral-practical knowledge might be attained that cannot yet be envisioned and which would demand a further rational reconstruction of the logical developmental pattern of moral-practical

A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative 45 knowledge. Furthermore, it is important to note in this context that Habermas does not conceive of modernity as an unproblematic stage of human development. His account of modernity simultaneously holds that it reveals ‘substantial progress’ in understanding the possibilities and need for dialogue in social reproduction, as well as in overcoming practical obstacles to its embodiment in political life. But at the same time, he also recognises Weber’s thesis about the dangers of intensified domination and curtailment of human self-determination associated with the rationalisation processes that accompany modernity. Hence, while agreeing with Weber about the potential for the reinforcement of domination present in modernity, Habermas observes that the cognitive potential held in modern post-conventional worldviews and consciousness structures opens the way for a more self-determined organisation of society on the basis of democratic processes of deliberative consensualisation of social norms and behavioural expectations. In this manner, Habermas strives to capture the ambiguous and dialectical character of human development and its expression in modernity (see: Linklater, 1998: 120–123). 2 There are several other important lines of criticism of Habermas’s work, such as feminist (Fraser, 1985; Hutchings, 2005; Pajnik, 2006) or environmental (see: Eckersley, 1990; Whitworth, 2000; Brulle, 2010) critiques, but these are not the focus here.

References Anievas A (2010) On Habermas, Marx and the critical theory tradition: Theoretical mastery or drift? In: Moore C and Farrands C (eds) International Relations and Philosophy: Interpretative Dialogues. London: Routledge, pp. 144–156. Bordum A (2005) Immanuel Kant, Jürgen Habermas and the categorical imperative. Philosophy & Social Criticism 31(7): 851–874. Brulle R (2010) Habermas and green political thought: Two roads converging. Environmental Politics 11(4): 1–20. Eckersley R (1990) Habermas and green political thought. Theory and Society 19: 739–776. Fraser N (1985) What’s critical about critical theory? The case of Habermas and gender. New German Critique 35: 97–131. Habermas J (1973) Legitimation Crisis. London: Heinemann. Habermas J (1979) History and evolution. Telos 39: 5–44. Habermas J (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action (Vol. 2): Lifeworld and System – The Critique of Functionalist Reason. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas J (1991a) Historical materialism and the development of normative structures. In: Habermas J (ed) Communication and the Evolution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 95–129. Habermas J (1991b) Towards a reconstruction of historical materialism. In: Habermas J (ed) Communication and the Evolution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 130–177. Habermas J (2000) Kant’s idea of perpetual peace: At two hundred years historical remove. In: Habermas J (ed) The Inclusion of the Other. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 165–202. Habermas J (2001) The Postnational Constellation. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas J (2003) Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas J (2006) Does the constitutionalization of international law still have a chance? In: Habermas J (ed) The Divided West. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 115–193. Habermas J (2012) The Crisis of the European Union: A Response. Cambridge: Polity Press. Harste G (2021) The Habermas-Luhmann Debate. Columbia: Columbia University Press. Heins V (2016) Habermas on the European crisis: Attempting the impossible. Thesis Eleven 133(1): 3–18.

46 A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative Heiskala R (2007) Economy and society: From parsons through Habermas to semiotic institutionalism. Social Science Information 46(2): 243–272. Honneth A and Joas H (1988) Social Action and Human Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horkheimer M and Adorno TW (2002) Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hutchings K (1996) Kant, Critique and Politics. London: Routledge. Hutchings K (2005) Speaking and hearing: Habermasian discourse ethics, feminism and IR. Review of International Studies 31: 155–165. Hutchings K (2011) What is orientation in thinking? Time and timeliness in cosmopolitan thought. Constellations 18(2): 190–204. Jeffries S (2017) Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. London: Verso. Kohlberg L, Levine C and Hewer A (1983) Moral Stages: A Current Formulation and a Response to Critics. Basel: S. Karger. Linklater A (1998) The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lundestad Ø and Mikalsen K (2011) The institutionalisation of international law: On Habermas’s reformulation of the Kantian project. Journal of International Political Theory 7(1): 40–62. McCarthy T (1982) The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Pajnik M (2006) Feminist reflections on Habermas’s communicative action: The need for an inclusive political theory. European Journal of Social Theory 9(3): 385–404. Pedersen J (2008) Habermas’s method: Rational reconstruction. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 38(4): 457–485. Schmid D (2018) The poverty of critical theory in international relations: Habermas, Linklater and the failings of cosmopolitan critique. European Journal of International Relations 24(1): 198–220. Schmid D (2023) The Poverty of Critical Theory in International Relations. Cham: Springer. Staats J (2004) Habermas and democratic theory: The threat to democracy of unchecked corporate power. Political Research Quarterly 57(4): 585–594. Verovšek P (2011) Meeting principles and lifeworlds halfway: Jürgen Habermas on the future of Europe. Political Studies 60(2): 363–380. Verovšek P (2021) Taking back control over markets: Jürgen Habermas on the colonisation of politics by economics. Political Studies 71(2): 398–417. von Bogdandy A and Dellavalle S (2009) Universalism renewed: Habermas’s theory of international order in light of competing paradigms. German Law Journal 10(1): 5–30. Whitworth A (2000) Communication with the environment? Non-human nature in the theories of Jürgen Habermas. Politics 20(3): 145–151.

3

The materialist-emergentist conception of history

Introduction This chapter makes the argument that Karl Marx’s critical theory provides the theoretical foundation for the development of a more adequate, historical-sociological, approach to grand narratives and critical theorising. This is achieved via two main innovations that Marx introduces to critical theoretical thought. First, through the development of what is here called a form of objective ethics, Marx draws the criteria for the normative judgement of existing conditions of existence, and for the anticipatory orientation of political activity envisioning the transformation of those conditions, from the analysis of the actual concrete history of embodied human beings and the immanent potential it has gathered for emancipatory change. This contrasts with the Kantian-Habermasian approach that relies on a form of transcendental ethics that abstract from those concrete conditions and have as their referent point for normative orientation a fixed utopian conception of the emancipated future. And second, Marx develops a materialist-emergentist conception of history that, unlike approaches based on philosophy of history, maintains a connection with actual empirical history and has the potential to capture the open-ended and multilinear character of the long-term process of human development, thus avoiding a reproduction of Eurocentrism. This materialist-emergentist conception is expressed in a general theory of human development that seeks to capture the universal social dynamics of the long-term history of the species, while tracing their specific expressions at different historical junctures. Marx’s critical theory thus seeks a dialectical interweaving between its objective ethics and general theory of human development that permits the maintenance of a connection between the anticipatory and the explanatory dimensions of the critical project and opens the way for the development of a more adequate, historical-sociological, answer to the problem of orientation. The chapter begins with the section ‘Humans in nature’, where an analysis is provided of Marx’s discussion of the emergence of the human species in the context of the long-term process of evolution on the planet. Marx emphasises how human beings are both a part of nature and have evolved a set of characteristics that distinguish them from other species, namely in what concerns their capacity to consciously transform their conditions of existence. This sets the stage for the DOI: 10.4324/9781003221777-4

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‘Objective ethics’ section, where Marx’s specific answer to the anticipatory dimension of the problem of orientation is discussed. This is argued to assume the form of objective ethics, focused on an assessment of the concrete conditions of existence that human beings experience at specific historical junctures and the potential these gather for the expansion of human conscious self-determination. The chapter then moves, in the ‘A general theory of human development’ section, to a discussion of Marx’s answer to the explanatory dimension of the problem of orientation via a general theory of human development that provides a sociological substitute for philosophical history. The ‘Orientation and emancipation’ section, finally, offers some reflections on the relationship between the type of historical-sociological approach to grand narratives that can be found in Marx’s work and orientation towards emancipatory change. The discussion in this chapter is closely connected with that of the next chapter. There, Marx’s multidimensional conception of class struggles is characterised as a process-concept that permits connecting his general theory of human development with his objective ethics in such a way that permits attaining a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition while maintaining a connection with the analysis of the concrete living experiences of historical human beings, and how these are expressed in a multilinear and open-ended process of human development. That discussion further brings to the forefront the potential, already expressed in this chapter, for Marx’s historical-sociological approach to grand narratives providing an answer to the problem of orientation that avoids a reproduction of Eurocentrism. However, the argument is also made in the next chapter that Marx is ultimately unsuccessful in fully actualising this potential in his work due to utopian hangovers in his thought. Marx’s critical theory is thus an important steppingstone for a historical-sociological critical international theory, but one that needs to be reconstructed in such a way that fully actualises its potential and overcomes its shortcomings. A proposal for how to carry out such a reconstruction is presented in Chapters 5 and 6. Humans in nature Marx’s break with philosophy of history can be traced to his argument that a more adequate understanding of human historical development must rely not on the ‘abstraction’ of philosophical history, but rather on an understanding of human beings ‘as they are’, i.e., on the ‘study of the actual life-processes and the activity of the individuals of each epoch’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 176). It must start from the basic conditions that make history possible, and the most basic of all is that people ‘before everything else, need to eat, to drink, a habitation, clothing, and many other things’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 181). The first historical act is thus ‘the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 188). The satisfaction of these natural needs is conceived of as requiring the constant engagement in productive activity via which humans extend their control

The materialist-emergentist conception of history 49 over non-human nature. This productive activity is not something fixed in time, but rather a constantly ongoing and ever-developing process, through which people learn more about external non-human nature and how to better tame it and orientate its natural processes towards specifically human ends. The human powers of production thus have an inherent developmental tendency, as people learn how to further extend their control over non-human nature and, in the process, increase the means at their disposal for the satisfaction of their constantly developing needs. As John Bellamy Foster (2000) notes, Marx’s understanding of human development captures the fundamental ‘unity’ and the constantly ongoing ‘struggle’ between human beings and nature (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 191; see also: Blackledge, 2012: 57). Humans are intrinsically bound to non-human nature in a relationship mediated through labour understood as a ‘process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature’ (Marx, 1982: 283; see also: Foster, 2000: Ch. 5). Through their constant metabolism with nature, humans not only transform and extend their control over the latter but also increase their productive powers, expand the amount, and transform the quality of the products of their labour and, in the process, transform their forms of social intercourse and associated products of the human mind (Marx, 1982: 283).1 Hence, in labouring non-human nature, [man] sets in motion the natural forces which belong to his own body, his arms, legs, head, and hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his own needs. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and in this way, he simultaneously changes his own nature. He develops the potentialities slumbering within nature and subjects the play of its forces to his own sovereign power. (Marx, 1982: 283) In this context, Marx notes that the type of control that humans have come to historically exercise over external non-human nature via labour differentiates them from all other species on the planet. Other animals also transform nature for the satisfaction of their needs; Marx (1992: 329) frequently mentions beavers, bees, or ants ‘which build nests and dwellings’. A spider, for example, ‘conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells’ (Marx, 1982: 284). However, while these other species also engage in productive activity, they do so predominantly under the compulsion of their immediate needs and according to the standards that are naturally inscribed in them, while human beings have evolved the capacity to increasingly carry out their productive activity in a ‘conscious’ manner (Marx, 1992: 328). In other words, what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been conceived

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The materialist-emergentist conception of history by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally. Man not only effects a change of form in the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials. (Marx, 1982: 284)

Unlike other animal species, whose labour assumes a predominantly ‘instinctive form’, humans have come to be able to produce according to self-defined standards, rather than driven by the compulsion of their natural inclinations (Marx, 1992: 328). Human beings thus have a historically developed capacity to make ‘life activity itself an object of their will and consciousness (…) [and this] directly distinguishes [them] from [other] animals’ (Marx, 1992: 329). From this perspective, Marx draws the parallels and differences between the evolutionary processes of other animals, which occur through the biological evolution of specialised adaptive bodily organs – or what he calls natural technology – and human evolution that occurs predominantly through the historical development of technology and forms of social labour, i.e., through the fashioning of tools that mediate the development of the human metabolism with nature and the associated transformation of human social relations.2 Marx’s historical conception of labour as a ‘mediated relation’ between human needs and surrounding non-human nature thus points to the historical emergence, out of the evolutionary process of life itself, of a species of ‘reflective, self-conscious beings’ whose behaviour, unlike that of other animals, is not driven predominantly by instinct but rather expresses a historically developing capacity for self-determination (Sayers, 2007c: 434). It is in this sense, then, that the human mind, from the perspective of Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of history, can be described as always trying to stretch beyond ‘things-as-they-are’, beyond the ‘limits of the possible’ it finds in the world (van der Pijl, 2007: 13; on the concept of ‘stretching’ see: Kurki, 2015; Saramago, 2020). Unlike other animal species whose instinctual behaviour predominantly frames their activity within the limits of the possible inherited from previous generations, human beings possess a historically developing capacity to consciously project themselves beyond those limits and find new ways, on the basis of each generation’s inherited limits of the possible, to mediate their relationship with non-human nature via labour and technology and increase their production powers and the efficacy and efficiency of their productive activity, with necessary consequences to the forms of social intercourse framing that activity. It is in this context that Marx observes the close relationship between the development of reason, technology, and the human powers of self-determination. To Marx (1982: 283), human adaptation to the natural environment has come to rely less on inherited ‘instinctive forms of labour’ to rather come to depend predominantly on the historical development of reason. This is understood as the capacity of the human mind to consciously and purposively stretch beyond the limits of the possible with which it is constantly confronted and orientate the development of forms of social labour and technology to mediate the human metabolism with nature in ways conducive to the satisfaction of human beings’ historically developing needs.

The materialist-emergentist conception of history 51 In Marx’s assessment (1982: 290), humans thus share with all other species a fundamental unity with nature to the extent that the appropriation of what exists in nature for the requirements of man (…) is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction between man and nature: the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and (…) therefore, independent of every form of that existence, (…) common to all forms of society in which human beings live. But, at the same time, humans are also distinguishable from other species by an evolved greater capacity to rationally project themselves into the future and plan their conscious activity beyond their inherited limits of the possible. In this sense, human beings’ can be defined by an evolved and historically developing capacity for conscious self-determination. This capacity cannot be interpreted as an a priori characteristic of the species. Rather, it is the product of an unplanned long-term evolutionary and developmental process throughout which human beings, in the context of their labouring activity to satisfy their needs, have come to develop the capacity to more consciously control their metabolism with nature. This conception is the basis for Marx’s comments that as people labour, they bring out what is ‘specifically human’ about them, developing their ‘human-nature’, i.e., their species-specific character as beings with a capacity for conscious selfdetermination.3 The history of the species thus comes to be characterised by Marx (1992: 349) as a long-term process of ‘humanisation’ of both nature and humankind, throughout which human animals develop their specifically human character on the basis of the natural immanent potential that developed in the long-term evolutionary process of life on the planet. It is in this sense, then, that Marx speaks of history as the slow emergence of the ‘humanism of nature’ and the ‘naturalism of humanity’ (Marx, 1992: 350). Objective ethics Marx’s processual and emergentist understanding of human beings and of the development of the human powers of self-determination lies at the core of what Michael Thompson (2010, 2015, 2016) calls ‘objective ethics’. Objective ethics are inherent in Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of history and open the way to overcome the shortcomings associated with transcendental ethics, namely the gap these imply between the explanatory and the anticipatory dimensions of the critical project. Even if Marx himself is ultimately unable to sustain such a standpoint of anticipatory orientation in a coherent manner throughout his work, his objective ethics and materialist-emergentist conception of history lay the foundations for a critical international theory capable of capturing the multilinear and open-ended character of human development in ways that do not detach from the concrete historical experiences of embodied human beings and that avoid a reproduction of forms of Eurocentrism.

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According to Thompson (2015: 236), Marx’s objective ethics can be described as such to the extent that they ground ‘their normative claims in claims about the functional and processual nature of social facts and human life’. Unlike KantianHabermasian transcendental ethics, objective ethics do not rely on the rational ascertainment of the preconditions of freedom, independently of empirical circumstances, from the perspective of which one can then judge human empirical conditions of existence and orientate human beings as to how to approximate the transcendental ideal. Rather, objective ethics ‘look for the validity of any value, norm, institution, or form of life more generally in the ontological structure of social being and the processes that constitute it’ (Thompson, 2015: 236). In other words, objective ethics arise from an understanding of the long-term process of development of a species whose members have historically evolved a capacity to rationally project themselves beyond the limits of the possible they inherent from previous generations and are able to consciously orientate their activity, according to that projection, in ways that broaden and refashion the limits of the possible with which they are confronted. Hence, Marxian objective ethics are grounded on an understanding of human beings as a species with a distinguishable capacity for freedom, i.e., to self-determine their conditions of existence according to rational volition. To an extent, Marx’s objective ethics share their basic structure with Aristotelian ethics in that Aristotle too grounds them in a distinctive understanding of the essence of human beings (Thompson, 2010, 2015). But to Marx this essence is not something fixed, rather finding its expression in the fact that the defining feature of the human species, its ‘species-being’, is the historical development of the human capacity for freedom, understood as conscious self-determination. Marx’s ‘essentialism’ can thus be described as a form of ‘naturalist ethics rooted in a dynamic model of human nature’ (Blackledge, 2012: 55; see also: Meikle, 1985). The human capacity for freedom is understood not as a fixed essence or as the endpoint of human development but rather ‘as an immanent potential which evolves over time through a process of collective struggles shaped by the development of humanity’s productive forces’ (Blackledge, 2012: 57). Therefore, to Marx, human beings’ capacity to stretch beyond their inherited limits of the possible is not free floating. It is always circumscribed by the immanent potential that has been gathered within the inherited limits of the possible, and by the human capacity to identify that potential and project it onto possible futures to be actualised by human purposive activity. As Marx (2000b: 329) famously notes, Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. It is through this ‘sociological move’ (Thompson, 2010: 175; see also: Jost and Jost, 2007) away from the ascertainment of the transcendental preconditions of

The materialist-emergentist conception of history 53 freedom to an understanding of freedom as an expression of human beings’ historically developing capacity to consciously project themselves beyond, and redefine, their inherited limits of the possible, that Marx’s objective ethics become indissociable from his materialist-emergentist conception of history. Marx’s critical theory does not pose a gap between theory and practice, between the anticipatory and the explanatory dimensions of the critical project. Rather, these dimensions become dialectically intertwined in a means of orientation that draws the criteria of judgement of human conditions of existence not from their comparison with a static, transcendental ideal, but rather from an analysis of the immanent potential these gather, at any particular historical juncture, for the expansion of the limits of the possible and, thus, of the conditions for the development of human conscious self-determination. Hence, while Marx’s sociological and materialist shift is frequently understood to leave him ‘bereft of ethics’ and as implying a ‘move towards science and a kind of structural determinism’, in fact Marx is creating the foundation for a historicalsociological means of orientation that dialectically connects ethics and a grand narrative of the long-term process of development of historical and embodied human beings (Thompson, 2010: 175).4 What Marx is doing ‘in developing a materialist perspective is not making evaluative claims irrelevant, but rather showing that ethics, as an autonomous enterprise, is doomed to failure’ (Thompson, 2010: 175). This is so because any ethics, like the Kantian-Habermasian form of transcendental ethics, that are ‘divided from an absolute understanding of the social systems and processes which organise material life in any society, will not be grounded in the true nature of human needs’ (Thompson, 2010: 175). They will, consequently, be unable to reconnect themselves back to the concrete experiences and struggles of human beings and their historical conditions of existence. Marx’s critical theory thus implies the dialectical connection between its anticipatory and explanation dimensions. Critique, for Marx, becomes a synthetic judgement between factual knowledge claims and evaluative, normative claims. There is no ethical system of values separate from how the world works, those values are inherent in an objective sense to social facts themselves. (…) [E]very social fact, every artefact of social life, contains the normative categories for its own judgement. (Thompson, 2015: 246) It is in this sense, then, that Marx’s critical theory can be described as a ‘breakthrough’ towards a historical-sociological means of orientation (see: Kilminster, 1998: Ch. 3, 2018). Unlike Kantian-Habermasian critical international theory, it does not find the criteria for the critical judgement of the human conditions of existence in the ascertainment of the transcendental preconditions of freedom, nor in the philosophical conception of the historical movement of reason and its potential to approximate a fixed ideal of freedom. Concomitantly, Marx also does not substitute the abstraction of philosophical universalism with a form of contextualist relativism. Rather, Marx’s criteria of judgement and orientation are grounded in a grand narrative of human historical development through which Marx carries out

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a constant sociological ascertainment of how the essence of human beings – i.e., their historically developing capacity for conscious self-determination – manifests itself in different ways in different historical junctures and how, in each of these junctures, produces specific immanent potentials to transform the inherited limits of the possible in ways that further expand human beings’ capacity to consciously self-determine their conditions of existence. In other words, Marx’s objective ethics express what Sean Sayers (2007a) describes as a ‘historical form of humanism’. One that conceives of human beings as possessing a distinguishable capacity for freedom, which emerges out of the evolutionary process on Earth and develops throughout the history of the species, as humans develop the technological and social means to satisfy their historically emerging needs. This historical humanism is not based on a ‘reified’ conception of freedom, nor does it see freedom ‘as simply an attribute of individuals against the social’ (Blackledge, 2012: 57). Instead, freedom ‘has a concrete meaning which changes throughout history, as both the material parameters for its realisation expand and as groups form through struggle to fight for the realisation of these expanding demands’ (Blackledge, 2012: 57). It is from this perspective, then, that Marx’s famous relation of base and superstructure, of productive activity and forms of social intercourse can be understood. Not as a mechanistic and deterministic conception, but as a general theory of human development, a grand narrative that captures the role of human agency in the historically developing process of freedom, but also the limits within which that freedom develops. While in his later work Marx predominantly uses the concepts of ‘forces of production’ and ‘relations of production’, abandoning the earlier use he and Engels make, namely in The German Ideology, of ‘productive activity’ and ‘forms of social intercourse’, this discussion of Marx’s critical theory uses predominantly this latter pair of concepts. The reason is that these concepts permit drawing out with particular clarity the dialectical character of Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of history and the connection it implies between the anticipatory and the explanatory dimensions of his critical theory. The other pair of concepts, ‘forces of production’ and ‘relations of production’, is too burdened with the history of mechanistic and deterministic interpretations of Marx’s work. These interpretations frequently hide how Marx’s discussion of ‘modes of production’ does not express a form of technological or economic determinism but is intended to capture how human productive activity circumscribes the limits of the possible at each historical juncture, gathers within it the immanent potential to expand beyond those limits, but also how the actualisation of that immanent potential is ultimately dependent on human conscious activity. Hence, ‘the mode of production shapes the contours of social struggles, [but] it is up to real men and women to fight for their desired ends’ (Blackledge, 2012: 48). A general theory of human development The previous sections discussed Marx’s objective ethics and their connection with his materialist-emergentist conception of history. This section further explores this

The materialist-emergentist conception of history 55 connection by analysing how Marx sought to develop a grand narrative of human development focused on identifying the social processes universally shared by all human societies, but which can assume very different historical expressions. To Marx, one of the universal features of human life is that the conditions of existence human beings face at any particular historical juncture are the result of ‘a historically created relation to nature and of individuals to one another [that] is handed down to each generation from its predecessor’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 189). These conditions are ‘modified by the new generation, but also prescribe for it its conditions of life and give it a definite development, a special character’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 189). The challenge in making history intelligible lies in developing an understanding of the universal social dynamics that shape this development. Amongst these dynamics, the development of the division of labour, and the way it connects to the development of the human-nature metabolism and forms social intercourse, is one of the most prominent. Expressed in the functional and technological specialisation of human productive activity, the division of labour historically emerges in an unplanned manner within the labour process. In the earlier stages of human history, it is ‘nothing but the division of labour in the sexual act, then that division of labour which develops spontaneously or naturally by virtue of natural predisposition (e.g., physical strength, needs, accidents, etc.)’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 184). But as people transform non-human nature to meet their needs and, in the process, acquire a greater understanding of its processes and how to control them, so too they develop increasingly more specialised tools and areas of activity to mediate their metabolism with nature. The overall direction of the historical development of humanity has thus been towards the increase in the division of labour, the specialisation of productive activity between different individuals and social groups and the growth of human conscious control over non-human nature. However, Marx also observes that as the division of labour increases, each individual’s social activity becomes more circumscribed and social groups come to be differentiated according to their respective position in the overall process of social production. The historical consolidation of different social classes, relating to different areas of social activity and specialised functions in the overall division of labour of a particular society, means that the satisfaction of human needs comes to depend more and more on exploitative relations within each human community. This is a direct outcome of different groups relating to the collective productive activity of their societies in different ways, which determines not only their labouring activity, but also their access to the enjoyment of the products of that activity. In other words, the division of labour ‘implies the (…) fact that intellectual and material activity – enjoyment and labour, production and consumption – devolve on different individuals’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 184). Hence, while the division of labour emerges organically from the natural conditions of human productive activity, it quickly becomes a matter of historical power struggles between individuals and social groups. These struggles are not circumscribed to social relations

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within a particular human political community, but also shape relations between communities, since the only barrier which [a] community can encounter in relating to the natural conditions of production – the earth – (…) is another community, which already claims it as its own inorganic body. Warfare is therefore one of the earliest occupations of each of these naturally arisen communities, both for the defence of their property and for obtaining new property. (Marx 1993: 491) The division of labour, and associated power struggles, both within and between human communities, is thus directly implied in the historical development of property relations. Within each community, it is the ‘division of labour in the family, (…) the separation of society into individual families opposed to one another (…) [and the] unequal distribution, both quantitative and qualitative, of labour and its products’ that gives rise to property understood as ‘the power of disposing of the labour-power of others’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 185). In earlier phases of social development and productive activity, private property finds its expression in the ‘latent slavery in the family’, where ‘wife and children are the slaves of the husband’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 185). In relations between communities, this earlier form of property is related to the conquering of other human groups ‘along with [their] land and soil, as [their] organic accessories (…); in this way arises slavery and serfdom, which soon corrupts and modifies the original form of all communities, and then itself becomes their basis’ (Marx, 1993: 491). Hence, as the division of labour develops so too does human productive activity and associated control over non-human nature and forms of social intercourse both within and between communities (see: Linklater, 1990: 35–40). These then constitute the context in which the further division of labour occurs, together with the further development of productive activity and forms of social intercourse. From this perspective, human historical development is understood as the result of the intertwinement between the development of productive activity and associated forms of forms of social intercourse. As Marx and Engels (2000b: 188) observe: This conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real process of production, starting out from the material production of life itself, and to comprehend the form of intercourse connected with this and created by this mode of production (…) as the basis of all history; and to (…) explain all the different theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc., and trace their origins and growth from that basis; by which means, of course, the whole thing can be depicted in its totality (and therefore, too, the reciprocal action of these various sides on one another). The materialist-emergentist conception of history should thus not be interpreted as expressing a linear and deterministic understanding of human development in

The materialist-emergentist conception of history 57 which the products of the human mind, social institutions and class relations are nothing more than a direct efflux of the underlying basis of productive activity. Such an interpretation actually represents a return to a form of naturalistic materialism, as that which is found in the writings of Feuerbach, Bacon, or Holbach, and to which Marx reacted against (see: van der Pijl, 2007a: 13, 2007b: 620). Naturalistic materialism, in many ways, represents the materialist equivalent of transcendental idealism, posing a similar gap between theory and practice, between the products of the human mind and the material circumstances of human existence, whose bridging depends only on the critical theorist’s discretion. As the quote above suggests, Marx’s materialist-emergentism instead seeks to supersede this binary between naturalistic materialism and transcendental idealism by dialectically connecting the development of productive activity with the development of the forms of social intercourse in ways that permit understanding how the development of the former conditions that of the latter, and vice-versa. As Kees van der Pijl (2007a: 620) notes, Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of history represents a synthesis between earlier forms of naturalistic materialism – and their conception of humans as a part of nature – with the Hegelian notion of the role that the ‘active spiritual development’ of human beings plays in the long-term process of development of the species; a synthesis to which Gramsci (1971: 465) would later call ‘absolute historicism’. Marx’s materialism-emergentism goes beyond naturalistic materialism to the extent that it incorporates an ‘emphasis on [the role of] creative intellectual labour’ in the historical development of both productive activity and forms of social intercourse (van der Pijl, 2007b: 13). To Marx, reason, understood as human conscious and purposeful activity, is ‘always trying to get ahead of things-as-they-are’; to stretch beyond its inherited limits of the possible (van der Pijl, 2007b: 13). This means that, as they labour upon non-human nature, human beings also constantly alter the limits of the possible in the context of their conscious productive activity, creating new technologies, new forms of the division of labour and developing new, and a greater proliferation of, the products of labour. These products must be understood as entailing not only the objects required for the satisfaction of human needs, but also the potential for an expansion of leisure time, i.e., for the possibility of working less hours each day, while producing more, as a direct consequence of a rise in productivity due to the adoption of new, more efficient and efficacious, technology and labouring techniques. Consequently, humans constantly establish the immanent conditions for the development of new forms of social intercourse and new patterns of distribution of the enjoyment of the products of labour, both in terms of consumption and leisure. However, the actualisation of that immanent potential also depends on further rational stretching, this time at the level of ideas that can orientate the establishment of new social institutions, norms and forms of social intercourse that regulate the metabolism with nature, the division of labour and the distribution of its products in ways that correspond to the immanent potential for new boundaries of the possible created by the development of productive activity. It is in this sense, then, that Marx argues that consciousness has no autonomous development, but it is also

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not a mere reflection of material circumstances. Rather, conscious activity mediates the development of both productive activity and forms of social intercourse. It is human beings’ conscious ‘development of their material production and their material intercourse [that] alters, along with this, their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 181). Hence, to Marx, the development of ideas, forms of intercourse and their dialectical interplay with the development of productive activity is understood as an expression of the human evolved capacity for conscious self-determination. This capacity is not free floating, being constantly conditioned by each generation’s inherited limits of the possible and by its capacity to stretch beyond those limits, both intellectually and in translating that rational stretching into activity that expands human productive powers and transforms inherited forms of social intercourse and associated patterns of the distribution of the products of labour. In Marx and Engels words (2000b, 180, own emphasis): men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest form. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. Therefore, consciousness can also no longer ‘retain the semblance of independence’ it does in Kantian-Habermasian critical theory (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 180). But it is also no mere reflection of material conditions of existence. Rather, human beings constantly rationally stretch beyond their inherited limits of the possible, projecting in their minds both new techniques and technologies of labour and new forms of social intercourse that, if actualised through human conscious activity, expand their control over non-human nature and over the social processes that they collectively constitute. Of course, this process is inherently confrontational, as the establishment of new forms of intercourse and associated changes in productive activity, and in the distribution of its products, implies changes in power and status relations within and between societies. Hence, those social classes that benefitted from the form of intercourse developed within the previous limits of the possible will resist the transformation and adaptation of that form to the new potential immanent in the development of productive activity. Consequently, the same form of intercourse that constituted the context for the development of productive activity in the past, eventually comes to constitute a barrier to its further development and the actualisation of its immanent potentials. As such, a universal pattern of human historical development has been a succession of forms of intercourse, as these dialectically constitute a condition for the development of productive activity, but eventually also a barrier to its further development. A long-term sequence of forms of social intercourse can thus be identified in which, in place of a form of intercourse which has become a fetter, a new one is put, corresponding to the more developed productive forces and, hence, to the advanced

The materialist-emergentist conception of history 59 mode of the self-activity of individuals, a form which in its turn becomes a fetter and is then replaced by another. (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 197) It is this dialectic that makes the historical process of human development appear to assume a predominantly ‘natural’ character, not being ‘subordinated to a general plan of freely combined individuals’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 197). The unplanned character of human development arises from the way the interweaving of human planned interventions in history constantly gives rise to unplanned outcomes and processes that condition the shape of people’s conditions of existence. Hence, Marx’s conception of historical development harbours a constant dialectic between conscious agency and unconscious determination; between the capacity of human beings to consciously self-determine their conditions of existence and the constant historical development of new forms of ‘alienation’, as the unplanned outcomes of planned behaviour turn human productive activity and social intercourse into an objective power that ‘determines and subordinates the individual’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 199; see also: Mészáros, 1970; Raekstad, 2015). Marx’s understanding of the historical dialectic between self-determination and alienation, as an outcome of the intertwined development of productive activity, forms of social intercourse, and human agency shows the connection between the anticipatory and the explanatory dimensions of his critical project. This connection permits Marx’s critical theory to serve as a means of orientation on the basis of which people can both understand the long-term development of their conditions of existence, how these are shaped by the dialectic between alienation and emancipation, but also orientate themselves regarding what types of activity with emancipatory intent are possible and adequate at different historical junctures. Orientation and emancipation A universal feature of human development has thus been the historical struggle between, on the one hand, those social classes whose position in the social intercourse at any particular historical juncture permits them to own the means of production and enjoy the greatest access to the products of productive activity, and who thus possess an active interest in the maintenance of the inherited state of affairs and, on the other hand, those classes who do not control the means of production and have lower access to the products of productive activity, and thus would benefit from a change in the predominant form of social intercourse. To Marx, the transformation of the inherited social form can only occur via class struggle and if the classes interested in such a transformation are capable of carrying out a revolutionary overthrow of the ruling conservative classes. However, the success of such a revolutionary movement is always conditioned by the actual development of productive activity and the corresponding capacity of human beings to rationally stretch beyond their inherited limits of the possible and conceive of alternative ways to organise their social intercourse that actualise the immanent potential gathered in the development of their productive activity. Only when a sufficient portion of society has been mobilised by the rational projection of the vision of an alternative form

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of social intercourse that could actualise the immanent potential gathered in productive activity can a successful revolution occur (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 184). Hence, a fundamental requirement for revolution is that ‘theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc. come into contradiction with the existing relations, [which] can only occur because existing social relations have come into contradiction with existing forces of production’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 184). The revolutionary dispossessed classes thus need to be bound together both by their shared material conditions of existence and by their shared orientations towards the world for a successful revolutionary movement to occur. Until these objective and subjective conditions have been historically gathered, until these material elements of a complete revolution are (…) present (namely, on the one hand, the existing productive forces, on the other, the formation of a revolutionary mass, which revolts not only against separate conditions of society up till then, but against the very ‘production of life’ till then, the ‘total activity’ on which it was based), then, as far as practical development is concerned, it is absolutely immaterial whether the idea of this revolution has been expressed a hundred times already. (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 189) As such, Marx’s grand narrative of human development does not predict the inevitability of revolutionary transformation, but simply seeks to capture the universal social processes shaping the development of all human societies. Concretely, the outcome of these processes is always historically contingent and open-ended, with the potential to assume a high diversity of forms in different contexts. Hence, even when the immanent potential for a revolutionary transformation of a particular form of social intercourse and mode of productive activity has been gathered at a specific historical juncture, its actualisation is always contingent and the result of concrete struggles between social classes. These struggles can occur either openly, through direct confrontation, or hidden, through various other means. Furthermore, their outcome is always open-ended and can lead to ‘[the] revolutionary re-constitution of society at large or (…) [even] the common ruin of the contending classes’ (Marx and Engels, 2000a: 246). If a revolution is successful, a new form of social intercourse is established by the revolutionary classes, which becomes the new boundary condition for the further development of human productive activity, thus defining the new limits of the possible. Then, the whole process is once again reproduced at a higher stage of development. The previously revolutionary classes eventually become the ruling conservative upholders of their established order, legitimising and reproducing their inherited limits of the possible, while other classes will come to claim a revolutionary transformation of society in order to actualise the immanent potential that has gathered in whatever further innovations have occurred at the level of human productive activity to further expand the limits of the possible. In Marx’s view, the dialectical movement of human development is a product of the fact that, despite each social order inaugurated by a new ruling class expressing an

The materialist-emergentist conception of history 61 expansion of the limits of the possible, understood as the expansion of the human powers of control over external nature and social intercourse, still, each of them is ultimately also revealed as limited in its character, as unable to ensure the overall satisfaction of the historically expanding needs of human beings, and transitions from being a condition for the development of human self-determination to become a fetter upon it. While socialism, as the form of social intercourse and productive activity immanent in capitalism, is frequently understood as expressing Marx’s vision of the end of history and the final stage in the dialectical grand narrative of human development, there are passages in his work, especially in his less utopian moments, where Marx explicitly says otherwise. In those passages, Marx characterises socialism as a ‘phase in human emancipation and rehabilitation, both real and necessary at this juncture of human development’ (Marx, 2000a: 104). Socialism, while it is understood as ‘the necessary form and dynamic principle of the immediate future, (…) is not as such the goal of human development, the form of human society’ (Marx, 2000a: 104). Hence, Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of history, and the expression it assumes in the form of a grand narrative of the dialectic of productive activity, forms of social intercourse and human conscious self-determination, does not necessarily entail either a deterministic pattern of development or a necessary end stage. While the majority of Marx’s writings are dedicated to the analysis of the capitalist stage of historical development and the immanent potential for a transition to a socialist form of social intercourse, his theoretical scheme of the social dynamics of human development is not circumscribed to that particular historical juncture. Rather, it constitutes a grand narrative, an attempt at a general theory of human development that captures the universal social processes shaping the development of all human societies, but which can assume highly varied expressions and contents at different historical junctures. From that perspective, Marx’s historical-sociological grand narrative simultaneously permits achieving a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition but also inaugurates a different form of cosmopolitanism than that found in the Kantian-Habermasian tradition. It does so to the extent that it is a cosmopolitanism that maintains a connection with the actual lived experiences of historical and embodied human beings in the context of a multilinear and open-ended conception of the long-term process of human development. Marx’s critical theory thus opens the way for an approach to grand narratives that does not reproduce the shortcomings of Eurocentrism. Furthermore, it permits a dialectical connection between its explanatory and anticipatory dimensions as it sees human historical development as a product of people’s developing capacity for self-determination, expressed in their ability – to paraphrase Marx – to progressively ‘make more of their history under conditions of their own choosing’ (Marx, 2000b: 329). This entails, first of all, people’s capacity to more consciously control their metabolism with nature, and second, their capacity to more consciously control the social processes that they together constitute. But the actual expression of the development of these powers of self-determination is always contingent and specific to each historical juncture, varying significantly across space and time.

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From the perspective of Marx’s critical theory, a normative standpoint of orientation can thus be disclosed from within the historically embedded assessment of the immanent potential, gathered at each particular historical juncture, for the actualisation of forms of intercourse and productive activity that expand the inherited limits of the possible concerning human beings’ capacity for conscious selfdetermination. As such, Marx’s assessment of the conditions for freedom is always historically embedded and processual, varying with the place in the dialectical and multilinear movement of history in which the critical thinker might find him or herself at any particular moment. Consequently, Marx’s answer to the anticipatory dimension of the problem of orientation, rather than involving the establishment of a transcendental blueprint of the ideal conditions of freedom that is considered universally valid and towards which human history necessarily develops, is based on a historically contextualised normative preference for those forms of social intercourse, and those social classes that, at any particular moment in the history of the species, and in any specific historical and social context, promote the further development of human self-determination and the expansion of the limits of the possible, in the context of a contingent and open future. Marx’s normative preference for those classes that have the potential to play the role of emancipator at each historical juncture is not arbitrary nor dependent solely on the personal judgement of the critical theorist. Rather, it is inherent in the materialist-emergentist understanding of history itself, as a process whose main moving force is the development of a species with a capacity for conscious selfdetermination. By not relying on a fixed conception of freedom, nor on a linear and teleological understanding of human development, but rather on a processual, emergent, multilinear and open-ended conception, Marx’s objective ethics are capable, on the basis of a sociological understanding of the development of human self-determination throughout history, of normatively supporting and defending a specific form of social intercourse, or set of social classes, that frame the conditions for the further development of human freedom at a particular historical juncture. And then, to come to criticise that same form of social intercourse and set of social classes once these have become a barrier to the further development of the human powers of self-determination and have created the immanent possibility for their further development to occur under a different form of social intercourse and productive activity. It is in this sense then, that Marx’s critical theory opens the way for the development of a historical-sociological answer to the problem of orientation. One based on a sociological understanding of the long-term process of human development from which it is possible to disclose standards of orientation that entail a normative commitment to the expansion of freedom, as it is immanently embodied in different forms of social intercourse and productive activity that, if actualised, expand the inherited limits of the possible at specific historical junctures. An answer to the problem of orientation that, consequently, does not lose its connection with the historical experiences of embodied human beings and their social struggles nor poses a gap between its anticipatory and explanatory dimensions. By not relying on an ideal, fixed conception of freedom, it is a means of orientation that provides

The materialist-emergentist conception of history 63 a more adequate understanding of what are the possible forms of emancipatory activity to the extent that it has a better grasp of how the expansion of freedom is always necessarily circumscribed by the limits of the possible at each particular historical juncture. As the next chapter argues, the dialectical interweaving between the explanatory and the anticipatory dimensions of Marx’s critical project, as well as its relevance for critical international theory, can be seen with particular acuity in his discussion of class struggles. Marx’s conception of class struggles tends to be frequently understood in a unidimensional key as entailing mainly the opposition between bourgeoisie and proletariat under capitalism. However, as the next chapter shows, much of Marx’s work actually expresses a multidimensional conception of class struggles that is significantly more complex, interweaving struggles around issues of class (in the strict economic sense), nationality, race, and gender. This multidimensional conception of class struggles plays a key role in Marx’s critical theory. It functions as what this book calls a process-concept that connects Marx’s objective ethics with his general theory of human development in a manner that underlines the potential of his historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising as a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation. However, this multidimensional conception of class struggles not only remained scattered throughout Marx’s work, never being fully developed or clearly expressed, but was also frequently hindered in the insights with which it could inform a more adequate means of orientation by the burden of Marx’s own revolutionary expectations and the concrete political struggles in which he and Engels were involved. This political involvement and utopian revolutionary expectations, while being the source of many of Marx and Engel’s insights, also frequently undermined their analytical acuity, leading inclusively to an undertheorised conception of the role of violence and monopolies of social power in processes of emancipatory social change of exactly the type that the two authors argued for. The next chapter is dedicated to exploring the multidimensional conception of class struggles in Marx’s work and highlighting its relevance for a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising and then to discuss the shortcomings of Marx’s critical project. Notes 1 The way Marx conceives of the interweaving between the capacity of human beings to transform external nature via labour and, in the process, transform themselves, their technology and forms of social intercourse has been described by Jason W. Moore as inaugurating a ‘post-Cartesian’ conception of human/nature relations that makes an epistemological breakthrough, aligned with emerging knowledge in the biological sciences in Marx’s time, namely the Darwinian revolution, that supersedes the dualism between humans and nature that characterises several strains of Enlightenment thought. Instead, Marx conceives of the relationship between human beings and non-human nature as a ‘double internality’ that underlines human beings’ character as an environment-making and a history-making species. See: Moore (2015). 2 For a discussion of how Marx’s views on human development relate to Darwin’s theory of evolution, see Foster (2000: Ch. 6); see also: Taylor (1989), Barnes (2021).

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3 It is worth recalling here Frederick Engels’s (2012) observation on how the transition from apes to humans must have involved the combined and intertwined processes of physical and cultural evolution, as the development of the hand and the brain were mutually reinforcing and accompanied the development of the defining human capacity for speech and for the social coordination of more conscious labour upon external nature. This observation makes Habermas’ distinction between hominid and properly human forms of life as entailing a distinction between life predominantly mediated by labour or speech appear too strict. Rather, Marx and Engels saw an interweaving of biological and cultural processes in the long-term process of human evolution, with no clear distinction between phases where labour or speech predominated, especially because the type of conscious social labour that is distinguishably human could not occur in the absence of speech patterns as a pacemaker of labouring activity. 4 The conception of objective ethics effectively supersedes now classical Marxist positions that either considered Marx’s critical theory has having an underdeveloped and at times incoherent position on ethics (see: Kamenka, 1972; Lukes, 1987; see also: Sayers, 2007b; Lukes, 2015) or defend that Marx’s critical theory is based on a teleological conception of history that abandons the need for ethics (Cohen, 1979; see also: Dietsch, 2016).

References Barnes J (2021) Revisiting the ‘Darwin-Marx correspondence’: Multiple discovery and the rhetoric of priority. History of the Human Sciences 35(2): 29–54. Blackledge P (2012) Marxism and Ethics: Freedom, Desire and Revolution. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Cohen GA (1979) Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dietsch P (2016) G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s theory of history – A defense. In: Levy JT (ed) The Oxford Handbook in Contemporary Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34715/chapter-abstract/296452287?redi rectedFrom=fulltext Engels F (2012) Dialectics of Nature. London: Wellred. Foster JB (2000) Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly Review Press. Gramsci A (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Jost L and Jost J (2007) Why Marx left philosophy for social science. Theory & Psychology 17(2): 297–322. Kamenka E (2015) The Ethical Foundations of Marxism. London: Routledge. Kilminster R (1998) The Sociological Revolution: From the Enlightenment to the Global Age. London: Routledge. Kilminster R (2018) Karl Marx: New perspectives. In: Castro JE, Fowler B and Gomes L (eds) Time, Science and the Critique of Technological Reason. Cham: Springer, pp. 231–264. Kurki M (2015) Stretching situated knowledge: From standpoint epistemology to cosmology and back again. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(3): 779–797. Linklater A (1990) Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Lukes S (1987) Marxism and Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lukes S (2014) Marxism and morals today. New Labour Forum 24(1): 56–61. Marx K (1982) Capital: Critique of Political Economy (Vol. 1). London: Penguin Classics.

The materialist-emergentist conception of history 65 Marx K (1992) Economic and philosophical manuscripts. In: Marx K (ed) Karl Marx: Early Writings. London: New Left Review, pp. 279–400. Marx K (1993) Grundrisse. London: Penguin Classics. Marx K (2000a) Economic and philosophical manuscripts. In: McLellan D (ed) Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 83–122. Marx K (2000b) The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In: McLellan D (ed) Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 329–355. Marx K and Engels F (2000a) The communist Manifesto. In: McLellan D (ed) Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 245–272. Marx K and Engels F (2000b) The German ideology. In: McLellan D (ed) Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 175–208. Meikle D (1985) Essentialism in the Thought of Karl Marx. La Salle, IL: Open Court. Mészáros I (1970) Marx’s Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin Press. Moore JW (2015) Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso. Raekstad P (2015) Human development and alienation in the thought of Karl Marx. European Journal of Political Theory 17(3): 300–323. Saramago A (2020) Reality-congruence, emancipatory politics and situated knowledge in international relations: A process sociological perspective. International Relations 34(2): 204–224. Sayers S (2007a) Marxism and Human Nature. New York: Routledge. Sayers S (2007b) Marxism and morality. Philosophical Researches 9(8): 8–12. Sayers S (2007c) The concept of labour: Marx and his critiques. Science and Society 71(4): 431–454. Taylor A (1989) The significance of Darwinian theory for Marx and Engels. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 19(4): 409–423. Thompson M (2010) Marxism, ethics and the task of critical theory. In: Thompson M (ed) Rational Radicalism and Political Theory: Essays in Honor of Stephen Eric Bronner. London: Lexington Books, pp. 161–188. Thompson M (2015) Philosophical foundations for a Marxian ethics. In: Thompson M (ed) Constructing Marxist Ethics: Critique, Normativity, Praxis. London: Brill, pp. 235–265. Thompson M (2016) Social ontology and social critique: Towards a new paradigm for critical theory. In: Krier D and Worrel M (eds) The Social Ontology of Capitalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 15–45. van der Pijl K (2007a) Capital and the state system: A class act. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 20(4): 619–637. van der Pijl K (2007b) Nomads, Empires, States: Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, vol. 1. London: Pluto Press.

4

Class struggles and utopian limitations

Introduction This chapter deepens the previous chapter’s analysis of how Marx’s critical theory opens the way for a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising by focusing on his conception of class struggles. The argument is made that in Marx’s work lies immanent a multidimensional conception of class struggles that interweaves social struggles around class, gender, race, and nationality in a complex analytical framework for how concrete historical struggles between social groups are expressive of the universal social dynamics that Marx captures in his general theory of human development. Hence, class struggles are here argued to function as a process-concept in Marx’s critical theory, via which he can capture the concrete historical expressions of the universal social dynamics expressed in his grand narrative of human development. As advanced in Chapter 1, the deployment of processconcepts in such a way is the core feature of a more adequate historical-sociological approach to the problem of orientation. It permits a constant interplay between a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition, via the disclosure of the universal social dynamics that are shared by all human societies, and the analysis of their concrete historical expression in specific historical junctures. Such an approach permits a recovery of grand narratives in critical international theory, without which it becomes incapable of answering the problem of orientation, while avoiding falling either into contextualist relativism or abstract universalism and Eurocentrism. However, the argument is also made in this chapter that Marx is ultimately incapable of actualising in a coherent manner the potential for the development of a historical-sociological means of orientation that can be found immanent in his work. Shortcomings burden Marx’s critical theory, whose origin can be traced to the political commitments and utopian expectations that frequently colour his analyses. While such political commitments frequently lie at the core of many of Marx and Engel’s original insights, they also frequently drag them to rushed conclusions and prescriptions about the likely future course of social development that block a clearer expression, and a more sustained and coherent development and application, of the historical-sociological approach to the problem of orientation that emerges in their work. The chapter focuses in particular on the way these utopian

DOI: 10.4324/9781003221777-5

Class struggles and utopian limitations 67 hangovers lead to an undertheorisation of the role of the monopolisation of violence and of non-economic sources of social power in processes of social change at both the intra- and inter-societal levels. Interestingly, this undertheorisation is concomitant with Marx and Engel’s frequent appeals to revolutionary upheaval as an instrument of social transformation. Marx’s critical theory is thus burdened with utopian conclusions that ultimately undermine its capacity to adequately orientate human beings in better understanding their conditions of existence and how they might identify, and actualise, the potential for emancipatory change gathered at specific historical junctures. This discussion sets the stage for Chapters 5 and 6, where a reconstruction of Marx’s historical-sociological approach is proposed that provides a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation. The argument is developed in three sections. The ‘The critique of capitalism’ section addresses Marx’s critique of capitalism, framing it in his general theory of human development and objectives ethics and highlighting the role of class struggles in its context. In the ‘The interweaving of multiple forms of class struggle’ section, Marx’s multidimensional conception of class struggles, and how it functions as a process-concept in the framework of his historical-sociological grand narrative, is discussed. Finally, the ‘Utopianism and social monopolies’ section addresses the shortcomings in Marx’s approach that ultimately hinder the adequacy of his critical theory as a means of orientation. The critique of capitalism Marx’s conception of class struggles is predominantly interpreted through his analysis of the opposition between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the context of capitalism. Consequently, a recurrent criticism of historical materialism within International Relations has been that Marx and Engels’ focus on class struggles as the main pacemaker of social development makes them conceptually ill-equipped to analyse world politics. The common view is that the relevance of Marx and Engels’ analysis of class struggles stops when entering the realm of inter-state conflict, something supposedly expressed in their own political writings in which issues of nationality and war frequently assume centre-stage to the detriment of the focus on class struggles (see Berki, 1971; Craig, 2017). This chapter contests that interpretation. With reference to Domenico Losurdo’s (2016) attempt to rebuild the multidimensional character of Marx’s conception of class struggles, it argues that Marx conceives of class struggles as interweaving social struggles around issues of class (in the strict economic sense), but also gender, race, and nationality, and that such a conception is an essential link between the anticipatory and the explanatory dimensions of his critical project. This argument is made in two moments. Fist, in this section, via an exposition of the critique of capitalism in Marx’s work that emphasises the centrality of the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and connects it with Marx’s grand narrative and objective ethics. And second, in the next section, by broadening the common interpretation of class struggles into a multidimensional conception and emphasising

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its role, as a process-concept, in the development of a more adequate, historicalsociological, answer to the problem of orientation. The core of Marx’s critique of capitalism arises from the way it is a historicallyspecific expression of the dialectic between emancipation and alienation that shapes his grand narrative of human development. Capitalism is a historical form of social intercourse that relies, for its reproduction, on the constant development of productive activity. This means a constant expansion of the limits of the possible at the level of productive activity, as people are compelled to constantly increase their capacity to mobilise social labour to produce, in a decreasing amount of time, an ever-greater proliferation of the products required for the satisfaction of their needs. The expansion of the human powers of production under capitalism not only radically diminishes the condition of scarcity and limited productive capacity that hitherto characterised the history of the species, but also creates the immanent potential for a redistribution of productive activity, and of the products of social labour, that would radically expand the boundaries of human freedom. The historical emergence of this immanent potential is associated with capitalism’s urge to constantly revolutionise the forces of production in such a way that constantly diminishes the amount of living labour required for productive activity. This occurs both in relative terms, as the number of hours each worker must labour daily to produce the wealth equivalent to that which is required for his or her biological and social reproduction diminishes, and in absolute terms, as workers are substituted by increasingly autonomous machinery within the production process. Fundamental for this development in both absolute and relative terms is the ever-growing division of labour that ‘gradually transforms the worker’s operations into more and more mechanical ones, so that at a certain point a mechanism can step into their place’ (Marx, 1993: 704). As such, what previously was the living worker’s direct activity in the production process, eventually ‘becomes the activity of the machine’ (Marx, 1993: 704). In the process, the worker increasingly ‘inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between him and inorganic nature (…) [and] steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor’ (Marx, 1993: 705). Consequently, under capitalism, humans not only exponentially increase their productive capacity, but also experience the historical emergence of the automation of the production process. This has significant implications in terms of the immanent potential that capitalism gathers for a radical expansion of the limits of the possible. On the one hand, the role of individuals in the production process progressively shifts from direct labour in the transformation of nature to assume a more ‘supervisory and regulatory role’, implying predominantly the development of the ‘powers of the human head’, i.e., the development of scientific knowledge, in all its dimensions, and its application to new technology and forms of organising social labour (Marx, 1993: 705, 709). On the other hand, labour changes not only qualitatively but also quantitatively. As the human forces of production grow, and the scientific appropriation of nature into the production process becomes more prevalent and expressed in the growing automation of industry, so too the amount of necessary labour on the part of each worker, required for the satisfaction of society’s ever-expanding needs, diminishes (Marx, 1993: 700).

Class struggles and utopian limitations 69 Capitalism thus gathers the immanent potential for a radical reduction of the labour time individuals must dedicate daily not only to the reproduction, but also to the development, of their conditions of existence. With the historical emergence of large-scale industry, the creation of ‘real wealth’ – not measured in capital, but rather in ‘use-value’, in the proliferation of the products for the satisfaction of human needs – comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed, than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose effectiveness (…) depends on the general state of science and (…) technology, and their application (…) to production. (Marx 1993: 704–705) It is thus one ‘of the civilising aspects of capital that it (…) creates the material means and the nucleus for relations that permit (…) a greater reduction of the overall time devoted to material labour’ (Marx, 1991: 958). The reduction of each day’s necessary labour creates the immanent conditions to liberate human beings to engage in ‘free labour’ in their free time, i.e., in self-determined conscious activity envisioning their self-development and creative self-expression. At the same time, the automation of the production process also implies the potential for the qualitative transformation of necessary labour itself, transforming it from the exhausting, repetitive and one-sided activity that it is under the high division of labour established by capitalism, into labour with a fundamentally scientific character, focused on the development of individuals’ intellects and knowledge.1 Capitalism thus gathers the historical conditions for a form of productive activity in which no longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing as middle link between the object and himself; rather, he inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor. In this transformation, it is neither the direct human labour he himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body – it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth. (Marx, 1993: 705) Under capitalism, it is thus gathered the immanent potential for a form of social intercourse characterised by a ‘general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific, etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them’ (Marx, 1993: 706). Concomitantly, access to the products of productive activity could come to depend less and less on exchange value, expressed in the form of

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money earned via the selling of labour power, as the unleashing of the powers of human production via automation essentially uncouples the proliferation of the products required for the satisfaction of human needs from the amount of labour humans need to input into the production process. Under these conditions, in which labour would seize to be ‘an essential part of the process of production’ and ‘restricted to watching and supervising the production process’, wealth would come to be expressed not in individual accumulation of money, but rather ‘in the enormous disproportion between the labour time utilized and its products’ (Marx, 1993: 705). Once labour, ‘in its direct form, has ceased to be the main source of wealth, then labour time ceases, and must cease, to be its standard of measurement, and thus exchange value must cease to be the measurement of use value’ (Marx, 1993: 705). The actualisation of such immanent potential for a radical expansion of the limits of the possible which is gathered under capitalism, however, is actively resisted by the bourgeois class as the main beneficiary of the capitalist form of social intercourse. Capitalism depends for its reproduction on the maintenance of exchange value as the only measure of wealth and means of access to the products of social labour. In other words, the basis of the social power of the bourgeoisie is its capacity to accumulate capital, which ultimately depends on the maintenance of a mode of production which is premised on the private appropriation, by the bourgeoisie, of the products of social labour and the reproduction of a class of propertyless proletarians who are forced to sell their labour power to that same bourgeoisie, in exchange of a wage via which they accesses the products of productive activity being sold on the world market. Hence, the bourgeoisie cannot coexist with the actualisation of the immanent potential that is gathered within capitalism for the full automation of production and the uncoupling of social wealth, and of the access to the products of social labour, from exchange value. But concomitantly, it also cannot prevent the historical gathering of this immanent potential. This is because every individual member of the bourgeois class is compelled, by the inherent dynamics of the capitalist form of social intercourse, to constantly develop the forces of production and reduce the amount of living labour required for productive activity as a condition for ensuring both the competitiveness of her or his products vis-à-vis those of other capitalists and the constant increase of her or his profit margins. Without this, each individual capitalist is constantly threatened with seeing her or his company be outcompeted, and eventually defeated and absorbed, by other capitalists and of being reduced to the status of a propertyless proletarian. Hence, capitalism is a moving and ever-growing contradiction (Marx, 1993: 706). On the one hand, ‘it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum’ but, on the other hand, it ‘posits labour time (…) as the sole measure and source of wealth’ (Marx, 1993: 706). Consequently, while capitalism poses the immanent potential for universal abundance and a radical reduction of necessary labour time, under this form of social intercourse these developments turn into their opposite, i.e., the advance of automation implies not emancipation but rather unemployment, pauperisation, and the perception of free time as a curse instead of a liberation. Under capitalism, the whole process of human development thus proceeds ‘in a contradictory way’ in that the growth of the productive forces, of general wealth and

Class struggles and utopian limitations 71 knowledge, appear in such a way that individuals relate to them not as ‘their own’ but as an ‘alien’ force (Marx, 1993: 541). All the ‘progress of civilisation (…) such as results from science, inventions, division and combination of labour, improved means of communication, creation of the world market, machinery etc., enriches not the worker but rather capital’ (Marx, 1993: 308). Capitalism thus historically moves from being a condition for the development of productive activity and expansion of the inherited limits of the possible to eventually pose itself as a historical barrier to the actualisation of the immanent potential it has created for the further development of human self-determination. It implies not only that developments such as the automation of industry cannot occur beyond a certain point on penalty of risking disrupting the reproduction of whole mode of social and productive organisation founded on capital, but also that important technological and scientific innovations, whose very character makes them incapable of being subsumed to capitalist relations, end up not being developed. This is particularly evident in the dimension of human beings’ metabolism with non-human nature. As several authors have noted (see: Foster, 2000; Foster et al., 2010; Burkett, 2014; Foster and Burkett, 2016; Saito, 2017), in his analysis of capitalism Marx becomes keenly aware of how the capitalist mode of social intercourse opens the way for the development of a more conscious and self-determined regulation of the human-nature metabolism. The development of the natural sciences, itself a fundamental feature of the rise and reproduction of capitalism, permits a hitherto unknown degree of social understanding of natural processes, opening the way for the development of forms of technology and organisation of social labour that permit a more conscious, reflexive, and sustainable pattern of human-nature relations. However, Marx also considers that the actualisation of such an immanent potential is ultimately blocked by the capitalist form of social intercourse, whose reproduction is dependent on an incessant and constantly accelerating quest for capital growth, which is itself premised on the ever-expanding commodification of non-human nature. As such, capitalism rather tends to produce what Marx describes as a deep ‘metabolic rift’ that undermines the natural basis of the metabolic relationship between human beings and non-human nature and finds expression in phenomena such as the over-exploitation of natural resources, deforestation and massive pollution (Foster, 2000: Ch. 5).2 Consequently, Marx concludes, beyond a certain phase in its historical development, ‘capital, i.e., wage labour, enters into the same historical relation towards the development of social wealth and the forces of production as the guild system, serfdom and slavery’ (Marx, 1993: 541). It becomes a ‘barrier’, a ‘fetter’ which ‘is becoming senile and has further and further outlived its epoch’ (Marx, 1991: 371). According to Marx (1993: 542), the immanent potential for the revolutionary transformation of the capitalist form of social intercourse is gathered not only at the level of productive activity, but increasingly also at the level of human beings’ ‘theoretical products and forms of consciousness’, as a direct result of the constitution of the capitalist world market. The argument is that the globalisation of capitalism, despite being an extremely violent process that disrupts, destroys, and forcefully subsumes previously self-contained modes of life, also establishes the

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historical basis for the emergence of ‘world-historical’ individuals that might lead the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist form (Marx, 1993: 542). The capitalist world market and the global networks of production, trade, and consumption it establishes, by reproducing capitalist conditions of existence everywhere, generate a material bond between the different national proletariats in a manner that cultivates, amongst the workers of the world, an increasingly cosmopolitan outlook. To the ‘universal development of productive forces’ under capitalism corresponds the ‘universal intercourse between men’ which ‘produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the propertyless mass (…) and puts world-historical, empirical universal individuals in place of local ones’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 186). The most dispossessed and exploited people in the class structure of global capitalism thus develop bonds of solidarity and mutual identification across borders, based on shared living experiences of exploitation and alienation that overcome previous, more circumscribed, forms of consciousness. However, as long as the capitalist form of social intercourse endures, the first world-historical individuals, the global proletariat, remain incapable of controlling their own conditions of existence and direct their global social bond to the satisfaction of human needs, the more rational regulation of the human-nature metabolism, and the reduction of necessary labour time. Instead, the ‘broadening’ of human activity into world-historical activity becomes ‘more and more enslaved under (…) a power which has become more and more enormous and, in the last instance, turns out to be the world market’ (Marx and Engels, 2000b: 188). As such, capitalism, despite gathering, for the first time in history, the material, social and ideational conditions for the development of a global civilisation based on human co-operation and solidary, which would enable people everywhere, united as a species, to more consciously control their social development and the future conditions of existence of both human and non-human life on the planet, also ultimately denies the actualisation of this potential for self-determination. This profound dialectical contradiction of capitalism, between the historical potential it gathers for a radical expansion of human freedom and the barrier it constitutes to its actualisation, ‘sets existing individuals a very definitive task’, that of stretching their minds beyond their inherited limits of the possible and imagine how to seize and actualise the immanent potential with which capitalism is ‘pregnant’ in order to ‘replace the domination of circumstances and chance over individuals by the domination of individuals over chance and circumstances’ (Marx and Engels, 2000a: 463). The actualisation of this immanent potential, Marx observes, will not come about automatically by the spontaneous development of capitalism. Instead, and in accordance with his general theory of human development, it demands the conscious and collective agency of the global proletariat, envisioning the appropriation of the universal social bond and the planned transformation of capitalism into a post-capitalist civilisation. Essential in this context is the conscious ‘transformation of capital back into the property of the producers, though no longer as the private property of individual producers, but rather as their property as associated producers, as direct social property’ (Marx, 1991: 568). Only in this manner can the wage-form be abolished and, with it, the class relations that give capitalism its

Class struggles and utopian limitations 73 contradictory character. Such transformation implies a global revolution that can only be brought about by the conscious activity of the proletariat, the social class of world-historical individuals emerging out of the capitalist process of production that have an active interest in actualising the immanent potential it gathers for the further expansion of the limits of the possible. As Marx and Engels (2000b: 187) note, socialism is only possible as the conscious global revolutionary movement of the social class that gathers both the objective and the subjective conditions to carry out the overthrow of the capitalist form of social intercourse. And even though Marx and Engels frequently talk about socialism as the end of history, they also refer to it as only the end of human pre-history. The historical development of humans’ species-being, of their capacity for conscious selfdetermination, must rather be understood as a constantly ongoing process, with no end point. Under socialism, just like under capitalism and all previous forms of social intercourse, the realm of freedom really begins only where labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends. (…) Freedom, in this sphere, can only consist in this, that socialised man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature. But this always remains a realm of necessity. The true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an end in itself, begins only beyond it, though it can only flourish with this realm of necessity as its basis. The reduction of the working day is the basic prerequisite. (Marx, 1991: 958–959) Hence, even under socialism the fundamental inescapable problem human beings face, that of regulating their metabolism with nature, with which they are in constant unity and struggle, will not disappear, even if the potential is actualised of dealing with this problem in a more conscious, self-determined and sustainable manner. Marx’s critique of capitalism can thus be understood as the analysis of a concrete historical manifestation of the universal social dynamics that are identified in his general theory of human development. It is an expression of Marx’s historical-sociological approach to critical theorising, based on a grand narrative that provides an orientating framework that discloses the relationship between emancipation and alienation within capitalism, as a specific historical juncture in the long-term process of human development. As such, when read from the point of view of Marx’s grand narrative, his analysis of capitalism shows itself capable of, on the one hand, orientating people towards an understanding of the social processes shaping the historical formation of capitalism, as well as identifying the emancipation/alienation dialectic it embodies when compared with previous forms of social intercourse. On the other hand, it discloses the potential capitalism itself

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has gather for the further expansion of human freedom but whose actualisation it tends to suppress. Hence, it is a means of orientation that directly connects itself with the lived experiences of embodied human beings at a specific historical juncture, and which provides orientation to those human beings both in understanding how their conditions of existence came to be what they are, and what are the realistic prospects for the further expansion of the limits of the possible. Under capitalism, emancipatory social transformation means overcoming the barrier this form of social intercourse has come to pose to the further automation of industry and to a more conscious regulation of the human-nature metabolism. A transformation that can be carried out via the conscious and collective revolutionary activity of the global proletariat envisioning the socialisation of the means of production and of the organisation of social labour. The interweaving of multiple forms of class struggle The overview of Marx’s critique of capitalism provided in the previous section places at the centre of the analysis the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as the main factor of social change. However, the global action of the proletariat that Marx’s prophesises failed to materialise, and frequently his more engaged political writings, especially those concerned with international affairs, such as on the American Civil War, or Russian and British imperialism in Poland and Ireland respectively, appear to move beyond a discussion of class struggles to instead focus on issues such as war, colonialism, race, and nationality. This has led to the frequent conclusion that, for Marx and Engels, issues related to inter-societal relations, such as war and inter-state conflict ‘remained secondary to the pressing issue of nineteenth-century capitalist class conflict’ (Craig, 2017: 225). As such, ‘for Marxism, international relations and conflict inhabit a world at a second remove from the relations and conflicts that are really significant’ (Berki, 1971: 82). These quotes express a more general understanding, according to which Marx’s attributed centrality to class struggles in his critical theory makes it frequently inadequate as a framework for the analysis of world politics and, consequently, can be interpreted as inadequate for the development of a critical international theory. The argument in this section is that, in fact, Marx does not abandon his theory of class struggles when analysing the political and international affairs of his own time but is rather engaged in the development of a multidimensional conception of class struggles that acts as a process-concept within his critical theory. A processconcept that permits bridging the cosmopolitan perspective of his general theory of human development with his concrete analysis of specific historical junctures, as well as capture the interweaving of the anticipatory and explanatory dimensions of his critical project. The process-concept of class struggles thus expresses the potential of Marx’s critical theory as a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives. This argument is developed mainly with reference to Domenico Losurdo’s (2016) proposed reconstruction of Marx’s multidimensional conception of class struggles, drawing its implications for the historical-sociological answer to the problem of orientation provided by Marx’s critical theory.

Class struggles and utopian limitations 75 According to Losurdo (2016: Ch. 1), the idea that there is a break in the conceptual framework Marx deploys when discussing the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie within a single country and when discussing national liberation struggles, such as that fought by Ireland and India against British imperialism or Poland against Russian imperialism, is based on a narrow understanding of his conception of class struggles. The domination and exploitation that imperial nations imposed on their colonies, or on semi-colonial states via the world market, constitutes a central structuring feature of the global division of labour. The resources, labour and surplus value derived from the exploitation of the colonies played a fundamental role in the development of capitalism and the industrialisation of leading Western nations, including in the capacity of the exploiting classes of those nations to placate proletarian demands for an improvement in their living conditions. As Marx notes in his criticism of the bourgeois defence of capitalism’s capacity to improve the conditions of life of the proletariat in the leading industrial nations, such arguments ignore the intertwinement of such improvement with colonial practices. They ignore ‘the millions of workers that had to perish in the East Indies so as to procure for the million and a half workers employed in the same industry in England three years’ prosperity out of ten’ (Marx, cited in Losurdo, 2016: 9). The connection between the conditions in which the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat takes place within the more industrialised nations and the colonial question thus leads Marx and Engels (2000a: 295) to conclude elsewhere that those who ‘cannot understand how one nation can grow rich at the expense of another’ are also ill-equipped ‘to understand how within one country one class can enrich itself at the expense of another’ (see also: Linklater, 1990: 86–94; Losurdo, 2016: 14). These observations lead Losurdo (2016: 12) to conclude that ‘far from being of minor relevance from the standpoint of class struggle, the exploitation and oppression that obtain internationally are a precondition, at least methodologically, for understanding social conflict and class struggle at a national level’. Hence, if this dialectical interweaving is verified, which links struggles between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the metropolis with struggles between exploited and oppressing nations in the colonies, Losurdo (2016: 12) asks to what extent can the struggle for the liberation/emancipation of exploited classes [be called] a class struggle – but not the struggle for the liberation/emancipation of exploited (and oppressed) nations? Is the struggle whose protagonist is a class that has achieved its political emancipation, but not its economic and social emancipation, a class struggle, whereas the struggle waged by a nation, yet to achieve its political emancipation, is not a class struggle? From Losurdo’s perspective, the fundamental connection Marx establishes between class struggles in the strict economic sense – as those between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat – and national liberation struggles, suggests that both struggles are different forms of expression that class struggles, in the more general sense, can

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assume under specific historical conditions. Such an interpretation is reinforced by Marx’s (cited in Losurdo, 2016: 14) observation, concerning the struggle for emancipation in Ireland vis-à-vis British imperialism, that in Ireland, the land question has, so far, been the exclusive form of the social question; it is a question of existence, a question of life or death for the immense majority of the Irish people; at the same time, it is inseparable from the national question. Hence, Losurdo (2016: 14) concludes, ‘in Ireland, there was no social question apart from the national question. A de facto identity existed between the two, at least for a whole historical period, as long as independence had not been gained’. Struggles for economic emancipation and national liberation can thus be seen as two intertwined forms of class struggle that operate both domestically and internationally. These different forms of class struggle assume different characteristics according to their specific historical conditions and whether these are fought in the metropolis or the colonies. In the later, ‘the international division of labour converted the subject peoples into a mass of serfs or slaves over whom a de facto power of life and death could be wielded’ (Losurdo, 2016: 15). Furthermore, ‘the victim of this condition was a whole people, the nation as such’ (Losurdo, 2016: 15), which significantly changes the terms of the struggle. In this context, for example, Engels (cited in Losurdo, 2016: 8) notes, when commenting the partition of Poland by Russia, Austria, and Prussia, that the Polish liberation movement counts with the participation of the Polish nobility itself, which was ready to renounce its feudal privileges and support the national liberation struggle led by the Polish bourgeoisie. The Polish national liberation struggle, characterised by this complex class alliance, and yet still celebrated by Marx and Engels as a world-historical example of ‘nobility of soul’, emphasises the predominantly ‘impure’ form in which concrete class struggles historically manifest themselves (Engels cited in Losurdo, 2016: 8). As Losurdo (2016: 9) notes, to Marx and Engels ‘while the proletariat is the agent of the emancipatory process that breaks the chains of capitalist rule, the alliance required to break the shackles of national oppression is broader’. As such, also the strategy of class struggles changes according to the specific historical conditions under which they are being fought. While the oppressed nation is enjoined to wage its struggle on the widest possible national base, the task of the proletariat in the oppressor nation is to nurture its antagonism towards the ruling class, thereby furthering its own human emancipation and, at the same time, contributing to the emancipation of the oppressed nation. (Losurdo, 2016: 9) Another expression of the complexity and ‘impurity’ of concrete class struggles can be found in Marx’s position of support to Abraham Lincoln and the Union in

Class struggles and utopian limitations 77 the American Civil War (Anderson, 2017). By the 1860s, the Union’s aim of establishing protectionist tariffs to promote the United States of America’s (USA) industrial development led many members of the British bourgeoisie to side with the Southern states’ pro-free trade position. Amongst socialists, support for the North also seemed ill-advised to the extent that it amounted to the defence of a Northern fraction of the USA bourgeoisie against its Southern fraction, each of them seeking to impose their respective form of domination on the whole country. But for Marx, a too purist interpretation of the class dimension of the conflict was inadequate to understand its emancipatory potential. The struggle between North and South could not be reduced to the issue of trade, but rather had the issue of slavery at its centre. Marx’s position was that ‘the South initiated the war [and] made slavery into a principle of its Constitution, (…) its goal was the opening of the entire U.S. to slavery’ (Anderson, 2010: 89). This was so to the extent that slavery, in Marx’s view, was an economic institution that required the constant acquisition of new territory. Not only because it tended to quickly exhaust the soil, but mainly because territorial expansion became the main mechanism through which ‘the interests of the small minority of slaveowners could be squared with those of the vast population of poor whites’ (Anderson, 2010: 89). In other words, the Southern slave-holding aristocracy sought to tame the class contradictions within the white population in the South ‘with the prospects of [poor whites] themselves one day becoming slaveholders’ (Marx cited in Anderson, 2010: 89). The race question in the USA could thus not be de-linked from class struggle. In fact, it was fundamentally linked with wider class struggles outside the USA. In a statement that clearly shows the interweaving of class (in the strict economic sense), nationality and race issues in Marx’s conception of class struggles, Marx (cited in Anderson, 2010: 92) observes that: English modern industry, in general, relied upon two pivots equally monstrous. The one was the potato as the only means of feeding Ireland and a great part of the English working class. This pivot was swept away by the potato disease and the subsequent Irish catastrophe. A larger basis for the reproduction and maintenance of the toiling millions had then to be adopted. The second pivot of English industry was the slave-grown cotton of the United States. The present American crisis forces them to enlarge their field of supply and emancipate cotton from slave-breeding and slave-consuming oligarchies. As long as the English cotton manufactures depended on slave-grown cotton, it could be truthfully asserted that they rest on a twofold slavery, the indirect slavery of the white man in England and the direct slavery of the black man on the other side of the Atlantic. And so, once again, Losurdo’s (2016: 13) question can be posed, is the struggle whose protagonists are subject to (…) “emancipated slavery”, or “wage slavery”, to the “indirect slavery of the white man in England”, a

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For Marx, the Civil War in the USA clearly ‘was among the most important chapters in the class struggle of his time’, a struggle for the human emancipation of an oppressed race, with ramifications for class struggle, in its various forms, beyond the borders of the USA (Losurdo, 2016: 26). The abolition of slavery with a victorious Union not only liberated labour in the ‘black skin of slavery proper’ and ‘created conditions more propitious for the emancipation of labour in the white skin’ in the USA, but it was also bound with the recognition, by the USA, of the independence of the ‘negro republics’ of Haiti and Liberia, as well as dealt a blow to the global relations of capitalist exploitation on which the power of imperial nations, such as the United Kingdom, and the oppression of workers in England and in the colonies such as Ireland and India, depended on (Losurdo, 2016: 26). Hence, even though the Confederacy characterised its participation in the Civil War as a struggle for national independence vis-à-vis the oppressing Union, Marx vehemently opposed it. Marx’s position on national liberation movements cannot thus be understood outside the framework of his conception of class struggles. His support or opposition of these movements was always historically contingent, in accordance with the class composition of those movements and their concrete political and economic program. While Marx would support national liberation struggles, such as the Polish or Irish struggles led by bourgeois elements, and even including nobility strata, that fought against national oppression on the basis of nationally inclusive programs, he would ‘withhold unconditional support from nationalist programmes which disregarded the well-being of co-nationals or threatened the security and dignity of other national groups’ (Benner, 2018: 168). Consequently, Marx’s support for the Union, even if led by an industrial bourgeoisie that wanted to impose ‘wage-slavery’ on the South, which portrayed itself as an oppressed nation, arose from a concrete analysis of the historical manifestation of class struggles in the context of the American Civil War. A final form that class struggles can assume is that focused on the dialectic of gender-based oppression and emancipation. As discussed in the previous chapter, Marx and Engels (2000b: 185) refer to the ‘latent slavery’ that frequently operates within the family, describing the oppression of women in that context as ‘the first class oppression’. Under capitalism, within the patriarchal bourgeois family, ‘the bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production’ (Marx and Engels, 2000a: 259). However, the specific character of women’s oppression extends also beyond the household, namely in the capitalist factory where, while the owner’s despotic power is experienced by all the workers, it is ‘experienced by women in especially degrading fashion’ (Losurdo, 2016: 16) to the extent that, to quote Engels (cited in Losurdo, 2016: 16) ‘his mill is also his harem’. For Marx and Engels, the gender oppression of women is not a natural state of affairs. Rather, it is the result of a concrete historical development characterised by the ‘worldhistorical defeat of the female sex [and the male seizure of] the reins in the house;

Class struggles and utopian limitations 79 [a development in which] the woman was degraded, enthralled, became the salve of man’s lust, a mere instrument for breeding children’ (Marx and Engels cited in Losurdo, 2016: 18). Marx and Engels thus see in the emancipation of women a struggle indissociable from the wider struggle for the emancipation of labour. This is so to the extent that ‘the modern individual family is based on the overt or covert domestic slavery of the women [in such a way that the man] is the bourgeois [and] the wife represents the proletariat’ (Marx and Engels cited in Losurdo, 2016: 18).3 Marx can thus be argued to be grasping at a multidimensional conception of class struggles in his work. One that links his analysis of concrete historical events with his grand narrative of human development and his objective ethics. The historical-sociological means of orientation inaugurated by Marx is thus based on a grand narrative of human development and a form of objective ethics that never lose their connection to the concrete and context-specific struggles of embodied human beings. This connection between his more general theory of human development and the concrete struggles of historically-situated human beings is made via a multidimensional conception of class struggles that can capture how the dialectic between emancipation and alienation manifests itself at particular historical junctures. It captures how struggles for emancipation find expression along three main axes that rarely appear in their pure form, but usually manifest themselves in a mixture of different forms, namely in the context of the complex relationship between the ‘more or less servile relations imposed by one people on another internationally, by one class on another in an individual country, and by men on women within one and the same class’ (Losurdo, 2016: 16). This picture is further complicated by the awareness displayed by Marx of how different class fractions can play different roles within the historical manifestation of different forms of class struggles. This is evidenced in his comments about the role of the nobility in the Polish struggle for national liberation, or the role played by different fractions of the American bourgeoisie in the Civil War. This observation could even be further extended to the relationship between men and women within the proletarian family and how different sections of the proletariat responded to struggles for women’s emancipation. A summary of Losurdo’s thesis concerning Marx’s multidimensional conception of class struggles is now within reach. According to Losurdo (2016: 14), the concept of class struggle constitutes a ‘general category’, a ‘genus’ that captures the fact that ‘classes and class struggles are formed and develop on the material base of the production and distribution of the resources and means that ensure life’. As Losurdo notes (2016: 43), obviously human existence is marked by various conflicts between individuals for various reasons. But what the conception of class struggle draws attention to is the centrality, in the long-term process of human development, of ‘conflicts whose protagonists are not single individuals, but social subjects who, directly or indirectly, pertain to the social order, to some essential articulation of the division of labour and the social order’. Class struggle is thus a ‘genus which, in determinate circumstances, takes a specific form’ (Losurdo, 2016: 14). This specific form can be that of class struggles in the strict economic sense, but also that of the struggle for national, racial or gender emancipation. As such, Losurdo

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(2016: 43) argues, a typology can be drawn from how the general category – the ‘genus’ – class struggle, can assume different ‘species’: An initial distinction is indicated. On the one hand, there are conflicts that oppose exploiting classes – [i.e.] class struggles that see the bourgeoisies of different countries rise up against the landed aristocracy and the ancient regime, and then confront one another in more or less fierce competition liable to result in war. On the other hand, we have struggles for emancipation, which are class struggles from the standpoint of the social subjects engaged in achieving it and of those intent on preventing or impeding it. At this point we must make a second distinction – to be exact, a tripartite distinction – between the struggle whose protagonists are people in colonial or semicolonial conditions; the struggle waged by the working class in the capitalist metropolis (the one on which Marx and Engels were particularly focused); and the struggle of women against ‘domestic slavery’. Each of these three struggles challenges the prevailing division of labour internationally, nationally, and within the family. Losurdo’s typology and exegesis of Marx’s multidimensional conception of class struggle also brings clarity to the way that Marx (2019: 765), in his Inaugural Address of the Working Men’s Association, weaves together themes related to the American Civil War and Polish resistance against Russian oppression with a discussion of the condition of the proletariat in England, to conclude that the ‘working classes [have] the duty to master themselves the mysteries of international politics’ and to ‘fight (…) for a foreign policy’ that makes these causes an integral part ‘of the general struggle for the emancipation of the working classes’. The relationship between Marx’s multidimensional conception of class struggles and his grand narrative and objective ethics is now clear. Marx’s critical project is oriented in its explanatory dimension by a grand narrative that captures the long-term dialectic between emancipation and alienation in human development and is oriented in its anticipatory dimension by a commitment to the expansion of human self-determination within the limits of the possible that are immanent at each historical juncture. But this overall abstract scheme assumes its full historicalsociological expression via Marx’s deployment of a multidimensional conception of class struggles that functions as a process-concept – a notion Losurdo captures in his distinction between the genus and the species of class struggles – that permits maintaining a constant connection between the grand narrative and the concrete historical struggles of embodied human beings. In this manner, Marx opens the way for a historical-sociological answer to the problem of orientation that overcomes the shortcomings of both contextualist relativism and philosophical-transcendental approaches by maintaining a constant linkage between the attainment of a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition and the actual historical experiences of concrete human beings. However, it is important to note that Marx did not formulate his critical project in the manner it is discussed here. Authors such as Losurdo and Thompson carry

Class struggles and utopian limitations 81 out an exegesis of Marx’s work that brings shape and clarity to a critical project that, in many of its aspects, only reached its mature expression in a scattered and unsystematised manner. In many instances, Marx was not coherent in the application of his own theoretical framework to his analysis of concrete class struggles, frequently letting his ‘revolutionary impatience’ (Losurdo, 2016: 21) rush into conclusions that were not in keeping with the broader parameters of his critical project. Marx’s emancipatory commitments and struggles with political opponents within and outside the socialist movement were frequently not only a source of insight, but also a source of disturbance of the clarity and adequacy of the development and application of his critical project. For example, Marx’s political involvement frequently blocked greater insight into the social dynamics underlying the role of violence in social change and its connection with the monopolisation of the sources of social power. It is to the shortcomings of Marx’s critical project that the next section turns, to identify the areas that need to be addressed in order to reconstruct a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation that builds upon the contribution of Marx’s historicalsociological approach to this problem. Utopianism and social monopolies Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of history, and its intertwinement with a form of objective ethics, seeks to bridge the gap between theory and practice and between the anticipatory and the explanatory dimensions of the critical project. It opens the way for what is here being called a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising. An approach that permits a more adequate sociological understanding of the social dynamics that have predominantly shaped the long-term process of development of the human species and combines it with a historically embedded assessment of the multiple ways in which these dynamics can find concrete expression via a multidimensional conception of class struggles. In the process, it opens the way to avoid both the Eurocentrism and the split between theory and practice associated with more philosophicaltranscendental approaches to critical theorising. But it also seeks to avoid the shortcomings of contextualist relativism by grounding the analysis in an understanding of the long-term process of human development as the historical emergence of a species with a defining capacity for freedom. From that perspective, it becomes possible to orientate human emancipatory activity in accordance with the immanent potential, disclosed at each particular historical juncture, for the actualisation of those possible futures that permit an expansion of the inherited limits of the possible and human beings’ conscious self-determination. Marx’s critique of capitalism is oriented by this historical-sociological approach. It identifies the extent to which capitalism can expand the limits of the possible of human freedom when compared to previous modes of social intercourse. On the other hand, it also discloses how capitalism gathers the immanent potential for an even more radical increase of human self-determination, whose actualisation, however, it constantly denies. But Marx’s discussion of capitalism and the potential it

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gathers for a socialist form of social intercourse also reveals the limits of his critical theory. It shows how, despite opening the way to a historical-sociological approach to critical theorising, Marx’s analysis remains burdened with utopian hangovers that ultimately undermine its potential. This is particularly evident in Marx’s discussion of the role of the state and violence in and after the transition to socialism, and in his conception of political multiplicity in the global expansion of capitalism and its revolutionary overthrow. Each of these interrelated issues are now addressed in turn. Marx, Engels, and later Marxists frequently expressed what can be described as an anarchist expectation in their conception of a post-capitalist world order. According to Marx (2000: 232), the coming proletarian revolution did not ‘mean that after the fall of the old society there will be a new class domination culminating in a new political power’. Rather, the condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of every class (…). The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society. (2000: 232) Marx thus advances a conception of the role of the state and political power in the future socialist society that is summarised with particular clarity in Engels’ (1975: 322) famous statement about the ‘withering away’ or ‘dying out’ of the state and concomitant substitution of the government of people with the administration of things. The state is predominantly understood as an expression of the class antagonism of bourgeois society, having no autonomous existence of itself; a conception exhibited in the claim that ‘the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie (Marx and Engels, 2000a: 247).4 However, this conception contrasts with another, more complex, which is also present in Marx and Engels’ work, where they note how, under certain historical conditions, the state can maintain some degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the contending classes. Namely, in periods ‘in which the bourgeoisie is still confronted by another class (…) the state can retain some appearance of independence in relation to both of them’ (Marx and Engels, 1998: 382). And even in conditions of bourgeois preponderance, the state can still be considered ‘a form of organisation which the bourgeois necessarily adopts both for internal and for external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests’ (Marx and Engels, 1998: 99, emphasis added). As Losurdo notes (2015: 224, author’s translation) ‘one cannot understand why, after the disappearance of classes and class struggles, this guarantee (…) provided to the members of a unified society should become superfluous’. There are no reasons to expect that, even after the supersession of class conflict, other forms of social conflict will not arise or that society will be completely free of forms of asocial behaviour that might threaten the security and well-being of its members. Consequently, some form of ‘mutual guarantee’ of the associated

Class struggles and utopian limitations 83 producers’ interests and property – even if socialised property – will have to be ensured. To think otherwise is an expression of the lingering utopianism in Marx’s critical theory. An utopianism that frequently leads him to characterise the socialist future in eschatological terms, as an end of history, a stage of human development characterised by the absence of conflict or any form of social contradiction. Marx’s lingering utopianism, however, cannot be simply attributed to an error of theoretical judgement. Rather, it served concrete purposes in the political struggles in which he and Engels were involved. To a significant extent, the utopian conception of the withering away of the state became the substitute for a more comprehensive understanding of its role in human development, and specifically in the passage from capitalism to socialism, in the context of the intense political struggles with Bakunin and other anarchists for influence in the workers movement, as Marx and Engels sought to resist accusations of despotism and statism (Losurdo, 2015: 229–230). Furthermore, the projection of a socialist future with utopian features also played a fundamental role in Marx and Engels’ attempts to mobilise the working class against the harsh forms of repression and the many obstacles its demands and political activity frequently faced. At the centre of Marx’s conception of class struggle in the strict economic sense is the thesis that the entrepreneurial classes use to the fullest extent, without any restriction by humanitarian or religious scruples, the greater power potentials they derive in the course of social development from the monopolisation of the ownership of capital. (Elias, 2012: 185) Consequently, the vision of a socialist future characterised by the absence of social conflict, violence and the instruments of state repression that haunted the working class played a fundamental role in its mobilisation. It had a fundamental ‘ideological use as a weapon in the political struggles around the middle of the nineteenth century, given the state of class relationships and class structures of that period’ (Elias, 2012: 179). However, Marx’s utopianism, despite an important political weapon, also had a fundamentally disorientating effect in his critical theory. The thesis of the withering away of the state became the predominant mode of thinking about the state in the socialist movement and informed both the analysis and the practice of later revolutionary socialists. It underlined the occasional return, within the socialist movement, to a form of naturalistic materialism, characterised by a mechanistic and reductionist understanding of the state that saw it as nothing other than a superstructure of capitalist economy and of bourgeois domination (Losurdo, 2015: 246). As a consequence, the socialist movement lost sight of how bourgeois state institutions, such as universal suffrage, freedom of the press, freedom of association and representative democracy ‘can also serve as a counterweight and instrument of struggle’ against ‘the most terrible forms of domination and oppression’ in the bourgeois political economy, not least of which ‘the despotism of the capitalist factory system’ (Losurdo, 2015: 243, author’s translation).

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In other words, it lay beyond the horizon of Marx, Engels, and later revolutionary socialists an analysis of the conditions under which state institutions might have a role in making ‘previously unregulated regions of social life, structured solely by power differentials, (…) accessible to human control, to regulation by integrating norms’ thus alleviating, ‘through the development of universally accepted controls and norms, the naked power struggles that Marx observed in the relationship’ between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (Elias, 2012: 190–191). Consequently, although Marx ‘advocated the use of physical violence – under certain conditions – as an instrument of social power’, his analysis of this type of power source, its monopolisation and the possibility of its collective control, as well as the consequences of a lack thereof, ‘remained marginal within his structure of ideas’ (Elias, 2012: 186; see also: Kilminster, 1998: Ch. 3, 2018). The lack of a more developed understanding of processes of violence monopolisation and control, together with the lingering utopianism in Marx’s critical theory, meant that later revolutionary socialists, oriented in their political activity by Marx and Engels’ work, came to believe that socialist revolution necessarily entailed not only the extinction of the state, but also of institutions such as representative democracy, political rights or checks and balances on political power (Losurdo, 2015: 246). This entailed a loss of the capacity to ‘recognise the cultural and political heritage of the previous centuries’, distinguishing within bourgeois institutions that ‘which is perishable and what is a permanent acquisition for humanity’ (Losurdo, 2015: 250, author’s translation). Ultimately, Marx’s utopianism hindered the development of a socialist state theory capable of envisioning the institutions required for the regulation of the unavoidable power struggles within a future post-revolutionary socialist society based on the constitutionalisation of democratic deliberation procedures. Lacking such a theory, any form of opposition or power struggle in a post-revolutionary period comes to be easily understood as an anomaly to the expected utopian course of revolutionary transformation of society, and thus as a potential source of treason to the revolutionary cause or threat of bourgeois restoration. This, of course, makes it impossible for decisions to be based on general rules and democratic consensuses and control, which in reality ends up favouring the exercise of arbitrary power by a small minority; (…) exactly the dialectic that developed after the October Revolution. (Losurdo 2015: 248, authors’ translation) Marx’s lingering utopianism affects not only his conception of the role of the state in social conflict and power struggles in pre- and post-revolutionary contexts, but also his understanding of relations between human communities with important implications for socialist emancipatory strategy. As discussed in the first section of this chapter, Marx considered that the globalisation of capitalist conditions of existence meant a parallel universalisation of people’s worldviews and the development of transnational forms of solidarity, especially amongst the global proletariat. This

Class struggles and utopian limitations 85 meant that while each ‘national proletariat would first have to settle scores with its own national bourgeoisie, (…) revolutionary struggle would be national only in form. The capture of state power was only the first stepping-stone to realizing cosmopolitan ideals’ (Linklater and Saramago, 2022: 104). Such a perspective has been argued to lose sight of the perennial condition of human political multiplicity. In the process, Marx has been charged with ‘largely ignoring’ and leaving ‘unanswered’ important questions regarding the future role of the state and the institutions of post-capitalist inter-societal relations (Linklater, 1998: 39). In fact, as the previous section has shown, Marx was not ignorant of international political multiplicity or the implications of international politics for emancipatory class struggles. Furthermore, especially in his later life, in his ethnographic investigations of nonWestern and pre-capitalist societies, Marx further emphasised the potential of his historical-sociological approach for a non-Eurocentric and multilinear conception of human development (Anderson, 2010: Chs. 5 and 6). He envisioned the possibility of multiple developmental paths towards socialism that did not necessarily entail a passage through the capitalist mode of production in every country. In this context, and expressing an increasingly keener awareness of the impacts of political multiplicity in socialist revolutionary strategy, Marx discussed the possibility that, in alliance with proletarian revolutions in the West, pre-capitalist non-Western countries might ‘combine ancient communal forms with modern technology’ and thus transition to forms of socialism ‘in a less exploitative manner than under capitalism’ (Anderson, 2010: 230). However, as previously noted, Marx’s insights on the role of the state as a ‘mutual guarantee’, his multidimensional conception of class struggles, or his insights on the implications of political multiplicity for the transition to a postcapitalist form of social intercourse, were frequently scattered in his work and intersected with passages that displayed more simplistic analyses of ongoing class struggles suffused with revolutionary impatience and utopian spirit. The lack of a clearly expressed theoretical framework that integrated the disparate elements of Marx’s critical project with which this and the previous chapter have occupied themselves meant that the contours of Marx’s grand narrative, objective ethics, multilinear and open-ended conception of history or multidimensional conception of class struggles remained largely inaccessible to later revolutionary socialists in other than a scattered manner.5 As such, the more direct inheritors of Marx’s critical project frequently lacked an adequate theory of the role of the state in the monopolisation of violence and collective control of power struggles within societies, or a grasp of the potential role of inter-state institutions in the collective management of tensions between human political communities, even in the context of a post-capitalist future. Marx’s considerations at that level were frequently mixed with a utopian expectation regarding the spontaneous transnational solidarity of the global working class and assumed that the only possible outcome of the victory of socialist revolution would a peaceful global order, without power struggles or disputes between political communities.

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Such a conception dragged many of Marx’s followers back to a form of naturalistic materialism in their analyses of the effects of capitalist globalisation in the relations between political communities. It closed off the potential for a full exploration of the pathways opened by Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of history for a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation faced by critical theory. As such, the full potential of Marx’s critical theory to provide a more adequate historical-sociological approach to critical theorising was frequently loss from sight, which had a profoundly disorientating effect that affected in negative and frequently tragic ways the socialist revolutionary movement Marx saw as the best chance for human emancipation under conditions of globalised capitalism. Notes 1 Important to note in this context is Marx’s analysis of the dialectical development of the division of labour. In his analysis of capitalism, Marx observes that, by developing the division of labour to a far greater extent than any previous mode of production, capitalism increasingly circumscribes and mechanises workers’ activities. Their labour becomes increasingly particularistic and reduced to small, repetitive tasks that turn them into mere ‘appendages of machines’ and remove any creative or self-expressive character from the activity of labour. As such, the division of labour becomes a negation of labour itself as a form of conscious activity. However, by creating the scientific, technological, and social potential for the automation of industrial production, capitalism also produces the historical conditions to overcome this situation. The actualisation of the automation of production and the transformation of the worker into a scientific supervisor of the production process effectively allows a reduction of the division of labour at a higher stage of productive capacity. Hence, the dialectical movement of the division of labour creates the immanent potential for its future supersession; see: Marx (1993: 693–695). This interpretation of Marx’s position supersedes the debate between those authors that interpret Marx as intending to diminish labour and those who prefer to read Marx’s position as entailing the defence of a more humane and self-expressive form of labour. Both interpretations are valid and are inherently implied in the future organisation of a postcapitalist society that actualises the potential historically gathered by capitalism. For a position arguing for a reduction of labour-time, see: Gorz (2005); for a position defending labour as a self-expressive activity, see: Sayers (2005), Vandenberghe (2002). For a discussion of Marx’s vision of a post-capitalist society see: Hudis (2012). 2 In this context, Moore (2017) makes the interesting observation that, beyond causing a metabolic rift, capitalism, as a mode of social intercourse, historically operates a series of metabolic shits through which it moves its nature-exploiting activity to different geographies in a constant quest to escape the ecologically damaging effects of its pattern of regulation of the human-nature metabolism. See also: Moore (2015: Ch. 10). 3 It is clear, however, that gender played a less salient role in Marx’s developing multidimensional conception of class struggles and, in many ways, continued to be an underdeveloped aspect of his critical theory (see: Federici, 2017; Leeb, 2007; Giménez, 2019). 4 The Marxist conception of the state has been developed significantly since Marx and Engel’s more reductionist understanding, with significant recent innovations in the work of authors inspired by the writings of Antonio Gramsci, see: Thomas (1994), Morton (2007), Anievas (2014), Bieler and Morton (2003, 2018a, 2018b), Hesketh (2017) or Rolf (2015). 5 It is important not to forget that works such as The German Ideology or the Grundrisse only found their way into publication and wide readership in the 1930s.

Class struggles and utopian limitations 87 References Anderson K (2010) Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity and Non-Western Societies. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Anderson K (2017) Marx’s intertwining of race and class during the Civil War in the United States. Journal of Classical Sociology 17(1): 24–36. Anievas A (2014) A world after its own image? The states-system, capitalism and unevenness. In: Brown W, Corry O and Czajka A (eds) International Relations: Continuity and Change in Global Politics. Milton Keynes: Open University, pp. 129–172. Benner E (2018) Really Existing Nationalisms: A Post-Communist View from Marx and Engels. London: Verso. Berki RN (1971) On Marxian thought and the problem of international relations. World Politics 24(1): 80–105. Bieler A and Morton A (2003) Globalisation, the state and class struggle: A ‘critical economy’ engagement with open Marxism. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 5(4): 467–499. Bieler A and Morton A (2018a) Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bieler A and Morton A (2018b) Interlocutions with passive revolution. Thesis Eleven 147(1): 9–28. Burkett P (2014) Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective. New York: Haymarket Books. Craig C (2017) When the whip comes down: Marxism, the Soviet experience, and the nuclear revolution. European Journal of International Relations 2(2): 223–239. Elias N (2012) What Is Sociology? (The collected works of Norbert Elias, Vol. 5). Dublin: University College Dublin Press. Engels F (1975) Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Federici S (2017) Notes on gender in Marx’s Capital. Continental Thought & Theory 1: 19–37. Foster JB (2000) Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly Review Press. Foster JB and Burkett P (2016) Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique. London: Brill. Foster JB, Clark B and York R (2010) The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. New York: Monthly Review Press. Giménez M (2019) Marx, Women, and Capitalist Social Reproduction: Marxist Feminist Essays. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Gorz A (2005) Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hesketh C (2017) Passive revolution: A universal concept with geographical seats. Review of International Studies 43(3): 389–408. Hudis P (2012) Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism. Leiden: Brill. Kilminster R (1998) The Sociological Revolution: From the Enlightenment to the Global Age. London: Routledge. Kilminster R (2018) Karl Marx: New perspectives. In: Castro JE, Fowler B and Gomes L (eds) Time, Science and the Critique of Technological Reason. Cham: Springer, pp. 231–264. Leeb C (2007) Marx and the gendered structure of capitalism. Philosophy & Social Criticism 33(7): 833–859. Linklater A (1990) Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

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Linklater A (1998) The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Linklater A and Saramago A (2022) Marxism. In: Devetak R and True J (eds) Theories of International Relations, 6th ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 97–118. Losurdo D (2015) Antonio Gramsci: Del liberalismo al communismo crítico. Madrid: Ediciones del oriente y del mediterráneo. Losurdo D (2016) Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Marx K (1991) Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 3. London: Penguin Classics. Marx K (1993) Grundrisse. London: Penguin Classics. Marx K (2000) The poverty of philosophy. In: McLellan D (ed) Karl Marx: Selected writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 212–233. Marx K (2019) Inaugural address of the International Working Men’s Association. In: Marx K (ed) The Political Writings. London: Verso, pp. 757–765. Marx K and Engels F (1998) The German Ideology. New York: Prometheus Books.Marx K and Engels F (2000a) The Communist Manifesto. In: McLellan D (ed) Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 245–272. Marx K and Engels F (2000b) The German ideology. In: McLellan D (ed) Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 175–208. Moore JW (2015) Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso. Moore JW (2017) Metabolic rift or metabolic shift? Dialectics, nature, and the worldhistorical method. Theory and Society 46: 285–318. Morton A (2007) Waiting for Gramsci: State formation, passive revolution and the international. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35(3): 597–621. Rolf S (2015) Locating the state: Uneven and combined development, the states system and the political. In: Desai R (ed) Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy, Vol. 30A). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 113–153. Saito K (2017) Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. New York: Monthly Review Press. Sayers S (2005) Why work? Marx and human nature. Science & Society 69(4): 606–616. Thomas P (1994) Alien Politics: Marxist State Theory Retrieved. Abingdon: Routledge. Vandenberghe F (2002) Working out Marx: Marxism and the end of the work society. Thesis Eleven 69: 21–46.

5

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives

Introduction Chapters 3 and 4 of this book discussed how Marx’s critical theory opens the way for a historical-sociological approach to critical theorising based on a grand narrative of human development that captures its predominant social dynamics and on the basis of which a more adequate answer to both the explanatory and the anticipatory dimensions of the problem of orientation can be found. This approach was argued to possess the potential of providing the basis for a multilinear and open-ended understanding of human development that avoids the shortcomings of Eurocentrism and the split between theory and practice that affects more philosophically oriented approaches to critical international theory, as well as the shortcomings of contextualist relativism. However, the chapters also concluded that Marx ultimately fails in actualising this potential in his work in a coherent and sustained manner. Due to utopian hangovers still lingering in his critical theory, Marx frequently falls back upon a linear understanding of human development and an anticipatory standpoint of orientation framed by a utopian conception of the emancipated future. This utopianism leads him to lose sight, on the one hand, of the central problem of violence and its monopolisation in human development and in emancipatory social change. And, on the other hand, it leads Marx to lose sight of the way the political multiplicity of humanity fundamentally impacts both the historical conditions of existence of human beings and any socialist revolutionary strategy envisioning the actualisation of the immanent potential for emancipation found at specific historical junctures. That discussion followed a consideration, in Chapter 2, of Habermas’s attempted reconstruction of historical materialism that highlighted how Habermas seeks to address the shortcomings of Marx’s approach by emphasising the role of human communication in the development of social norms and behavioural expectations and thus in shaping moral and social development. Chapter 2, however, also noted how, despite pointing in relevant research directions, Habermas’s philosophicaltranscendental grounding for his theory of moral and social development, relying on an inadequate and too sharp dichotomy between labour and communication, leads him to reproduce the shortcomings of philosophy of history, namely its Eurocentrism and split between theory and practice. DOI: 10.4324/9781003221777-6

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The argument in this and the next chapter is that process sociology can be read as providing the necessary elements for an alternative reconstruction of historical materialism. One that provides a more adequate theoretical basis for the development of a historical-sociological approach to grand narrative theorising that complements Marx’s critical theory in ways that permit starting to address its shortcomings. Echoing Marx’s method and the relation it establishes between a general theory of human development and the analysis of concrete social struggles – expressed with particular clarity in the deployment of his multidimensional conception of class struggles as a process-concept – process sociology is also focused not on disclosing the abstract stages of human development using the methods of philosophy of history, but rather on the study of actual empirical history, with a view to understanding what are the social processes shaping the long-term development of all human societies. This entails disclosing what Elias (2012b: 99) designates as the ‘universals of human societies’ in the form of what are here referred to as ‘processconcepts’. Process sociology provides a set of these process-concepts – such as symbol emancipation, triad of controls, monopoly mechanism, survival units and civilising processes – that can serve as the theoretical basis for the development of a grand narrative that captures the predominant social dynamics shaping long-term processes of human development. These process-concepts, provide the building blocks for a reconstruction of Marx’s critical project that overcomes some of its shortcomings and constitutes the basis for a more adequate historical-sociological approach to both the explanatory and the anticipatory dimensions of the problem of orientation. The argument in this chapter is developed in four sections. Section ‘Process sociology and critical theory’ discusses the complex relationship between critical theory and process sociology and the way process sociology’s contribution to a reconstruction of Marx’s critical theory can be mobilised. Section ‘Symbol emancipation and the triad of controls’ addresses how Elias’s process sociology shares several features with Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of history and objective ethics, while also providing important insights that further complement and develop that approach. Section ‘On the concept of civilisation’ provides some clarifications on the use of the notion of civilisation and civilising processes in this book. Section ‘Civilising processes as grand narrative’ addresses how Elias’s study of civilising processes, and of the European civilising process in particular, echoes the relationship Marx establishes between his general theory of human development and his conception of class struggles, but in such a way that overcomes Marx’s lingering utopianism. It focuses on the role within Elias’s theory of civilising processes of the monopolisation of the sources of social power and how it can contribute to overcome Marx’s undertheorisation of the role of the state and intersocietal relations in processes of social change. This sets the stage for the discussion in the next chapter that considers how the reconstructed historical-sociological approach to grand narratives that is here proposed can be brought to bear on the analysis of world politics in ways that are relevant for an improvement of critical international theory’s role as a means of orientation.

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 91 Process sociology and critical theory Chapter 4 discussed how Marx’s achievements in opening the way for a historicalsociological conception of human development were hindered by utopian hangovers derived from his political involvements. Elias’s (2007) argument in this regard is that Marx’s shortcomings are expressive of a wider trend in social scientific inquiry which remains predominantly shaped by involved perspectives, reflecting social scientists’ emotional attachments to either their national, class, political or ideological projects. The consequence is that frequently social scientific analyses are either coloured by these involvements or ignore aspects of social relations that are incompatible with them. This makes social scientific explanatory frameworks frequently inadequate as means of orientation. Consequently, Elias’s work strongly advocates the need of a ‘detour via detachment’ in the social sciences (see: Kilminster, 2007, 2011; Saramago, 2015, 2020). Such a detour is argued to have allowed the natural sciences to develop explanatory frameworks of the natural world that broke with more involved perspectives that mainly served egocentric emotional needs (Elias, 2007; see also: Dunning and Hughes, 2013: Ch. 4). Frequent examples are the Darwinian or Copernican revolutions which were ‘profoundly unsettling and actively resisted because they contradicted the dominant Christian standpoints on the privileged position of humans in God’s creation’ (Linklater, 2019: unpaginated). The acquisition of a more detached, less human-centred, conception of the universe permitted the natural sciences to develop a more ‘reality-congruent’ understanding of the natural world (Elias, 2007: 21). An understanding that orientated more conscious and purposeful interventions in nature that resulted in increased human control over non-human species and natural phenomena. The social sciences should thus develop a similar ‘detour via detachment’ that puts ‘hopes, desires, utopian fantasies, ideological convictions, wishful and egocentric thinking, and so forth on the back burner’ (Kilminster, 2011: 111). Process sociologists see themselves as contributing to that much-needed detour via detachment in the social sciences. Such self-characterisation of process sociology has led to it frequently being interpreted as being inherently at odds, and consequently incompatible, with critical theory and its expressed commitment to orientate emancipatory social change. However, several discussions of Elias’s position on involvement and detachment have also highlighted how his call for a ‘detour via detachment’ should not be confused with a defence of ‘value-free’ social science (Kilminster, 2011: 96). Rather, as Kilminster (2011: 96) argues, Elias is saying that, in order to fulfil their orientating task, the social sciences need to shed the role of ‘heteronomous evaluations’ in social scientific inquiry and rather adopt a stance focused on the cultivation of ‘autonomous evaluations’. While the former refer to the ‘intrusion of ideological evaluations coming from wider society which would skew the inquiries towards (…) wishful thinking’, the latter reflect a ‘commitment to research principles of fact orientation and detachment’ (Kilminster, 2011: 96). In this context, Kilminster (2007: 121–125) mentions the possibility of ‘secondary involvement’ in

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which the ‘kind of passion normally associated with political and religious beliefs’ is channelled into the ‘pursuit of a kind of detached sociological knowledge that transcends the one-sidedness of involved viewpoints of society’. Other authors have sought to go further than Kilminster to argue that while ‘political involvements can be overcome via a detour via detachment (…) these involvements must be transformed rather than lost via secondary forms of involvement’ (Lever and Powell, 2017: unpaginated). Specifically, these authors have pointed to how Elias’s calls for a ‘detour via detachment’ are frequently accompanied by a commitment to the broadening of the human powers of control over nonhuman nature and social processes, with detachment itself being understood as a key step in that process (Saramago, 2015, 2020). Hence, the detour is conceived by Elias as an intermediate step in the development of more reality-congruent stocks of knowledge about the social world on the basis of which human beings might come to better orientate themselves as to how they might attain a greater degree of conscious and collective control over their conditions of existence. Elias’s calls for detachment thus appear to be accompanied by an ‘ethical conviction’, not dissimilar to that which characterises Marx’s critical theory, ‘that the social sciences can contribute to the realisation of a state of affairs in which people make more of their history under freely-chosen conditions’ (Linklater, 2019: unpaginated). Elias’s position has thus been described as one of ‘detached empathy’, characterised by the ‘aspiration that greater reality-congruent knowledge would help people solve problems that arouse from their relations with each other’ (Linklater, 2019: unpaginated). Elias ‘at one and the same time, (…) aimed for sociological detachment and expressed sympathy for human predicaments and the desire to contribute to the improvement of social conditions’ (Linklater, 2019: unpaginated). Elias’s work has thus been described as being informed by a deep ‘secular humanism’ of a type not dissimilar to that orientating Marx’s critical theory (Linklater, 2019). Elias thus shares with Marx the search for a grand narrative of human development that provides a more adequate standpoint of orientation from the perspective of which a deeper understanding of the human condition, its past, present, and possible futures, can be attained. A further aspect of Elias’s approach to grand narrative theorising, which is also shared with Marx, is the way it underlines the embeddedness of human beings in the evolutionary process of life on the planet while underscoring the emergent character of specifically human features which, while being unplanned outcomes of the long-term evolution of the species, have allowed human beings to exert a greater degree of conscious influence over their conditions of existence than any other earthly species, with significant consequences for the overall development of life on Earth (see: Saramago, 2021, 2023). The following section emphasises these parallels between Marx’s materialistemergentist conception of history and Elias’s conception of human beings and their place in the evolution of life on Earth. This discussion also highlights how Elias’s process sociology can be read, from a critical theoretical perspective, as also expressing a form of objective ethics, thus establishing the foundation for the reconstruction of Marx’s critical project, both in its explanatory and anticipatory dimensions, via an engagement with Elias’s process sociology.

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 93 Symbol emancipation and the triad of controls According to Elias (2011: 45), clearly echoing Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of history, one of the most striking characteristics of humankind is its high level of changeability without incurring biological evolution, a characteristic that is attributed to the fact that, unlike other animals whose behaviour is predominantly ‘genetically determined’, ‘learned variations’ have gained the upper hand in human beings. While other animals predominantly orientate themselves in the world in accordance with a genetically inherited instinctual and behavioural pattern which is ‘species-specific’, i.e., common to all members of the same biological species, humans have evolved a high degree of behavioural malleability that permits their forms of communication, their technology, their societies and their individual personality structures to undergo a wide range of changes within the framework of a single biological species. This distinguishable character of human beings is understood as an emergent feature of the species, an unplanned result of the blind evolutionary process on the planet. Hence, even though humans are ‘in certain respects unique and unlike any other animal on Earth (…) their unique properties emerge from, and are fully integrated into, their animal heritage’ (Elias, 2011: 47). The predominance of ‘learning-oriented behaviour’ in humans thus finds its origins in biological factors and is part of an overall evolutionary shift in the balance between genetically-oriented and learning-oriented forms of behaviour in the long-term evolutionary process of life on Earth. The shift in this balance can be observed in the natural history of the planet with mammals – and, within them, apes in particular – expressing a greater capacity for learned behaviour than, for example, insects.1 Humans represent the latest phase in this long-term process of evolution in which the balance predominantly tilted towards learning-oriented behaviour. While in ape societies, forms of behaviour and communication, despite local variations acquired through learning within particular groups, are still predominantly speciesspecific, in the case of human beings ‘society-specific’ forms of behaviour have acquired predominance (Elias, 2011: 45).2 Elias thus advances what can be characterised as a materialist-emergentist conception of human beings and their long-term development that is close to that which characterises Marx’s critical theory. Like Marx, he understands the distinguishable features of the human species, namely the predominance of learningoriented behaviour, as an emergent process within the context of the wider process of evolution on the planet. In this manner, Elias, like Marx, successfully steers between the two extreme positions of naturalistic materialism, which conceives of human behaviour as a causal outcome of material conditions of existence and biological features, and a philosophical-idealist perspectives that conceive of humans as representing a break with natural evolution, endowed with a unique capacity for freedom, which ultimately poses an ontological dualism between human and nonhuman animals (Kilminster, 2007: 136; Saramago, 2023). The shift of the balance between learning-oriented and genetically-oriented forms of behaviour has thus opened the way for the historical emergence – out of the evolutionary process which has hitherto shaped life on Earth – of a species

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whose members are endowed with the biological capacity to learn from each other society-specific forms of behavioural orientation. Biological features, such as the vocal apparatus and cortical brain dominance, have endowed humans with a species-specific capacity to carry out what Elias considers to be one of the main turning points in the history of life on Earth, i.e., to initiate a developmental process he calls ‘symbol emancipation’ (Elias, 2011: 71). With this concept, Elias refers to the fact that human learning-oriented behaviour came to depend predominantly on communication based on the production and reception of sound-patterns and, eventually, their written symbolic representation. While in other animal species these sound-patterns are predominantly genetically-oriented, human voice-sounds can be patterned in accordance with a learned and society-specific code that makes it possible for each member of that society to understand those sound-patterns as symbols for objects and phenomena in both the human and the non-human parts of the universe (Elias, 2011: 71). Human beings thus possess a species-specific capacity to produce symbolically-codified stocks of knowledge about their world and their conditions of existence that function as means of orientation that can be passed on from generation to generation. In this context, Tim Newton (2007: 109) makes the interesting note that perhaps ‘technolinguistic emancipation’ might be a more adequate term than ‘symbol emancipation’, as it captures the fundamental interplay of tool-making and symbolic communication in human development. Indeed, Elias’s highlight of symbolic communication in human development can be interpreted as being to the detriment of the role played by technological development, in a way that might appear to bring him closer to the distinction Habermas makes between labour and communication and his criticism of Marx’s supposedly one-sided focus on the former. As discussed in Chapter 3, Marx’s conception of labour as social labour is, in fact, more complex that Habermas’ characterisation of it, and integrates notions of communicative action as well. On the other hand, this perspective does remain undertheorised in Marx’s critical theory, especially in what concerns the integrative role of linguistically-constituted social norms in human being’s collective control over social processes, but also in what concerns the role of language and symbolic communication in technological development itself. But as becomes clear in the rest of the discussion in this chapter, Elias’s own conception is in fact a lot closer to Marx than Habermas’s. Elias’s whole work is oriented towards capturing the role played by symbolic communication in the interweaving of both technological innovations in the relationship between human beings and non-human nature and the development of social norms mediating human intra- and inter-societal relations. Elias’s concept of ‘symbol emancipation’ thus captures how the longterm process of human development is characterised by the constant interweaving of symbolically-mediated inter-human communication and norm constitution and symbolically-mediated technological development via which human beings regulate their metabolism with non-human nature. Through this concept it becomes possible to trace how symbolically-oriented learning permits human beings to develop new technologies to mediate their metabolism with non-human nature in ways that are more adaptive to the challenges

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 95 posed by their natural environment. Concomitantly, it permits to trace how the transformation of their natural environment via technology also transforms human social relations and leads to the development of new forms of symbolicallyconstituted social norms to mediate both social relations and the relations between human beings and non-human nature. Social norms which, of course, then shape the conditions under which the further symbolically-oriented development of technology to deal with a changing environment occurs. In a way, then, Elias can be read as reconstituting the basic pattern of Marx’s general theory of human development discussed in Chapter 3, but in a manner that further emphasises the role played in its context by the development of social norms and symbolic communication. The advantages of human symbolic emancipation become evident when compared with the largely unlearned and predominantly genetically-oriented forms of animal behaviour. When compared with human behaviour, forms of non-human animal species’ communication and manipulation of their natural environment – whether communication via voice-signals, body-movements/changes or manipulation of surrounding nature via the development of rudimentary technology, such as the building of damns, nests or hives – are significantly more rigid and tied to momentary situations.3 In contrast, human learning-oriented behaviour permits human beings to develop learning processes about their surrounding environment that can be symbolically-codified into an ever-expanding stock of knowledge that assumes both oral and written form. This stock of knowledge permits a life-long and multi-generational learning process on how to orientate themselves in relation to new and changing situations, both in their social relations with each other and in their relations with non-human nature. A stock of knowledge that, furthermore, can be improved upon to become increasingly more reliable and adequate as a means of orientation.4 As Elias (2011: 72) notes, symbolically-mediated learning permits a degree of behavioural flexibility that is quite beyond the reach of other animals, whose genetic make-up may provide an excellent way of coping with a specific situation and yet blocks their ability to cope with the demands of their situation if the task changes in a manner for which a species is not genetically equipped. Human symbolic emancipation can thus be understood as a ‘liberation from the bondage of largely unlearned or innate’ behaviour (Elias, 2011: 71). It unleashes a potentially unlimited learning process that has hitherto permitted humankind not only to acquire a predominant position vis-à-vis other Earthly species but to also become a major factor conditioning the future course of their processes of evolution (see: Goudsblom, 1994, 2002a, 2002b; Quilley, 2004a, 2004b). Elias’s expressed commitment to detached sociological analysis implies a predominant lack of discussion of notions of freedom or self-determination in his work. But the parallels between Elias’s conception of symbol emancipation and Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of human development, and the connection the latter establishes between such a conception and a form of objective ethics, are evident. Like Marx, Elias’s conceives of human beings as being characterised

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by an evolved and distinguishable capacity to consciously shape their conditions of existence in ways that permit a ‘liberation’ from the bonds of their animal ancestry and the determination of nature (Elias, 2011: 71). The issue here is not whether Elias himself expresses a commitment to a form of objective ethics that is partial to an expansion of human self-determination in history; though his frequent comments on the role of sociological knowledge in improving the human means of orientation and concomitant capacity to expand human control over hitherto unplanned processes seem to point in that direction. Rather, the argument is that Elias’s work can be read as being also shaped by a materialist-emergentist conception of history, one that opens the way for a reconstitution of Marxian objective ethics within the context of process sociology. Furthermore, this reconstruction can occur on a theoretical basis that improves upon Marx’s critical theory by further emphasising the interweaving of symbolically-mediated technological development and social norms constitution in human development. While Habermas sought to integrate the later dimension in his reconstruction of historical materialism via the establishment of a philosophical split between communicative and instrumental reason, Elias’s approach is a more adequate basis for a reconstruction of Marx’s critical project. It is more adequate to the extent that it provides an integrated conception of the role of symbol-mediated learning and communication in both productive activity and linguistic interaction in the context of which human beings expand their control over their conditions of existence. The expansion of human self-determination is thus expressed, simultaneously, in the form of symbolically-mediated technological development that expands human control over external non-human nature and symbolically-mediated constitution of social norms that expand human control over social processes. To these, Elias’s adds a third dimension, that of self-control, whose interweaving with the other two dimensions remains undertheorised in both Marx and Habermas’s critical theories. The interweaving of these three dimensions of the development of the human powers of control throughout the history of the species is captured by another of Elias’s process-concepts, which has already been discussed in Chapter 1 of this book, the ‘triad of controls’. Recovering that discussion, according to Elias (2012b: 151), symbol-oriented learning mediates the development of control at the three dimensions in which it must be constantly exercised in order to ensure the reproduction and survival of human societies: (1) control over non-human complexes of events – that is, control over external non-human nature; (2) control over interpersonal relationships – that is, control over social processes; and (3) control of human beings over themselves as individuals – that is, over their internal drives and impulses. The triad of controls is described by Elias (2012b: 99) as one of the ‘universals’ of human societies to the extent that, though the specific form that the triad assumes in different societies and historical contexts varies greatly, all human societies, on penalty of collapse, have to engage in some pattern of the triad to ensure their survival. The concepts ‘symbol emancipation’ and ‘triad of controls’ permit a recovery of Marx’s materialist-emergentist conception of human development

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 97 that overcomes the dualism between communication and labour established in Habermas’ approach to the problem of orientation. Like Marx, Elias conceives of human beings as emergent from the long-term process of natural evolution on the planet in a manner that, simultaneously, captures human embeddedness in nature but also identifies the distinguishing features of the species that have opened the way for its preponderance in the Earth’s ecosystems. The role Elias attributes to symbolic emancipation also permits recovering Habermas’s insights about the importance of communication in human development while avoiding the latter’s philosophical-transcendental shortcomings. Through the interplay between this concept and the notion of triad of controls, it becomes possible to capture how the development of human control over non-human nature via technological development, and over social processes via the development of social norms, fundamentally relies on the historical development of symbolically-mediated learning and symbolically-codified stocks of knowledge. Elias’s conception of symbol emancipation and triad of controls thus permits building upon Marx’s critical theory in a way that overcomes some of its shortcomings, namely the lack of an adequate account of the role of social norms in the regulation of social processes – such as those concerning collective control of violence – and integrates Habermas’s communicative orientation at a higher level of synthesis. One in which a sociological transposition of Habermas’s attempted reconstruction of Marx’s historical materialism can occur without requiring a reliance on philosophical-transcendental categories associated with his theory of moral and social evolution. By emphasising how the triad of controls is a universal feature of all human societies, but one that assumes society-specific patterns throughout history that vary also with society-specific forms of symbolic communication, technological development and knowledge codification, Elias effectively opens the way for a recovery of the multilinear and open-ended potential of Marx’s grand narrative of human development. From this perspective, the development of human patterns of control over nature and society via technology and social norms does not necessarily follow a rationally reconstructible stage-based path that can be captured in a universal theory of moral and social development. Rather, human societies historically exhibit highly changeable and society-specific patterns of the triad of controls that do not follow a pre-determined transcendental structure and whose development is always open-ended. In this manner, Elias’s process sociology can serve as a basis for a more adequate, historical-sociological, approach to the explanatory dimension of the problem of orientation that avoids the problematic linear and teleological conception associated with a philosophical-transcendental grand narrative of the Kantian-Habermasian type. One that, furthermore, explores two dimensions of human development that remained undertheorised in Marx, the symbolic mediation of the development of the human psyche and personality structures and its relationship with the development of human beings’ powers of control of social and, consequently, natural processes. This synergy between the different dimensions of the triad of controls is capture by Elias’ notion of civilising processes.

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On the concept of civilisation One of the most challenging aspects of Elias’s work is his reliance on the concept of civilisation, which frequently leads to the charge, by some critics, that it reproduces a form of Eurocentric grand narrative (see: Goody, 2006: Ch. 6; Pepperell, 2016; see also: Redner, 2015). However, a closer reading of Elias’s work clearly shows how his usage of the concept of civilisation is fully integrated in the multilinear and open-ended explanatory framework discussed above. Stephen Mennell’s (2015) distinction between an ‘emic’ and an ‘etic’ perspective on civilisation in Elias’s work is relevant in this context. An emic perspective expresses an insider’s point of view, relating to how members of a specific society or social group perceive the world and themselves, while an etic perspective refers to the more detached standpoint of orientation sought by social scientists that try to develop a theory about that specific social group or society and its development. The concept of civilisation in Elias’s work adopts each of these perspectives in different passages. As Mennell (2015: unpaginated) argues with reference to Elias’s (2012a) On the Process of Civilization, it is possible to regard the first part of that book, dedicated to the study of European manners books between the late Middle Ages and the 19th century, as an emic account of how European self-conceptions of their ‘civilised’ character developed historically, while Parts Two and Four of the book present an etic account, in the form of a sociological theory of civilising processes that seeks to understand the social processes shaping the changes in European personality structures throughout the same period and how these influenced the development of European self-images and worldviews. The theory of civilising processes thus seeks to capture the multilinear historical expression of different patterns of the triad of controls from an etic perspective, and how it connects with the emic self-understanding of human groups. Hence, even though the majority of Elias’s writings on civilising processes take the European civilising process as an example, it is never assumed that it sets the standard for other civilising processes and that these are bound to replicate the European path of civilisational development. Rather, from an etic perspective, civilising processes are understood as social universals whose concrete historical expression is always society-specific and thus framed in an overall conception of human development that is multilinear and open-ended. Hence, Elias’s use of the concept can be argued to echo what Losurdo (2016: 14) describes as the relation between genus and species in Marx’s theory of class struggles. It expresses the deployment, by both Marx and Elias, of process-concepts as the core feature of their shared historical-sociological approach to grand narratives. An approach that does not rely on an a priori ascertained path of human development that is then historically actualised. Rather, civilising processes are, by definition, historical and society-specific and it is up to social scientists to study their history and understand how different patterns of the triad of controls are expressed in different contexts. Consequently, Elias’s study of the European civilising process can only be conceived of as a starting point, and not a full-fledged theory of civilising processes. While opening the way for the identification of some potential social universals

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 99 of human development their status as such can only be determined via further sociological analysis of other, non-European civilising processes (see, for example: Suzuki, 2009, 2012; Linklater, 2021: Ch. 5; Lau, 2022). Elias was not unaware of the difficulties arising from his reliance on the notion of civilisation. Commenting on his usage of the term, Elias (2008b: 8–9) noted how he could have looked around for less ideologically charged terms for long-term changes of behaviour standards or tried to free the concept of civilization from its ideological burdens and transform it into an ideologically neutral term with the aid of appropriate documentation. I did cast about for other possible expressions but did not find any that were more appropriate. Finally, I decided to develop the concept of civilization into an ideologically neutral, fact-based term in conjunction with abundant empirical documentation. The problem, as Linklater (2021: 19) notes, is that it is not always clear to readers that Elias was mobilising the term in a non-evaluative way. It was all too easy to assume Elias was clinging to the idea of progress that was at the heart of the disgraced 19th century theories of history. Following Mennell (2015), Linklater (2021: 19) argues that the distinction between the emic and the etic use of the concept is always clear in Elias’s work to the careful reader, but that the best strategy to avoid the risk of misinterpretation – a strategy unfortunately not followed by Elias himself – is to consistently use quotation marks to identify the emic sense of the term, reserving the use of the term, without quotation marks, to when it is used in its etic sense. That is the approach adopted in this book, using ‘civilisation’ to refer to the insiders’ perspective, i.e., how people see themselves, and the terms civilisation or, preferably, civilising processes – without quotation marks – to refer to the more detached, social scientific theory of how different, society-specific, patterns of the triad of controls are expressed in the multiple streams of the overall process of human development. Another clarification that is important to make in this context concerns the meaning of civilisation or civilising processes, i.e., to what specific social processes do the concepts refer to. Some process sociologists, such as Johan Goudsblom (2002b: 27–28), have argued for a restriction of the use of these terms to only one dimension of the triad of controls, that of individual self-control, reserving the terms ‘technology’ and ‘organisation’ to refer to the other two dimensions of the triad – respectively, control over non-human nature and control over interpersonal relationships. The justification for this choice lies in the fact that, in On the Process of Civilisation, Elias uses the term civilisation to refer mainly to the historically changeable patterns of individual personality structures. The approach adopted here is different. Rather, the process-concept civilising processes is used to refer to the development of different historical patterns of the triad of controls, rather than to only one of its dimensions. The reason for

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this approach is that, while Elias frequently referred to civilisation to describe the process of change in individual personality structures, these changes were never disconnected from the other two dimensions of the triad, as will become clear in the discussion below. Furthermore, even in its emic sense, ‘civilisation’ refers to people’s self-images and the ways these condition their attitudes and behaviour not only vis-à-vis each other, but also non-human nature. The broader meaning of civilisation is captured with particular clarity in Linklater’s (2021: 229–230) four criteria to determine to what extent relations within and between human groups are undergoing a process of civilisation. These are first, whether the practice of resolving conflicts on the basis of rules jointly acknowledged by social groups is increasing or decreasing; second, whether internal as opposed to external constraints on violence and on conduct more generally are gaining power or losing influence; third, whether there is or is not an overall widening of emotional identification between people as exemplified by the ‘ability to empathize and capacity to feel for and sympathise with other people in their relationships with them’; and fourth, whether levels of social coordination and planning to protect people from harm are rising or falling. A fifth criteria should be added concerning whether levels of collective human control over non-human nature are increasing or decreasing, given the extent to which the development of the remaining four criteria is fundamentally dependent on that of the human-nature metabolism. Interestingly, authors influenced by the process sociological perspective have increasingly tackled the notion of ‘ecological civilising processes’ (see: Quilley, 2009, 2011; Rohloff, 2019). This is intended to add nuance to the conception of control over non-human nature to note how that control cannot be read as an expression of a civilising process if it is exercised in such a way that undermines the natural conditions for the existence of human societies and for the development of the remaining dimensions of the triad. However, that approach tends to charge the notion of civilisation with a valuative assessment of social development and thus adopt a more emic perspective of the concept. The approach adopted in this book is different, noting that civilising processes must be conceived of as always entailing some pattern of control over non-human nature. However, whether historically-specific patterns of control of the human-nature metabolism are congruent with the natural requirements of ecological sustainability is an open, context-specific, question (Saramago, 2020: 2015, 2023: 202–204). As is discussed in the next chapter, different patterns of the triad of controls can be more or less compatible with ecological sustainability and that assessment itself opens the way for their critical judgement from the perspective of an anticipatory standpoint of orientation. Together, these five criteria point to an understanding of civilisation, in the etic sense, that sees it as an expression of the development of the triad of controls in a particular direction, within a wide variety of concrete historical expressions. These criteria are universal to the extent that they ‘can be used in the attempt to ascertain

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 101 the main directions of change in social figurations ranging from small kinship groups to large-scale state-organised societies (…) [to] international organisations that include the totality of human societies’ (Linklater, 2021: 229; on Elias’s conception of figuration see: Hughes et al., 2022). A final clarification concerns the role of Marx’s key process-concept – class struggles – in Elias’s account of civilising processes. As Steven Loyal (2004, 2013) notes, class stratification and class struggles occupy a central place in Elias’s conception of civilising processes, with Loyal even arguing that Elias advances a more complex class perspective than Marx’s to the extent that he was particularly aware of the influence that different class fractions can have in wider processes of class constitution and struggle. At the same time, Elias also frequently avoided the language of class and class struggle, instead opting for more neutral concepts such as social groups or social strata, due to the supposedly charged ideological character of the concept. However, the current discussion of Elias’s work intends to offer a reading of Elias that permits a reconstruction of Marx’s critical theory and, specifically, also his theory of class struggles. Hence, the following discussion of Elias’s conception of civilising processes seeks to bring to the forefront the notion of class struggles underlying Elias’s work with the purpose of clearly foregrounding its potential for a reconstruction of a historical-sociological approach to critical theorising. Civilising processes as grand narrative Having clarified the usage of civilisation and civilising processes both in Elias’s work and in this book, it is now possible to move to a more in-depth discussion of Elias’s theory of civilising processes. As discussed above, the theory of civilising processes connects the three dimensions of the triad of controls. The fundamental argument, once again echoing that of Marx, is that humans expand their control over their conditions of existence in the context of their relations with non-human nature, through the development of technology and forms of organisation of social labour that deepen the division of labour and expand the networks of production and trade within and between societies. But Elias also builds substantially on Marx’s perspective by emphasising how the historical development of increasingly more intricate and lengthier webs of social interdependence, on which all those that collectively form those webs come to depend for the satisfaction of their historically-developing needs, is related to the historical emergence of social pressures that condition the development of social norms and individual personality structures in a specific direction (Elias, 2012a: 406). These pressures express themselves in the development of social norms and collective understandings of what constitutes adequate social behaviour, and associated threats of sanctions for the violation of those norms. These norms seek to prevent individual and collective behaviour that might disrupt the networks of social interdependence. In this manner, members of different societies try to ensure a degree of collective social control – whose actual concrete shape depends on shifting balances of power between different social classes – over the webs of social

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interdependence. Concomitantly, this pressure also assumes the form of individual internal psychological controls that shape the manifestation of individual drives and impulses and find their origin in the internalisation of feelings of shame and fear of social degradation that might derive from disrespecting established social norms. These socially-instilled internal controls are transmitted to children since the earliest phases of their infancy through processes of education and socialisation within the family and in dedicated social institutions. As Elias (2012a: 406) summarises, as the ‘webs of actions grow [more] complex and extensive, the effort required to behave “correctly” within them becomes so great that, beside the individual’s conscious self-control, an automatic, blindly functioning apparatus of self-control is firmly established’. The theory of civilising processes thus captures the interweaving between the three dimensions of the triad of controls and the way these are symbolicallymediated through society-specific learning and socialisation processes. In this context, it is important to highlight two points. First, and to recover the argument concerning the mutually constitutive character of the three dimensions of the triad, Elias does not establish a causal relationship between the development of human interdependence and that of self- and social control. Rather, these three dimensions are better understood as intertwining and mutually reinforcing processes. On the one hand, the growth of human interdependence via the development of technology and the division of labour produces the conditions for the development of personality structures in a direction of greater self-control. On the other hand, the establishment and maintenance of longer and more interconnected webs of interdependence is impossible without the development of the capacity of human beings to exercise self-restraint over their internal drives and impulses or without the concomitant development of collective social norms patterning people’s behaviour in ways conducive to the maintenance of those networks. And second, the theory of civilising processes seeks to capture the universal social dynamics of human development in terms of the interweaving between the three dimensions of the triad of controls, but not does not seek to define a priori their concrete, society-specific, content and historical patterns of expression. This is particularly clear in Elias’s comments regarding how civilising processes cannot be characterised in purely quantitative terms, simply implying an increase in control over self, nature, and society (see: Wouters and Mennell, 2013). Taking the European civilising processes as his example, Elias (2008a: 6) notes that it cannot simply be said that people have less self-control under social conditions in which the webs of human interdependence are less developed and the social constraints towards self-restraint are lower. On the contrary, there are expressions of extreme forms of self-control and asceticism in earlier phases of the European civilising process that might no longer be accessible to more ‘civilised’ individuals. Instead, under those conditions, individual patterns of self-restraint can be characterised as being less even and less uniform than in a more ‘civilised’ context (Elias, 2008a: 5). Hence, European people in conditions of lower social interdependence were more liable to ‘wild swings’ in their behaviour, with ‘extremely strong self-constraints often going hand-in-hand with a capacity for the extremely uncontrolled release of

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 103 drives and affective impulses’ (Elias, 2008a: 6). But as the webs of interdependence became tighter and social constraints towards self-restraint increased, people’s self-control tended to become more even, uniform, and stable, expressing fewer situational shifts. As such, the European developmental process in a ‘civilising’ direction is better characterised not in quantitative terms of more or less individual self-control, but instead in a more qualitative manner which assesses the evenness and uniformity of the patterns of people’s self-regulation of their drives and impulses. In other words, the actual patterns of self-control are highly historically variable and society-specific. The developmental path these patterns have assumed in Western Europe cannot in any way be assumed as universal, with different patterns of self-restraint emerging in different societies and historical periods and finding their own ideational expressions in those societies’ ‘civilised’ self-images (see: Suzuki, 2009, 2012; Linklater, 2021: Ch. 5; Lau, 2022). At this point in the discussion, it is important to introduce another processconcept that structures Elias’s historical-sociological approach to grand narratives, the notion of monopoly mechanism. Monopoly mechanism is a concept that permits to capture the interplay between class struggles and civilising processes in the formation of political communities and their mutual relations, in a manner that can be relevant for a reconstruction of Marx’s answer to the problem of orientation in such a way that begins to overcome the shortcomings identified in Chapter 4. The rest of this section focuses on the discussion of the interplay between class struggles, the monopoly mechanism and civilising processes at the intra-state level, while the next chapter considers the relationship between these concepts in intersocietal relations. The departing point for this discussion is the way Elias underlines the fact that the networks of human interdependence, whose expansion and growing intricacy play a fundamental role in his theory of civilising processes, are always structured by asymmetrical power relations between the individuals and social classes that constitute them. These power asymmetries are fundamentally connected with the historical development of what Elias (2012a: 302) calls the ‘monopoly mechanism’. This notion builds upon Weber’s conception of the monopoly over the legitimate means of violence and Marx’s analysis of capitalism’s tendency for the formation of monopolies over economic functions to refer to the monopolisation of control over any source of social power within a certain area of human activity by the representatives of one or more social class. To Elias, a monopoly can thus refer not only to the means of physical violence or economic power, but also to a monopoly over taxation or even a monopoly over means of orientation, like the one that the Catholic Church exercised for a part of Western European history. The notion thus plays a fundamental role in Elias’s analysis of the main dynamics of the historical development of the triad of controls. The monopoly mechanism can be described in the following manner: If, in a major social unit, a large number of the smaller units which, through their interdependence, constitute a larger one, are of roughly equal social power and are thus able to compete freely – unhampered by pre-existing

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monopolies – for the means to social power (…) the probability is high that some will be victorious and others vanquished, and that gradually, as a result, fewer and fewer will control more and more opportunities, and more and more units will be eliminated from competition, becoming directly or indirectly dependent on an ever-decreasing number. (Elias, 2012a: 302) As such, human social relations under conditions of free competition tend to slowly ‘approach a state in which all opportunities are controlled by a single authority’ (Elias, 2012a: 302). Although the notion of the monopoly mechanism is developed in the context of the study of the overall direction of state formation in Western Europe, once again, it constitutes a process-concept that seeks to capture a universal social dynamic structuring human development when conditions of free competition are experienced between different social units vying to achieve control over each other in successive ‘elimination contests’ (Elias, 2012a: 308). The actual historical expression of the monopoly mechanism is, once again, highly changeable across time and space, being society-specific in line with a multilinear and open-ended conception of human development.5 The development of the monopoly mechanism is fundamentally intertwined with the development of different patterns of the triad of controls. Taking as his case study the formation of states in Western Europe, Elias (2012a: 304) considers that, when viewed in a long-term perspective, the development of the monopoly mechanism in that specific context followed two main phases. In the first phase, the succession of elimination struggles between survival units and the absorption of the defeated units by the victorious slowly led to the formation of state monopolies over the means of violence and taxation. The formation of more encompassing monopoly centres represented a loss of control chances to the social classes who were submitted to the rule of the monopolising state. In this phase, the central state monopolies predominantly assumed the form of ‘private’ monopolies of a single noble family or association of noble families and the social norms that from them emanated served predominantly the interests of this ruling class (Elias, 2012a: 304). The webs of human interdependence were thus characterised by great power asymmetries between social classes, with those who were not in control of the central monopoly institutions finding themselves a lot more dependent on the central rulers than the other way around. According to Elias (2012a: 488), in phases of the development of the monopoly mechanism in which the webs of human interdependence are structured by a high degree of power asymmetries between social classes, individual personality structures tend to exhibit less even patterns of self-restraint. Individual behavioural patterns are thus more liable to wild swings depending on the power balances structuring social relations. Relations between individuals belonging to higher social classes and those of lower rank tend to be frequently characterised by a greater loosening of impulses and drives, which express themselves in the form of relations of violence and domination vis-à-vis social inferiors, but are also frequently concomitant with a higher degree of self-restraint in relations between

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 105 social equals. On the other hand, relations between individuals belonging to lower social classes and those of higher rank tend to be characterised by particularly accentuated patterns of self-restraint which express themselves in the form of relations of deference and submission vis-à-vis social superiors, but also are frequently concomitant with a greater loosening of drives and impulses in relations between social equals. Furthermore, under these conditions, individual orientations tend to be predominantly shaped by more involved, parochial, and egocentric worldviews, with ruling social classes using their control of monopoly centres – be they political, economic or orientational – mainly for private purposes. To this corresponds a lack of identification with these monopoly centres on the part of the lower social classes, whose main emotional attachments tend to be to familial, clan or tribal relations rather than to the state. The predominance of more parochial worldviews that see the state as mainly an instrument of class rule means that the development of collective social norms as a way to mediate power struggles between social classes is less likely, which also increases the likelihood that class struggles develop in violent ways, corresponding to the less even patterns of self-restraint at the level of individual personality structures. Consequently, what Losurdo (2016: 25) calls ‘emancipatory class struggles’, i.e., those carried out by lower social classes to improve their control chances over their conditions of existence, frequently assume the character of violent anarchic revolts that seek to either destroy the ruling monopoly centres or break away from them. Such patterns can be witnesses historically, for example, in the relations between feudal lords and peasants, and in the frequent peasant revolts that characterised Medieval Western Europe, or in the relations between industrial capitalists and the industrial proletariat in the earlier phases of the industrial revolution – corresponding also to Marx and Engel’s more anarchic impulses envisioning a violent revolution that would ultimately eliminate the state as a monopoly centre. However, Elias (2012a: 305) also observes that there was a second phase in the development of the monopoly mechanism in Western Europe. The transition to the second phase was intertwined with the development of the webs of human interdependence in the direction of increased length and intricacy, as well as their structuring by a lower degree of power asymmetries between social classes. This transformation was part of the development of human control over non-human nature via technological development and the associated increase in the division of labour and expansion of trade and production networks within and between societies. The development of the division of labour towards greater specialisation and consequent associated increase in mutual dependence between social functions led not only to an expansion of the networks of human interdependence but also to their being increasingly structured by a process Elias (2012a: 305) calls ‘functional democratisation’. This is defined by a reduction of power asymmetries between people and social classes as all come to depend more on all the others for both the satisfaction of their social needs and for carrying out the specialised social functions which can now only exist if integrated in an increasingly tighter and more complex web of mutual interdependencies. One of the main consequences of

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these developments was that, increasingly, the operation of central state monopolies could no longer be carried out by a single class in control of its institutions. The central rulers had to rely more and more on lower social classes and intermediate managerial class fractions for the maintenance of the monopoly and the carrying out of its regulatory functions (see: Elias, 2006, 2012a: 305). In this context, Elias (2006: 289) notes the role played by the ‘nobility of the robe’ in the functional democratisation of state monopoly centres in 17th and 18th century Western Europe. As Linklater (2021: 213–214) emphasises, Elias’s (2006) study of the French Court Society during this period shows how the aristocratic military elite (…) had to share power with lesser nobles (…) [whose] upshot was a shift in the balance of power between the traditionally dominant “nobility of the sword”, with its dedication to military virtues, and the “nobility of the robe”. This shift was intertwined with the growing complexity of the webs of human interdependence within and between European states, as the ‘nobility of the robe’ was the social stratum with expertise in undertaking the administrative tasks that were vital for the smooth functioning of a complex state-organized society as well as [with] the necessary command of court etiquette to be capable of discharging diplomatic responsibilities (…) that were integral to the European inter-state order. (Linklater, 2021: 113) Slowly these administrative tasks came to be occupied also by members of the previously excluded bourgeois class whose education or economic power bought a position amongst the central institutions of the state where they came to play an important role in balancing the power of the ruling aristocracy. Functional democratisation in 17th and 18th century European court societies thus entailed a growing power balance between the ruling aristocracy, the lesser nobility and the rising bourgeoisie that pushed the contending social classes towards the ‘sober realisation’ that outright victory in their class struggles ‘through violent means was improbable and that fundamental interests were best satisfied through unreserved commitments to negotiated compromises’ (Linklater, 2021: 203). In this context, the administrative elites, by the very character of their tasks, which entailed the attempt at conscious regulation of the web of tensions and interdependent competition between the various social classes structuring complex state societies, were compelled to carry out a detour via detachment vis-à-vis the more parochial worldviews of their respective classes of origin. As Linklater (2021: 259) notes ‘bourgeois elements in 18th century French court society (…) thought that a deeper understanding of social processes would provide the foundations for more benevolent and effective government’.

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 107 The taming of monopoly power via negotiated settlements and the development of social norms representative of the webs of tensions structuring state societies thus opened the way for what Elias (2012a: 304–308) calls a process of ‘socialisation’ of central state monopoly institutions, which slowly moved from being the private property of a ruling class to become a ‘public’ monopoly centre mediating the complex balances of power between the various social classes. A process in which administrative elites – mainly integrated by managerial class fractions of both the bourgeois and lesser nobility social classes – increasingly came to see themselves as servants of the ‘state’ rather than of their respective classes of origin, and as the cultivators of the ‘patterns of self-restraint (…) [required] to enable rival parties to achieve the non-violent resolution of major disputes and tensions’ (Linklater, 2021: 202). These individuals thus played a central role in the development of administrative and parliamentary techniques through which ‘evenly balanced competing groups [could] avoid (…) [violent] struggles for supremacy [that] could have become impossible to control’ and thus threatening to their own social status and position (Linklater, 2021: 202). Hence, in contrast with the first phase in the development of the monopoly mechanism, in the second phase, in which the webs of human interdependence become structured by a lower degree of power asymmetries between social classes, individual personality structures also tend to develop more even patterns of self-restraint. Individual behavioural patterns become less liable to wild swings depending on the power balances structuring social relations. Furthermore, under these conditions, there tends to occur a widening of individual orientations towards more detached, encompassing and less parochial worldviews, in the process of which monopoly centres come to be seen not as the private property of a ruling class, but as power centres regulating the complex web of interdependencies on which all members of a society have come to depend. To this corresponds a greater emotional identification with the state – in contrast with other interpersonal bonds such as familial, clan or tribal relations – as the main instrument for the development of collective social norms that mediate power struggles between social classes in ways that avoid the eruption of uncontrollable violence that might disrupt the webs of social interdependence. Consequently, under these conditions, what Losurdo calls ‘emancipatory class struggles’, i.e., those carried out by lower social classes to improve their control chances over their conditions of existence, tend to change their form (and need to do so in order to be effective). Increasingly, emancipatory class struggles come to be carried out through non-violent means, as the use of violence is easily suppressed by the increasingly complex and powerful state apparatus and is frequently out of synch with predominant social attitudes and behavioural patterns. Furthermore, these emancipatory class struggles now seek to capture or significantly influence the ruling monopoly centres, rather than destroy or break away from them. This alteration is an expression of the growing identification of the state as the main regulator of the webs of social interdependence in which all social classes are embedded and on which the existence of the emancipatory movements themselves is dependent. And finally, emancipatory class struggles also tend to widen

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the definition of their interests beyond the confines of a specific social class assuming an increasingly ‘national’ character. This is an expression of an overall widening of worldviews and of the concomitant awareness that, under conditions of highly complex social interdependence, the success of emancipatory movements becomes dependent on their capacity to portray their goals and methods as being an expression of the collective interests of the social classes that are excluded from the state’s monopoly centres. Hence, under these conditions, emancipatory class struggles tend to assume the form of struggles for the socialisation of monopoly centres, rather than their abolition. This means that, unlike Marx and Engel’s utopian expectations, the actual challenge facing emancipatory revolutionary movements under conditions of high social interdependence – which Marx and Engels saw as a precondition for the development of socialism – is learning how to administer monopoly centres in such a way that promotes their socialisation and operation in the general interest of the web of interdependent people, rather than supervising the withering away of the state. The outcome of these emancipatory class struggles is, of course, always historically contingent and open-ended. According to Elias (2012a: 305), the ruling classes in control of monopoly centres can either acknowledge the consequences of functional democratisation and impose on themselves the self-restraints and the sharing of power with other social classes which the reduction in power asymmetries entail, or they can attempt to preserve their private control of the central monopoly and continue to direct its operation only to the satisfaction of their private interests and needs. Different European states followed different historical paths in this regard. Elias’s argument is that, in conditions of high social interdependence moving towards a functional reduction of power asymmetries, the later course of action becomes increasingly harder to maintain without leading to increasingly violent class struggles that can explode into the revolutionary forced substitution of the monopolist holders of power, or into civil wars that might push the web of interdependencies into a condition of social degradation in which the maintenance of a central monopoly is no longer possible and the state becomes divided into smaller social units in violent competition with each other (Elias, 2012a: 305). In this context, it is important to note that the degree of socialisation of monopoly centres is also a historically contingent process, dependent on the outcome of ongoing class struggles. Hence, the development of welfare states in Western Europe in the second half of the 20th century can be understood as a specific outcome, in the form of a growing socialisation of the state apparatus, of class struggles between an emerging proletariat and the ruling bourgeois and aristocratic classes. Classes whose own command of state monopoly centres was a specific outcome of the previous socialisation struggles that Elias described in his analysis of 17th and 18th century court societies, pushed by a rising bourgeoisie vis-à-vis an established aristocracy. Furthermore, it is also important to note that Elias’s conception of functional democratisation does not imply a linear and irreversible process. Functional democratisation is always dependent on the outcome of ongoing class struggles. As Mennell (2007) argues at the end of his study on the American civilising process,

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 109 functional democratisation is always liable to go into ‘reverse’. He observes how the more recent phase of development of free market capitalism appears to express a tendency for an increase in the power asymmetries between social classes and a less equal distribution of power chances to control the monopoly centres enacting social norms and making decisions regarding the development of the global economy. This reversal of functional democratisation, Mennell (1990, 2007) observes, might be accompanied by a transformation of people’s patterning of self-restraint in the direction of ‘decivilisation’, expressed in a reduction of mutual identification between people and a freer expression of more aggressive and dominating impulses in social relations. The contribution of Elias’s theory of civilising processes to a reconstruction of a historical-sociological approach to critical theorising that further develops the insights of Marx’s critical theory and overcomes its shortcomings thus becomes evident. Elias’s account of what he designates as social universals, captured in process-concepts such as symbol emancipation, triad of controls, civilising processes and monopoly mechanism clearly permits to build upon Marx’s critical theory in a way that captures the role of state formation and social norms in the development of the human powers of self-determination. They permit a more adequate understanding of the different forms that class struggles assume under different social conditions, in a direct contribution to deepen and improve the adequacy, as well as reduce the utopian expectations, of Marx’s historical-sociological grand narrative. The next chapter further develops these insights and the reconstruction of a historical-sociological approach to critical theorising by considering how the interplay between these process-concepts can provide a more adequate basis for critical orientation in the analysis of world politics. Notes 1 This greater ‘plasticity’ of human behaviour should not be confused with the implication that human beings possess ‘weaker instincts’ when compared with other animals. There is no proof that human instincts are weaker than those of other animals, but they appear to be more ‘malleable’ and more ‘amenable to control’, a characteristic that has emerged out of the process of evolution and allowed cultural development to predominate over biological evolution as the main ‘pacemaker’ of human development (Linklater, 2011: 158). 2 That is not to say, however, that genetically determined behavioural patterns have disappeared from the human repertoire, as can be seen by the examples of the smile, cries of pain, or fight or flee mechanisms; but these play an auxiliary role in human communication and behaviour and, in some cases, such as smiling, have actually come under a greater degree of conscious control on the part of human individuals. 3 This observation remains valid for forms of animal behaviour that display a learningoriented character, such as that verified amongst some groups of some ape species that have developed group-specific practices of rudimentary tool-making which have to be taught by older members of the group to its younger members (e.g., the use of sticks to hunt termites or stones to break nuts shells). However, the transmission of this intergenerational knowledge remains predominantly tied to the moment, requiring the imitation, by the younger members of the group, of the movements carried out by its older members in context-specific situations. As far as is hitherto known, there is no form of symbolically-codified knowledge that is passed between members without resorting to

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a reproduction of the movements required for the activity being learned (see: de Waal, 2002). 4 As already noted above, Elias observes that symbolic emancipation is inherently tied with biological changes in the transition from hominids to early humans, namely at the level of cortical development and lowered larynx. This passage recalls Engels observation about the interweaving of biological evolution and cultural development in the early phases of hominization and again confirms the materialist-emergentist perspective shared by these authors. However, as noted throughout the discussion, Elias never expressly characterises himself as a materialist given his conscious attempt to move away from what was commonly understood, including by Elias himself, as the reductionist perspective adopted by materialists such as Marx and Engels. As the previous chapter argued, however, that characterisation can be read as a caricature of Marx and Engel’s perspective and fails to capture the full complexity of their materialist-emergentist perspective which is not dissimilar to that adopted by Elias himself. 5 For example, Elias’s (2012a: 589) makes several observations about the development of the monopoly mechanism in the formation of a centralised state in China long before the emergence of states in Western Europe.

References de Waal FBM (2002) Apes from Venus: Bonobos and human evolution. In: de Waal FBM (ed) Tree of Origin: What Primate Behaviour Can Tell Us About Human Social Evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 39–68. Dunning E and Hughes J (2013) Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology: Knowledge, Interdependence, Power, Process. London: Bloomsbury. Elias N (2006) The Court Society. (The collected works of Norbert Elias, Vol. 2). Dublin: University College Dublin Press. Elias N (2007) Involvement and Detachment. (The collected works of Norbert Elias, Vol. 15). Dublin: University College Dublin Press. Elias N (2008a) Civilisation. In: Kilminster R and Mennell S (eds) Essays II: On Civilising Processes, State Formation and National Identity. (The collected works of Norbert Elias, Vol. 13). Dublin: University College Dublin Press, pp. 3–7. Elias N (2008b) What I mean by civilisation: Reply to Hans Peter Duerr. In: Kilminster R and Mennell S (eds) Essays II: On Civilising Processes, State Formation and National Identity. (The collected works of Norbert Elias, Vol. 13). Dublin: University College Dublin Press, pp. 8–13. Elias N (2011) The Symbol Theory. (The collected works of Norbert Elias, Vol. 13). Dublin: University College Dublin Press. Elias N (2012a) On the Process of Civilisation: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. (The collected works of Norbert Elias, Vol. 3). Dublin: University College Dublin Press. Elias N (2012b) What Is Sociology? (The collected works of Norbert Elias, Vol. 5). Dublin: University College Dublin Press. Goody J (2006) The Theft of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goudsblom J (1994) Fire and Civilization. London: Penguin Books. Goudsblom J (2002a) Conclusions: Retrospect and prospects. In: de Vries B and Goudsblom J (eds) Mappae Mundi: Humans and Their Habitats in Long-Term Socio-Ecological Perspective – Myths, Maps and Models. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 411–414. Goudsblom J (2002b) Introductory overview: The expanding anthroposphere. In: de Vries B and Goudsblom J (eds) Mappae Mundi: Humans and Their Habitats in Long-Term

Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives 111 Socio-Ecological Perspective – Myths, Maps and Models. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 21–46. Hughes J, Saramago A, Dunning M and Hughes K (2022) Fields, worlds and figurations: Using Elias to revisit depth conceptual imagery and emancipatory critique. Sociology & Antropologia 12(1): 53–80. Kilminster R (2007) Norbert Elias: Post-Philosophical Sociology. London: Routledge. Kilminster R (2011) Norbert Elias’s post-philosophical sociology: From ‘critique’ to relative detachment. In: Gabriel N and Mennell S (eds) Norbert Elias and Figurational Research: Processual Thinking in Sociology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 91–116. Lau W (2022) On the Process of Civilisation in Japan: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Cham: Springer. Lever J and Powell R (2017) ‘Problems of involvement and detachment’: Norbert Elias and the investigation of contemporary social processes. Human Figurations: Long-Term Perspective on the Human Condition 6(2): unpaginated. Linklater A (2011) The Problem of Harm in World Politics: Theoretical Investigations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Linklater A (2019) Process sociological and human emancipation: Involvement and detachment reconsidered. Human Figurations: Long-Term Perspectives on the Human Condition 8(1): unpaginated. Linklater A (2021) The Idea of Civilization and the Making of Global Order. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Losurdo D (2016) Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Loyal S (2004) Elias on class and stratification. In: Loyal S and Quilley S (eds) The Sociology of Norbert Elias. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 112–141. Loyal S (2013) Assessing Elias on Marx in a neoliberal age. Política y Sociedad 50(2): 581–599. Mennell S (1990) Decivilising processes: Theoretical significance and some lines of research. International Sociology 5(2): 205–223. Mennell S (2007) The American Civilising Process. Dublin: University College Dublin Press. Mennell S (2015) Civilising offensives and decivilising processes: Between the emic and the etic. Human Figurations: Long-Term Perspectives on the Human Condition 4(1): unpaginated. Newton T (2007) Nature and Sociology. Abingdon: Routledge. Pepperell N (2016) The unease with civilisation: Norbert Elias and the violence of the civilising process. Thesis Eleven 137(1): 3–21. Quilley S (2004a) Ecology, ‘human nature’ and civilizing processes: Biology and sociology in the work of Norbert Elias. In: Loyal S and Quilley S (eds) The Sociology of Norbert Elias. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 42–58. Quilley S (2004b) Social development as social expansion: Food systems, prosthetic ecology and the arrow of history. Amsterdam Sociologisch Tijdschrift 31(3): 321–348. Quilley S (2009) The land ethic as an ecological civilising process: Aldo Leopold, Norbert Elias, and environmental philosophy. Environmental Ethics 31(2): 115–134. Quilley S (2011) Entropy, the anthroposphere and the ecology of civilisation: An essay on the problem of ‘liberalism in one village’ in the long view. The Sociological Review 59(1): 65–90. Redner H (2015) The civilising process – According to Mennell, Elias and Freud: A critique. Thesis Eleven 127(1): 95–111.

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Rohloff A (2019) Climate Change, Moral Panics, and Civilisation, edited by André Saramago. Abingdon: Routledge. Saramago A (2015) Problems of orientation and control: Marx, Elias and the involvementdetachment balance in figurational sociology. Human Figurations: Long-Term Perspectives on Human Development 4(2): unpaginated. Saramago A (2020) Reality-congruence, emancipatory politics and situated knowledge in international relations: A process sociological perspective. International Relations 34(2): 204–224. Saramago A (2021) Marx, Elias y la concepción materialista de las relaciones humanonaturaleza. In: Kaplan C and Barragán Díaz D (eds) Tiempos de Cambio: Diálogos desde Norbert Elias. Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidadd de Buenos Aires, pp. 185–210. Saramago A (2023) Dualism and anti-dualism in the Anthropocene: Process sociology and human/nature relations in the Great Evolution. Historical Social Research 48(1): 190–212. Suzuki S (2009) Civilisation and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society. Abingdon: Routledge. Suzuki S (2012) Viewing the development of human society from Asia. Human Figurations: Long-Term Perspectives on the Human Condition 1(2): unpaginated. Wouters C and Mennell S (2013) Discussing civilisation and informalisation: Criteriology. Política y Sociedad 50(2): 553–579.

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Critical orientation in world politics

Introduction This chapter further develops the reconstruction, proposed in the previous chapter, of Marx’s historical-sociological approach to grand narratives through an engagement with Elias’s process sociology. It does so by considering how the process-concepts discussed in the previous chapter – namely civilising processes, monopoly mechanism, triad of controls, and class struggles – can orientate a more adequate critical analysis of world politics. One that interweaves, in a single theoretical framework, the explanatory and the anticipatory dimensions of the critical project, providing orientation concerning the main social dynamics shaping the formation of contemporary global conditions of existence and disclosing their immanent emancipatory potential. This potential is understood as the possibility of expanding the inherited limits of the possible in terms of human freedom, in the form of a more conscious and self-determined pattern of controls regulating intra- and inter-societal relations, individual personality structures, and the humannature metabolism. The chapter thus constitutes a starting point in the application of the historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising proposed in this book to the analysis of contemporary world politics. In the process, it seeks to exhibit how this approach to critical international theory improves its adequacy as a means of orientation to the extent that it provides an answer to both the explanatory and anticipatory dimensions of the problem of orientation that, simultaneously, permits achieving a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition without reproducing forms of Eurocentrism or losing the connection with the concrete living experiences of embodied human beings. The chapter is structured in three sections. The ‘From the triad to the tetrad of controls’ section provides conceptual clarification concerning how the processconcepts discussed in the previous chapter can be made relevant for a critical analysis of world politics. It proposes that the concept of triad of controls (Elias, 2012b: 151) be rather understood as a tetrad of controls. This refers, respectively, to different patterns of control at the level of individual self-restraint, of the metabolism between human beings and non-human nature, and of social relations within political communities but also between political communities. The conception of a tetrad of controls permits to more adequately trace how the historical expression DOI: 10.4324/9781003221777-7

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of the social dynamics captured by the process-concepts discussed in the previous chapter is conditioned by the interweavement of developments at both the intraand inter-societal levels of human interdependence in ways that are relevant for a critical analysis of world politics. This analysis is then carried out in the ‘Class struggles in inter-societal relations’ and ‘Socialisation and planned interdependence’ sections, which are focused on providing explanatory orientation concerning the challenges faced by human beings under conditions of global ecological and social interdependence and on providing anticipatory orientation concerning the immanent potential for an expansion of the inherited limits of the possible in terms of the development of a more conscious, self-determined, and sustainable pattern of the tetrad of controls. From the triad to the tetrad of controls As shown in the previous chapter, an engagement with Elias’s process sociology permits not only an improvement of the explanatory dimension of Marx’s critical project, but also contributes to its anticipatory dimension by permitting a more adequate assessment of the immanent potentials that might exist at each historical juncture and how emancipatory class struggles envisioning the actualisation of those potentials can be carried out. Fundamental here is an understanding of how the phase of the monopoly mechanism, and its relationship with specific patterns of ‘civilisation’ and the triad of controls, affect the form, strategy, and potential outcomes of class struggles. While Elias’s insights are mainly drawn from an analysis of the Western European civilising process, and thus further work on nonEuropean civilising processes is required, they seem to point to some preliminary conclusions. For example, they point to the conclusion that, under the social conditions experienced in complex state societies, emancipatory class struggles that envision the violent destruction of the state apparatus tend to be utopian and, ultimately, self-defeating. Rather, the success of emancipatory class struggles depends on the capacity of rising social classes universalising their struggles to other classes excluded from the monopoly centres with a view to building a broad emancipatory movement capable of acquiring control or greater influence over those monopoly centres and the social norms that from them emanate. The success of emancipatory class struggles thus becomes fundamentally intertwined with the transformation of state monopolies from private to public monopolies through socialisation processes and the transformation of social norms in the direction of a regulation of the webs of human interdependence that actualises their immanent emancipatory potential. To Elias, once again expressing the possibility of reading his work from a perspective informed by a form of objective ethics, the development of the networks of human interdependence and of the power asymmetries that structure them in the direction of the greater socialisation of monopoly centres creates the immanent potential for the development of more conscious and less repressive individual patterns of self-restraint. In his discussion of the Western European civilising process, Elias notes that the concrete historical expression that the development of

Critical orientation in world politics 115 individual patterns of self-restraint have come to assume in that context frequently entails high costs for individuals in terms of their capacity for self-expression and overall human satisfaction (Elias, 2012a: 488). According to Elias (2012a: 488), the patterns of self-restraint that became predominant in Western Europe can hardly be considered a ‘pinnacle’ of ‘civilised’ conduct, as they are frequently described in those countries’ ‘civilised’ self-images. Self-described ‘civilised’ people are rigged through in their personality structures by all manners of ‘anxieties’ and ‘tensions’ – frequently manifesting themselves in the form of neuroses and other psychological ailments – which derive from their internalisation of external constraints in the form of particularly harsh patterns of self-control (Elias, 2012a: 487). As Elias (2012a: 489) observes, these ‘rules of conduct and sentiment’, acquired throughout individual processes of education and socialisation, are an expression of the uncontrolled and unregulated character of the frequently asymmetric power struggles between social classes at both the state and inter-state levels. These unplanned social dynamics push people into patterns of asymmetric competition for power and status to which their personality structures must correspond through the individual internalisation of external constraints that guarantee ‘conformity’ with the dominant standards of ‘acceptable’ social behaviour which ‘have no other function than that of reinforcing [the dominant classes] power chances and status superiority’ (Elias, 2012a: 488). To Elias (2012a: 489) the development of the networks of human interdependence in the direction of a reduction of power asymmetries and greater socialisation of monopoly centres could permit an overall reduction in the personal costs of ‘civilisation’ by circumscribing people’s patterns of self-restraint only to ‘those instructions and prohibitions which are necessary in order to keep up a high level of functional differentiation and interdependence’ (Elias, 2012a: 489). Such more self-determined pattern of self-restraint, however, can only be achieved when the unplanned dynamics of human interdependence are brought under a greater degree of collective and conscious control. Only when the tensions between social classes within states and between states have been ‘mastered’ can the common pattern of individual self-control become ‘confined to those restraints that are necessary in order that [people] can live with each other and with themselves with a high chance of enjoyment and a low change of fear’ (Elias, 2012a: 489). Then, it can become the rule, rather than the exception, that ‘an individual person could attain an optimal balance between his or her imperative drives claiming satisfaction and fulfilment and the constraints imposed upon them’ (Elias, 2012a: 489). A condition which Elias (2012a: 489) described as one of greater ‘happiness’ or ‘freedom’.1 Elias comments in this regard point to the complex ways the interweaving of intra- and inter-societal conditions of existence affect the development of civilising processes and the actualisation of their immanent emancipatory potential. In order to fully integrate the contribution of Elias’s process sociology to a reconstruction of a historical-sociological approach to the problem of orientation in critical international theory, it is thus necessary to turn now to a discussion of how the processconcepts mobilised in the previous chapter – namely, monopoly mechanism, triad

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of controls, civilising processes and class struggles – can inform an analysis of inter-societal relations in ways that permit the development of a critical international theory that functions as a more adequate means of orientation in both its explanatory and anticipatory dimensions. A discussion of how these process-concepts permit the development of such a critical international theory requires the introduction of an important distinction in Elias’s conceptual apparatus. Although Elias never expressly considers the possibility, the discussion above clearly points to the need to consider intersocietal relations as a fourth dimension of the triad of controls. This occurs to extent that not only the intra-societal development of the monopoly mechanism and civilising processes is always conditioned by inter-societal relations, but because the development of these processes at the inter-societal level frequently lags behind developments that have been achieved at the intra-societal level in terms of the expansion of the human powers of control over their conditions of existence. As such, human beings can find themselves living in societies that have achieved a high degree of socialisation of their intra-societal monopoly centres, to which corresponds a pattern of ‘civilisation’ that permits a significant degree of collective and conscious self-determination over their conditions of existence, but whose further development, or even future sustainability, are hindered by a lack of similar patterns of monopoly socialisation and control at the level of inter-societal relations. It is thus necessary to speak about a tetrad of controls referring, respectively, to the interdependent and symbolically-mediated development of human beings’ control over their metabolism with nature, over individual internal drives and impulses, over intra-societal processes, and over inter-societal processes. A final concept that is important to introduce in the context of this discussion, to the extent that it permits the conceptual mediation between intra- and inter-societal processes, is survival units. According to Elias (2012b: 133) human beings are bounded to each other in various ways in accordance with the emotional, survival or social needs they fulfil one another. A great variety of human bonds can be identified, from sexual, to familial, to occupational, to national. People have several simultaneous attachments to different bonds in different degrees of emotional intensity and priority in a manner that is society-specific and historically variable. To Elias (2012b: 134), one of the shortcomings of Marx’s work was assigning priority to ‘occupational bonds’ as the determinant factor of human development to the detriment of the relational dynamics associated with other forms of bonds. As the discussion in Chapter 4 highlighted, Marx’s multidimensional conception of class struggles actually envisioned a much more complex interplay between different types of human bonds, as is evidenced by the different forms that class struggles can assume in different contexts, from struggles between classes in the strict economic sense, to being expressed in struggles for national liberation or gender emancipation. But Elias makes an important point to the analysis of this interplay when he underlines the role played by what he calls the ‘solidaristic’ bond that develops between members of the same ‘survival unit’ in most human beings’

Critical orientation in world politics 117 emotional maps. A ‘survival unit’ consists of that form of human bond whose social purpose is to knit people together (…) [for] the common defence of their lives, the survival of their group in the face of attacks by other groups and, for a variety of reasons, attacks in common on other groups. Thus, the primary function of such an alliance is either physically to wipe out other people or to protect its own members from being physically wiped out. Since the potential of such units for attack is inseparable from their potential for defence, they may be called ‘attack-anddefence units’ or ‘survival units’. At the present stage of social development, they take the form of nation states. In the future they may be amalgamations of several former nation states. In the past they were represented by city-states or the inhabitants of a stronghold. Size and structure vary: the function remains the same. (…) [W]herever people have bonded and integrated into units for attack and defence, this bond has been stressed above all others. This survival function, involving the use of physical force against others, creates interdependences of a particular kind. It plays a part in the figurations people form, perhaps no greater but also no more negligible than ‘occupational’ bonds. Although it cannot be reduced to ‘economic’ functions, neither is it separable from them. (Elias, 2012b: 134) People frequently attach very strong emotional bonds to the survival units of which they are a part because of the survival needs they serve. Their attachment to their survival units is ‘often as intense as their attachment to a person they love’, and people are ‘deeply affected when the social unit to which they are devoted is conquered or destroyed, debased or humiliated, as when a beloved person dies’ (Elias, 2012b: 133). These emotional attachments to different forms of interpersonal bonds, namely survival units, but also belongings to a particular social class, race or other form of bond, are frequently mediated by symbols, such as flags, coats of arms, anthems or rituals that are shared by those that integrate a particular social bond (see: Kaspersen and Gabriel, 2008; Kaspersen, 2021; for a deeper exploration of the role of ‘symbols’ in interpersonal bonds see: Linklater, 2019). As Lars Kaspersen and Norman Gabriel (2008: 381) argue, Elias’s identification of survival units as another of the ‘social universals’ of human development, which assumes society-specific and historically variable expressions, has two fundamental implications. First, it means Elias’s process sociology is inherently cognisant of the multiplicity of the human condition, as all human beings are born into and live in some sort of survival unit and each survival unit always exists in a larger system of multiple survival units (Kaspersen and Gabriel, 2008: 380; see also Kaspersen, 2021). And second, survival units frequently assume ‘primacy’ over other human interpersonal bonds. This primacy is expressed in two ways. First, because of the survival function that survival units fulfil, people frequently emotionally attach to them in a stronger manner than they do to other interpersonal bonds. And second, survival units enjoy a level of relative autonomy greater than that of other

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interpersonal bonds, which permits them to condition the latter’s functioning and development (Kaspersen and Gabriel, 2008: 380). This relative autonomy means that other forms of interpersonal bonds are conditioned in their functioning by the interpersonal bond that encompasses them, the survival unit. In other words, these interpersonal bonds require the conditions of pacification that the monopoly of force of a survival unit guarantees to function and operate, which gives the survival unit in which these other interpersonal bonds form themselves a significant degree of relative autonomy. On the other hand, a survival unit cannot exist without these other interpersonal bonds, e.g., depending on occupational bonds to reproduce the material conditions of existence of the survival unit and on familial bonds for the biological reproduction of its members. Hence, the same survival unit can exhibit throughout history highly variable patterns of power relations between the several interpersonal bonds that constitute it, which conditions not only the degree of relative autonomy between these interpersonal bonds but also the degree of emotional attachment individuals feel in relation to the several interpersonal bonds of which they are a part. The primacy that survival units frequently play in individual emotional attachments, however, does not mean that other interpersonal bonds, and the concepts that identify them, such as social classes, should lose their role as relevant sociological concepts, especially considering a multidimensional understanding of social class such as Marx’s. The argument here is that Elias’s theoretical work on how survival units develop, relate to the several interpersonal bonds that constitute them, as well as to other survival units, can help understand the interweaving of the different dimensions of the tetrad of controls in ways that are relevant for a more adequate, historical-sociological, approach to critical theorising. Elias’s conception of the relationship between different interpersonal bounds, and the role these play in human emotional attachments, permits to analyse the different forms that class struggles assume in different contexts and how these are related to different historically-specific patterns of the tetrad of controls. That is the framework that orientates the rest of the discussion in this chapter, whose goal is to trace the way the development of the monopoly mechanism and the tetrad of controls interweave with the development of class struggles and the forms they assume at the level of world politics. Class struggles in inter-societal relations In his discussions of inter-societal relations, Elias notes that the operation of the monopoly mechanism tends to assume different expressions in that context than what it does at the level intra-societal relations. While in intra-societal relations elimination struggles can lead to the formation of central monopoly institutions with control over the means of violence and taxation in a certain territory, Elias (2010a: 134) considers that the web of humanity has become too wide, and the number of states large and small that are accustomed to independence is too considerable, to give a single state or a single group of

Critical orientation in world politics 119 states any real chance of establishing a lasting military-economic hegemony over the whole of humanity. However, the increasing complexity and intricacy of the webs of global interdependence also constantly confront human survival units with the task of organising themselves globally. This is even more the case given how the patterns of control of the human-nature metabolism that became historically predominant have led to the emergence of unplanned outcomes that further reinforce global interdependence by posing direct threats to the maintenance of complex human societies and even the future of life on the planet. The ecological crisis posed by climate change and biodiversity loss is an example of such an unplanned development. Another is the historically-emergent nuclear balance of power that, in Elias’s (2010a: 120) assessment, has made elimination contests between survival units an increasingly ‘obsolete’ mode of power struggle since they imply the realistic possibility of destruction of not only the contending parties, but of a considerable part of the world’s human and non-human population, making large areas of the planet inhospitable to life.2 Under these conditions, Elias considers that the intra-societal role played by monopoly institutions as regulators of the web of interdependencies has come to be slowly assumed also at the level of inter-state relations by international regulatory institutions which, while not monopolies in themselves, tend to reproduce some of the developmental patterns of the monopoly mechanism. These international regulatory institutions, of which the United Nations system is the main global expression, result from the planned and partial pooling of sovereign competencies between different states, as a strategy to acquire a greater degree of collective and conscious control over their conditions of interdependent existence (Elias, 2010b: 150). However, as Elias (2010b) notes, the degree of control chances each survival unit, and the individuals that constitute them, acquire via their integration in these international regulatory institutions is also dependent on the inter-societal balances of power that structure the global webs of human interdependence. In the contemporary and, in historical perspective, still early phase of development of international regulatory institutions, these institutions tend to reflect existing power asymmetries between states. They are predominantly shaped in their functioning, and in the content of the international norms they emanate, by the interests of the stronger and most influential states. As such, individuals tend to experience a higher chance of collectively controlling their conditions of existence inside their survival units – at least in those that have at least partially socialised their monopoly centres, namely via the development of parliamentary democracies and welfare states – than they do at the level of inter-societal relations, where their capacity to influence decision-making processes taking place in international regulatory institutions remains low (Elias, 2010b: 148). Consequently, people’s emotional attachment to these international regulatory institutions remains low and their respective national survival units continue to constitute the interpersonal bond with which they feel the highest degree of emotional identification. Elias (2010b: 189) thus talks of a ‘drag-effect’ in people’s emotional attachments that can block the further

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development of international regulatory institutions and is a product of the latter’s lack of democratic accountability and the high levels of power asymmetries that structure their functioning. Hence, even though the human species has become increasingly interdependent on a global scale, humankind remains ‘a blank space on the map of [most people’s] emotions’ (Elias, 2010b: 181). This phase in the development of international regulatory institutions, in some ways, parallels the private phase in the development of monopoly centres at the intra-societal level. This has significant implications for the form that emancipatory class struggles tend to assume in its context. For example, it becomes a likely developmental path that whenever the monopoly centres of certain states are taken over, either via revolution or peaceful development, by the representatives of lower social classes with the objective of promoting their socialisation and that of interstate relations – historical examples being the struggles for national liberation against colonial empires and forms of neo-colonialism throughout the 20th century, many of which assumed an expressly socialist outlook and consciously sought to actualise Marx and Engels’ revolutionary emancipatory vision – such socialisation struggles will necessarily be conditioned by the dynamics of inter-societal relations in ways that fundamentally shape their form and orientation. If the socialisation projects of those emancipatory class struggles are perceived as threatening by the most powerful states in international society, those emancipatory projects will quickly be confronted with the need to ensure their own survival, and that of their political project, in the context of a hostile international environment whose main regulatory institutions are predominantly controlled by more powerful states. Consequently, under these conditions, individuals involved in these emancipatory struggles will tend to develop particularly strong emotional attachments to their state as the main survival unit of their emancipatory project and, consequently, to promote the development of patterns of ‘civilisation’ in keeping with the situation of struggle for survival found at the inter-societal level. This means that patterns of individual self-control, control over non-human nature and control over social processes within these states will tend to assume a more repressive and dominating character, in keeping with the need to accumulate material power and ensure individual compliance with the standards of behaviour required for the life-or-death power struggles fought at the inter-societal level with other survival units. Under those conditions, the initial goals of these emancipatory movements will be frequently suppressed, or transformed, by the international struggle for survival, and new intra-state class structures will tend to emerge that do not necessarily correspond to the ideal that initially oriented the emancipatory movement. Elias’s conception of the monopoly mechanism, at how it operates at both the intra- and inter-societal levels thus permits a more detailed understanding, than that provided by Marx’s grand narrative, of the underlying social dynamics shaping the different forms that class struggles can assume in different contexts. In contexts characterised by significant international power asymmetries, emancipatory class struggles aiming at the socialisation of intra-state monopolies and inter-state relations in ways that threaten more powerful states and their control of international regulatory institutions frequently find themselves under siege. This tends

Critical orientation in world politics 121 to transform these class struggles into national liberation struggles but also leads them to develop patterns of the tetrad of controls characterised by more repressive forms of individual self-control and social control and by more dominating relations with non-human nature. These patterns of ‘civilisation’ frequently appear as essential to the proponents of these emancipatory class struggles to ensure the development of the required levels of material power and social control to confront the inter-societal power struggles that threaten their survival. Consequently, they also can open the way to unplanned processes of class stratification and social oppression that undermine the emancipatory hopes of these movements, potentially even turning them into their opposite, as the members of a small revolutionary elite become the private holders of the intra-state monopoly centres. This contradictory pattern of the emancipation/alienation dialectic can be witnesses in several 20th-century revolutionary movements, starting with the Soviet revolution and its Stalinist outcome. From this perspective, then, the emancipatory hopes of Marx’s critical theory and its vision of a cosmopolitan future characterised by the absence of class or national divisions to be reached via a revolution that, even if starting on a national basis, would quickly assume global expression, appears as an expression of Marx’s lingering utopianism. Elias’s analysis of the development of the monopoly mechanism at both the intra- and inter-societal levels, and its relationship with the development of different patterns of the tetrad of controls, leads to the conclusion that the actual historical path of emancipatory class struggles tends to be much more complex and contradictory. However, it is also important to observe that while the social dynamics shaping inter-societal relations and emerging international regulatory institutions can be read as reproducing characteristics of the private phase of development of the monopoly mechanism, a direct domestic analogy cannot be assumed. In significant ways, they also exhibit characteristics of the socialisation phase of the monopoly mechanism. Overall, struggles for national liberation and socialisation throughout the 20th century did not seek to break away from, or destroy, existing international regulatory institutions. Rather, those institutions themselves frequently became the site of parallel struggles – frequently coexisting with direct, violent confrontation on the ground – for the socialisation of inter-state relations and of the international regulatory institutions themselves. A clear expression of this is the way the United Nations General Assembly became one of the main stages for national liberation struggles. These struggles found expression in the development of international norms, such as the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 adopted in 1960, that affirmed the right of self-determination, called for an end to colonial rule, and characterised it as a violation of human rights, effectively producing a ‘tectonic shift in international legitimacy (…) undermining the institution of empire’ (Reus-Smit, 2011: 236). Another expression of these struggles for the socialisation of inter-state relations and international regulatory institutions is the way post-colonial and developing states sought to leverage their growing influence over the United Nations General Assembly to, in a declaration adopted in 1974, call for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) that permitted developing states to

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escape the poverty trap, namely via technological transfers and fairer trade conditions (see: Gilman, 2015; McFarland, 2015; for a discussion of a re-emergence of the NIEO project see: Chang, 2020). These two examples are clear expressions of class struggles – in the wider, multidimensional understanding of the concept – that were fought within the United Nations system and that aimed at the reduction of power asymmetries in inter-state relations and at the socialisation of existing international regulatory institutions. These struggles sought to use these institutions to reconstitute international norms in such a way that they better reflected the interests of developing states and permitted them a greater degree of influence in the collective regulation of the global web of human interdependence. Elias’ discussion of the monopoly mechanism and its relationship with the development of the tetrad of controls thus permits a reconstruction of critical international theory in such a way that opens the way to tracing not only the different forms that class struggles might assume under different conditions, but also their frequently contradictory character. On the one hand, as mentioned above, the emancipatory class struggles expressed in the national liberation struggles and socialist revolutions of the 20th century frequently resulted in the establishment of societies whose patterns of ‘civilisation’ assumed a repressive character that contrasted with their initially stated goals. To these patterns corresponded intra-state class structures – in the strict economic sense – that were in many ways oppressive to the lower social classes supposedly represented by these emancipatory movements. On the other hand, those same emancipatory movements were also responsible for significant achievements in terms of the reduction of power asymmetries in interstate relations, partial socialisation of emergent international regulatory institutions and improvements in the livelihoods of their populations.3 Three points are thus important to make in this context. First, it is fundamental that the triad of controls is in fact understood as a tetrad of controls, given that the patterns of individual self-control, control over nature, and control over intrasocietal relations are fundamentally intertwined with the patterns of control over inter-societal relations and, consequently, with the development of the monopoly mechanism at both the intra- and inter-societal levels. In the examples provided, a lower degree of collective control at the level of inter-societal relations is associated with more repressive patterns of the remaining three dimensions of control within societies. As argued, emancipatory class struggles throughout the 20th century, such as those expressed by national liberation struggles against colonial empires, or by social movements representative of lower social classes envisioning the socialisation of intra-societal monopoly centres and inter-societal relations and regulatory institutions, were fundamentally conditioned in the form they assumed, and in the patterns of ‘civilisation’ they inaugurated, by the dynamics of inter-societal relations and the development of the monopoly mechanism that they encountered at that level. The low level of socialisation of inter-societal relations meant that existing international regulatory institutions tended to be predominantly controlled by more powerful states that frequently resisted the nationally-based emancipatory struggles they faced and sought to suppress them. This led to the development of

Critical orientation in world politics 123 patterns of ‘civilisation’ – i.e., self-control, control over nature and social control – within the societies engaged in emancipatory struggles that assumed a more repressive character in keeping with the struggles for survival they fought at the international level. At the same time, the very existence of these emancipatory struggles also had an effect, even if not to the extent expected by their leaders, in forcing concessions on the part of more powerful states, thus contributing to the at least partial socialisation of existing international regulatory institutions. It is thus an expression of these emancipatory class struggles and their influence that the United Nations system reinforced its emphasis on issues of decolonisation and development throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It could even be argued that these emancipatory struggles had a socialising effect within the most powerful states. The development of Keynesian social democracy in the post-Second World War period in the core capitalist states can be argued to have resulted from the combined pressure of workers movements within those states and the at least nominal existence of a socialist alternative, which led to the awareness, on the part of some leading national bourgeoisies, that the alternative to the at least partial socialisation of existing intrastate monopolies of power was revolution (see: Lorenzini, 2019; Sant’Anna and Weller, 2020). The second, related, point that is important to make in this context is that a reconstructed critical international theory via an engagement with Elias’s process sociology in the manner that is suggested here permits building upon Marx’s grand narrative in ways that reinforce its strengths and overcome at least some of its shortcomings. It permits the development of a critical international theory that significantly reinforces its explanatory dimension via an improvement of its understanding of some of the main dynamics shaping processes of social development and that, concomitantly, also reinforces its anticipatory dimension by being better equipped to disclose how each particular historical juncture holds immanent potentials for an expansion of the inherited limits of the possible. This assessment is based not on a transcendental vision of an ideal future state of the type that orients Habermas’s critical theory, nor in the utopian expectations that frequently colour Marx’s grand narrative, but rather on a form of objective ethics that engages in a constantly ongoing assessment of the concrete, highly complex, and frequently contradictory, struggles in which human beings are engaged at specific historical junctures. It is a critical international theory that can capture the frequently concomitant emancipatory/alienatory character of ongoing class struggles, in the various forms these might assume in different contexts. And which is thus capable, from an anticipatory standpoint of orientation, of simultaneously supporting some emancipatory class struggles that hold within them the potential to expand the limits of the possible of human self-determination, while maintaining a critical perspective on those movements, denouncing, resisting to, and trying to find ways to avoid/overcome their frequent de-emancipatory outcomes and strategies. This implies a constantly ongoing assessment of the developing class structure and orientation of these struggles. For example, and in keeping with Marx’s approach in this regard, discussed in Chapter Four, support for struggles of national liberation,

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from this perspective, is conditioned on their representation of the emancipatory interests of lower classes and ethnic minorities, turning into criticism whenever national liberation struggles become dominated by a self-serving revolutionary elite that enacts repressive policies on those lower classes and ethnic minorities. It is thus a critical international theory that remains connected to concrete historical struggles, acknowledging their frequently contradictory character, and maintaining an attitude of critical solidarity with the various forms of emancipatory class struggles, rather than escaping to the comfort of theoretical abstraction or utopian expectations. The third point is that this reconstructed critical international theory avoids not only the utopian hangovers that hindered Marx’s grand narrative, but also the Eurocentric shortcomings of Kantian-Habermasian approaches to critical theorising. The proposed approach actualises the post-Eurocentric and non-teleological potential of Marx’s critical theory, by proposing a grand narrative of human development that is not based on tracing the stages of human development through which all human societies are expected to develop, but rather a grand narrative based on what has here been called process-concepts. In other words, concepts – such as symbol emancipation, tetrad of controls, class struggles, monopoly mechanism, survival units and civilising processes – that capture social dynamics that are universal to all human societies, but which can assume very different expressions in different historical and spatial circumstances. This approach maintains a commitment to a notion of universality and the search for a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition, thus avoiding falling into contextualist relativism, while avoiding confusing specific expressions of those process-concepts – such as that found in the development of Western European societies – as the universal measure by which all other human societies should be assessed. Concomitantly, it is also based on a conceptual framework that, as the discussion in this chapter makes evident, is particularly attuned to the agency of non-Western societies in the development of the emancipation/alienation dialectic at the level of world politics. In the process, it also moves beyond a perspective of non-Western societies as mainly adapters or resistants to an expanding Western modernity and overcomes Eurocentric diffusionist models of human development. It is thus an approach to a grand narrative of human development that is, simultaneously, universal, non-teleological, contingent, and open-ended, as the concrete expressions that process-concepts can assume can never be disclosed a priori, nor can the limits of the possible they inaugurate or supersede in different historical contexts be predicted. Socialisation and planned interdependence However, a final question that makes sense to pose at this point is to what extent this approach to critical theorising is attuned only to class struggles that occur via the state and that express themselves in relations between states? Is what is being argued for here a form of critical international theory with a distinctively realist outlook? Is this critical international theory also condemned to a ‘realist fate’ that locates the main site of emancipatory struggles in geopolitical competition

Critical orientation in world politics 125 between states (Davenport, 2013)? In this context, it is worth further exploring how Elias’s discussion of the developmental tendencies that structure the socialisation of monopoly centres can also open the way for a consideration of the interweaving between state-based class struggles with class struggles that assume a distinctively transnational character. As discussed in the previous chapter, the immanent historical potential for the socialisation of monopoly centres at the intra-state level emerges in the context of a process of functional democratisation. This means that, as the networks of human interdependence become increasingly more complex – itself a process intertwined with the development of human control over non-human nature and associated development of technology and forms of organisation of social labour – those social classes in control of monopoly centres can no longer ensure their functioning and management without relying on an increasingly wider group of people, including managerial fractions of other social classes. Previously excluded social classes can thus gain access and a degree of influence over decision-making at monopoly centres, either via some of their members becoming functionaries of their central institutions or by performing societal tasks that are important for the maintenance of the networks of human interdependence on which all have come to depend. A process of functional democratisation thus finds expression in the way that the operation of monopoly centres, in conditions of growing functional interdependence, increasingly depends on the activities of wider strata of society outside the ruling class. As was mentioned before, whether functional democratisation actually leads to the socialisation of monopoly centres remains an open question. It depends on the willingness of monopoly rulers to open decision-making centres to the active participation of individuals originating from other social classes and on the latter’s capacity to impose their access to monopoly centres in the context of historicallycontextualised and society-specific struggles for power and influence. But a similar pattern can be seen emerging at the inter-societal level throughout the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries, as the growing complexity and intricacy of the webs of global tensions and competitive interdependencies between human survival units also means that the global management of both international regulatory institutions and private economic monopolies (in the form of multinational corporations) has had to increasingly rely on an ever-widening group of international administrators drawn from several class and national backgrounds. At this point, Elias and Linklater’s observations on the role of administrative elites in the socialisation of state monopoly centres can be intersected with Kees van der Pijl’s (1998; see also: van der Pijl, 2005) discussion of international managerial cadres in ways that are relevant to address the immanent potential for a transnational track of socialisation of contemporary international regulatory institutions. One that is parallel to, and intertwining with, the state-based struggles for the socialisation of international relations carried out by post-colonial and developing states. Echoing Elias’s comments on functional democratisation, van der Pijl (1998: 139) observes how the growing complexity of the global networks of human interdependence associated with the globalisation of market capitalism implies that

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both in the context of international regulatory institutions and private economic monopolies, the leading state and private economic rulers are compelled to increasingly rely on a growing ‘number of paid functionaries and intermediaries, the cadres’, to whom they cede ‘aspects of [their] rule (…) with every advance in the complexity of production and social organisation’ (van der Pijl, 1998: 139). Individuals belonging to these managerial cadres can have various class and national backgrounds. But in the process of integrating their administrative roles at the level of international regulatory institutions, multinational corporations, and national institutions in charge of foreign relations of various kinds, they are frequently compelled to, at least partially, detach from their more circumscribed national or class perspectives and adopt more ‘cosmopolitan’ orientations as a precondition for the successful carrying out of the management tasks with which they are charged (van der Pijl, 1998: 139). This process is further reinforced by the way that, in the performance of their tasks, the managerial cadres are also directly confronted by the relationship between the way that global networks of interdependence are structured and regulated and the emergence of phenomena, such as ecological degradation or economic inequality, that might threaten those same global networks with which the existence and activity of the managerial cadres is intertwined. According to van der Pijl (1998, 154), the specific type of response provided by the managerial cadres to these challenges is inherently connected with the role that education, and particularly university education, plays in their social reproduction. This means that, despite national or class backgrounds, these individuals are frequently infused with the ‘university (…) atmosphere of pure science, [which] sustains the image of expertise as a social force distinct from state and capital’ (van der Pijl, 1998: 154). This leads to a general ‘orientation towards rationalising social and economic development (…) [and] a preference for planning and regulation in the name of the wider social interest’ (van der Pijl, 1998: 142). Consequently, van der Pijl (1998: 140) refers to a tendency amongst international managerial cadres for the emergence of a cosmopolitan self-identity that is focused on tasks of planning and regulation, which increasingly come be seen as being carried out in the name of the wider social interest in the maintenance and improvement of the global webs of interdependence; namely through the further development and socialisation of international regulatory institutions to which the managerial cadres increasingly attach strong emotional bonds. Hence, ‘to the degree (…) [that] the intricacy of social organisation increases (…) the cadre stratum which embodies this infrastructure of advanced capitalist society grows into a distinct social force’ (van der Pijl, 1998: 140). A social force composed of individuals that carry a specifically cosmopolitan worldview oriented towards science-based ‘planned interdependence’, which arises from the combination of their specific personal experiences associated with the tasks they develop in an international context and the specific forms of education on which the reproduction of the managerial cadres relies (van der Pijl, 1998: 156). The parallels between van der Pijl’s analysis of the historical emergence of international managerial cadres and Elias and Linklater’s discussion of the role played by ascendent bourgeois managerial class fractions within European court societies

Critical orientation in world politics 127 are clear. In a similar way to that in which the ascending bourgeoisie developed a distinctive pattern of ‘civilisation’, i.e., an orientation to specific patterns of selfcontrol, control over nature and control over social processes, that contrasted with that of ruling aristocratic elites – namely to the extent that it had a more national outlook – contemporary international managerial cadres hold the immanent potential to develop what van der Pijl (1998: 156, emphasis in the original) calls a frame of reference oriented towards ‘democratic, equitable inter-nationalism’. However, van der Pijl (1988: 156) also notes that the historical emergence of cosmopolitan scientifically-planned interdependence as a new ‘civilisational’ pattern of regulation of the global webs of social and ecological interdependence is only an immanent potential. Whether or not it comes to be actualised ultimately depends on the further socialisation of international regulatory institutions. And similarly to what occurs with the socialisation of monopoly centres at the intrastate level, such socialisation can only come about either via, or through a combination of, the voluntary self-restraint of the more powerful and developed states and of the ruling capitalist class in control of private multinational corporations, or via its imposition by various possible alliances between the least powerful and developed states and social forces committed to the socialisation of world politics. These forces range from sections of the international managerial cadres oriented to planned interdependence to the nationally-based global working class, and indigenous, feminist, or other minority groups that resist the dynamics of global capitalist development and geopolitical competition. In this context, van der Pijl (1998: 157) notes historical instances when such combinations between sections of the international managerial cadres and national movements in post-colonial states arose that questioned the dominant global political and economic order. In the 1970s, for example, growing concerns amongst sections of the managerial cadres with the ecological impact of capitalist development, which found expression in Club of Rome reports such as The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972), combined with developing states’ already mentioned calls for a New International Economic Order to ‘stress the need for the entire political and economic overhaul of a world thrown into disarray by the relentless operation of market forces’ (van der Pijl, 1998: 157). This represents an instance when a section of the international managerial cadres looked beyond the dominant global political and economic order, whose smooth functioning they are tasked with ensuring, to express an emerging orientation towards the general interest of the ‘planetary community of fate’ (van der Pijl, 1998: 165). A more recent example is the way the second working group on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) openly questions a global economic model based primarily on capital growth and calls for equitable transfers of wealth and technology to poorer states as a way to tackle the growing ecological crisis, explicitly stating its advocacy for a new pattern of ‘economic, social and technological progress grounded in stewardship and care, rather than exploitation’ (Schipper et al., 2022, Ch. 18: 2671; see also: Good, 2022; Parrique, 2022). These examples point to the immanent potential for international managerial cadres to adopt a more

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cosmopolitan orientation that looks beyond the inherited limits of the possible and opens the historical possibility for the development of a more reflexive pattern of the tetrad of controls that expands conscious and collective regulation of global social and ecological interdependence.4 Of course, whether the immanent potential for the transformation of the inherited limits of the possible via the development of a new pattern of the tetrad of controls is identified and actualised, or what shape that pattern might come to assume, is contingent on ongoing class struggles. Particularly influential in this context, according to van der Pijl (1998: 137), is whether these class struggles evolve in such a way as to compel wider or narrower sections of the international managerial cadres to either ‘seek to uphold the privileges of the ruling class or, under the impetus of popular movements, (…) circumscribe and look beyond capitalist discipline’ and global geopolitical competition.5 The political orientation of the international managerial cadres is thus always dependent on historically-specific configurations of class forces at both the national and international levels. What type of pattern of the tetrad of controls could result from the potential success of ongoing emancipatory class struggles is, of course, an open question. It is possible to presume that it would be more reflexive of the webs of interdependence that globally bind human beings not only to each other, but also to non-human species and ecosystems. This would mean a pattern of the tetrad of controls in which humans learn to be more self-conscious and reflexive of their own capacity to exercise control over themselves, each other and non-human nature and are thus able to better self-determine what patterns of control at each of these dimensions they should exercise to permit maximum individual self-expression and realisation within the requirements of collective human and non-human well-being and prosperity. It could entail a pattern of control of the human-nature metabolism that is less dominating and more focused on a scientific understanding of how to ‘work with’ natural processes and other species in ways that permit the flourishing of human and non-human life (Saramago, 2023: 204). This means a reorientation of productive activity away from capital growth to rather a focus on the production of durable use-values, reduction of necessary labour and reproduction of the conditions for ecological sustainability. A pattern of individual self-control that is oriented to forms of self-realisation and self-expression that find actualisation not only in material consumption but in relations with other humans and non-human nature. Concomitantly, it means a pattern of self-control that circumscribes individual self-restraint to those limitations that are essential for the maintenance of the complex networks of social and ecological interdependence on which all individuals have come to depend. And a pattern of social control, at both the intra- and inter-societal levels, characterised by a greater influence of previously excluded classes and social groups over decision-making centres and a concomitant socialisation of national monopoly centres, multinational corporations, and international regulatory institutions. Whether or not such a more conscious, reflexive, and collectively selfdetermined pattern of the tetrad of controls will ever come into being depends on what Linklater (2010, 2021: Ch. 7) has called a long, complex, and frequently

Critical orientation in world politics 129 contradictory ‘global civilising process’ and on the outcomes of the specific class struggles that will structure it. But, to paraphrase Elias (2011: 174), it is unlikely that human beings will find, in the time they are able to secure on this planet, anything better to do than to search for just that, for the development of better conditions of life on Earth, for themselves and for all those forms of non-human life that with them share a fundamental bond as members of the planetary community of fate. Notes 1 One can also extrapolate that Elias’s conclusion concerning the possibility of actualisation of a more self-determined pattern of self-restraint at the level of individual personality structures is fundamentally intertwined with the development of a pattern of control of the human-nature metabolism that actualises Marx’s envisioned post-capitalist transformation of the character of the production process. Namely, a transformation in which human beings transition from being the executors of labouring activity to become the scientific supervisors of an increasingly automated labour process, with the associated reduction of necessary labour time and expansion of free time that such automation implies. Without the reduction of necessary labour time in this manner, the chances for a more consciously self-determined pattern of individual self-restraint are reduced since, to paraphrase Marx’s quote in Chapter 4, the realm of freedom only beings when labour determined by necessity ends. Concomitantly, the actualisation of such a post-capitalist pattern of regulation of the human-nature metabolism also depends on the further socialisation of monopoly centres at both the intra- and inter-societal levels. It is thus possible to emphasise, once again, how the approach to critical theorising proposed in this book underlines the fundamental interweaving of the several dimensions of the triad of controls in any critical analysis of world politics that seeks to maintain a connection with the actual living experiences of human beings. 2 In this context, van der Bergh (1992) makes the interesting observation that the nuclear balance between the great powers has come to fulfil the role of a functional substitute to a global monopoly over the means of violence. The threat of annihilation on a global scale posed by nuclear war constitutes a compelling external constraint over people organised as states to exercise greater self-restraint in their foreign policy and develop a greater degree of control over their drives and impulses which, in the absence of the nuclear threat, would more easily take over their behavioural orientations and push them into armed conflict with each other. As such, the nuclear revolution, while implying an increase in the degree of human destructive capacity, also acts as a compulsion for the development of more self-restrained personality structures of the people caught up in the dynamics of mutually assured destruction. 3 The Chinese revolution, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the subsequent development of the People’s Republic of China since 1949, is perhaps a relevant example of this dialectic – arguably also identifiable in other socialist-oriented emancipatory struggles of the 20th century. The CCP supervised significant achievements in terms of, for example, the overall reduction of poverty in China (see: The World Bank, 2022), or in the reduction of global inter-state asymmetries, while also developing a pattern of domestic governance characterised by frequent repressive practices vis-à-vis the lower labouring classes it is supposed to represent (see: Bieler, 2017; Friedman, 2022). 4 Common to these examples is an emerging interest in the notion of ‘degrowth’ amongst international managerial cadres as an answer to the global ecological crisis (see: Kallis, 2018; Hickel, 2021; Hickel et al., 2021; Jackson, 2021). At first glance, it might seem that a degrowth perspective is incompatible with the type of post-capitalist future envisioned by Marx, characterised by technological development that permits a radical automation of

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production and associated reduction of necessary labour. However, as more sophisticated approaches to degrowth have emphasised, degrowth is not incompatible with technological innovation, quite on the contrary (see: Hickel, 2023). It rather implies the reduction of the wastefulness associated with the reproduction of capitalism, which has become indissociable from practices such as planned obsolescence. The reduction or elimination of such practices would release both the human and material resources necessary for further technological innovation envisioning increased productivity and reduction of necessary labour within the parameters required for ecological sustainability, especially when combined with the adoption of measures envisioning the socialisation of essential goods and services, such as healthcare and education. It is, however, also important to emphasise that any engagement with the notion of degrowth requires clarification on what it exactly entails, as there are significant implications associated with more radical agendas of degrowth that envision a return to less complex societies (see: Quilley, 2011; Saramago, 2023: 205–206). Furthermore, the notion of natural limits to growth is itself open to debate when conceived of from the materialist-emergentist perspective proposed in this book, which tends to see natural limits as historically changeable in accordance with the patterns of the human-nature metabolism (for a similar argument, see: Moore, 2015). However, the intention of this chapter is simply to identify emergent immanent potentials for alliances between international managerial cadres and global emancipatory movements that seek to think beyond their inherited limits of the possible, rather than propose a definite solution concerning what future shape a more self-determined and sustainable pattern of the tetrad of controls could assume. 5 Fundamental in this context is the capacity of nationally-based working class, indigenous, feminist, and other minority groups to transnationalise their struggles and link them up with the socialisation-oriented sections of the international managerial cadres.

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Critical orientation in world politics 131 Good J (2022) Stories about economic degrowth help fight climate change – and yield a host of other benefits. The Conversation, 18 April 2022. Available at: https://theconversation. com/stories-about-economic-degrowth-help-fight-climate-change-and-yield-a-host-ofother-benefits-181025 [accessed 30 July 2023]. Hickel J (2021) Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. London: Windmill Books. Hickel J, Brockway P, Kallis G, Keyßer L, Lenzen M, Slameršak A, Steinberger J and ÜrgeVorsatz D (2021) Urgent need for post-growth climate mitigation scenarios. Nature Energy 6: 766–768. Hickel J (2023) On technology and degrowth. Monthly Review 75(3): 44–50. Jackson T (2021) Post Growth: Life After Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kallis G (2018) Degrowth. Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing Limited. Kaspersen L (2021) War, Survival Units and Citizenship: A Neo-Eliasian ProcessualRelational Perspective. Abingdon: Routledge. Kaspersen L and Gabriel N (2008) The importance of survival units for Norbert Elias’s figurational perspective. The Sociological Review 56(3): 370–387. Linklater A (2010) Global civilising processes and the ambiguities of human interconnectedness. European Journal of International Relations 16(2): 155–178. Linklater A (2019) Symbols and world politics: Towards a long-term perspective on historical trends and contemporary challenges. European Journal of International Relations 25(3): 931–954. Linklater A (2021) The Idea of Civilization and the Making of Global Order. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Lorenzini S (2019) Global Development: A Cold War History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. McFarland V (2015) The New International Economic Order, interdependence, and globalisation. Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 6(1): 217–233. Meadows DH, Meadows DL, Randers J and Behrens W (1972) The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Books. Moore JW (2015) Nature in the limits to capital (and vice versa). Radical Philosophy 193: 9–19. Parrique T (2022) Degrowth in the IPCC AR6 WGII. Available at: https://timotheeparrique. com/degrowth-in-the-ipcc-ar6-wgii/ [accessed 30 July 2023]. Quilley S (2011) Entropy, the anthroposphere and the ecology of civilisation: An essay on the problem of ‘liberalism in one village’ in the long view. The Sociological Review 59(1): 65–90. Reus-Smit C (2011) Struggles for individual rights and the expansion of the international system. International Organization 65(2): 207–242. Sant’Anna AA and Weller L (2020) The threat of communism during the Cold War: A constraint to income inequality? Comparative Politics 52(3): 359–381. Saramago A (2023) Dualism and anti-dualism in the Anthropocene: Process sociology and human/nature relations in the Great Evolution. Historical Social Research 48(1): 190–212. Schipper ELF, Revi BL, Preston ER, Carr SH, Eriksen LR, Fernandez-Carril B, Glavovic NJM, Hilmi D, Ley R, Mukerji MS, Muylaert de Araujo R, Peres SKR and Singh PK (2022) Climate resilient development pathways. In: Pörtner HO, Roberts DC, Tignor M, Poloczanska ES, Mintenbeck K, Alegría A, Craig M, Langsdorf S, Löschke S, Möller V, Okem A and Rama B (eds) Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.

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Concluding remarks

This book began with a discussion of how the Eurocentric shortcomings of grand narratives have led to a reaction in critical international theory characterised by the adoption of several strategies that aim at avoiding their use in critical analyses of world politics. These strategies have assumed the form, on the one hand, of a growing concern with reflexivity, which seeks to identify underlying, and frequently unacknowledged, forms of exclusion and oppression structuring critical theoretical thinking. And on the other hand, of an emphasis on shorter-term analyses that seek to draw the critical implications of present or historical social practices. Both strategies seek to diminish critical international theory’s reliance on grand narratives by abandoning attempts to link their analyses to emerging dynamics shaping the long-term development of human societies. While not denying the important contribution of both strategies to the development of critical international theory, this book has argued that critical approaches to the study of world politics cannot abandon grand narratives. Critical international theory is confronted with a fundamental problem of orientation. Any answer to this problem implies two dimensions of critical theorising which, taking its lead from Seyla Benhabib, this book has characterised as, respectively, the explanatory and the anticipatory dimensions. The first is related to the development of theoretical frameworks capable of capturing the main dynamics of human historical development from a more cosmopolitan perspective. The second seeks to identify the potential gathered at each historical juncture for an expansion of human self-determination and disclose through what forms of political agency human beings might actualise that immanent potential in history. These two dimensions are fundamentally intertwined to the extent that the anticipatory disclosure of the potential for an expansion of the limits of human self-determination depends on the explanatory understanding of the emergent capabilities of human beings throughout the history of the species. Hence, while a truly universal perspective is impossible, without the search for a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation, based on a more detached understanding of the main social dynamics shaping the long-term development of human societies, critical international theory remains locked in particularistic perspectives. This makes it easily fall prey to forms of contextualist relativism that undermine its capacity for critical judgement. Alternatively, the growing concern with reflexivity, while helping avoid the trap of DOI: 10.4324/9781003221777-8

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Eurocentrism, also leads to an increasing reliance on philosophical abstraction that compromises critical international theory’s connection between theory and practice. As such, from a critical international theory perspective, the abandonment of grand narratives is no less a source of disorientation than their Eurocentrism. This book has thus sought to provide an alternative answer to the problem of orientation in critical international theory by suggesting theoretical avenues towards a recovery of the critical role of grand narratives without reproducing their shortcomings. It began by revisiting Habermas’ own attempt at reconstructing critical grand narratives to identify the shortcomings of his approach, here called a philosophicaltranscendental approach to grand narratives and critical theorising. It showed how Habermas ultimately failed in his endeavour, developing a critical theory that not only reproduced a form of Eurocentrism but also led to a growing disconnect between theory and the concrete historical struggles and experiences of embodied human beings. From there, the book moved to discuss Marx’s critical theory to argue that it held the potential to provide a more adequate, non-Eurocentric, and non-teleological approach to grand narratives, here called a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising. Marx provided an answer to the explanatory dimension of the critical project via a general theory of human development based on a materialist-emergentist conception of history, and to its anticipatory dimension via a form of objective ethics. Together, these implied an approach to critical theorising capable of simultaneously achieving a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition, while maintaining a connection between theory and practice. Marx’s achievement related to his deployment of what this book has called process-concepts, expressed in particular in his multidimensional conception of class struggles. Process-concepts permit an alternative, historicalsociological, approach to grand narrative theorising that is focused on understanding what are the social dynamics shaping the long-term development of all human societies, but which assume highly varied time- and society-specific expressions. This approach to grand narratives permits an answer to the problem of orientation alternative to that of stadial grand narratives or that of historical contextualism. By identifying the emergent social dynamics shaping the long-term development of all human societies, it recovers the search for a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition that can disclose the universal potentialities opened by human history. Namely, the way the long-term process of evolution of life on the planet led to the emergence of a species, the human, with a distinguishable capacity for conscious self-determination. At the same time, this approach maintains a connection with practice by analysing how these universal social dynamics assume drastically different context-specific expressions. Hence, an assessment becomes possible not only of how the long-term multilinear development of the human species led to contemporary conditions of existence in different contexts but also how these conditions express different patterns of the human capacity for conscious self-determination and hold different immanent potentials for the further development of that capacity in the context of multiple possible futures. Such an approach thus permits an answer to the problem of orientation that retains both the search

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for a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation and a connection with the actual social struggles of concrete human beings for an expansion of freedom in history. However, Marx was also incapable of fulfilling the potential in his work for a such a form of critical international theory, namely due to utopian hangovers in his critical theory and the way these led to an under-theorisation of the role of social norms and political communities in long-term processes of social change. The book then followed the lead of Andrew Linklater in proposing a pathway to a reconstruction of Marx’s critical theory and its historical-sociological approach to grand narratives via an engagement with the process sociology of Norbert Elias. Process sociology, it was argued, provides the necessary conceptual apparatus – in the form of a set of process-concepts such as symbol emancipation, civilising processes, monopoly mechanism, survival units, and tetrad of controls – to reconstruct Marx’s critical theory in such a way that builds upon its insights, while overcoming several of its shortcomings. It permits an understanding of how the development of different forms of class struggles, and hence of the potential for human self-determination in history, is intertwined with the development of political communities and human beings’ capacity to develop different patterns of what has been called the tetrad of controls, i.e. control over themselves as individuals, over their metabolism with non-human nature, and over their social relations at both the intra- and inter-societal levels. To recover the discussion in Chapter 6, this proposed reconstruction of a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising permits two fundamental contributions to critical international theory. First, it permits the development of a critical international theory that significantly reinforces its explanatory dimension via an improvement of its understanding of some of the main social dynamics shaping the development of all human societies. Concomitantly, it also reinforces its anticipatory dimension by helping critical international theory identify how each historical juncture holds immanent potentials for an expansion of human self-determination. This assessment is based not on a transcendental vision of an ideal future but rather on a constantly ongoing concrete assessment of the highly complex and frequently contradictory struggles in which embodied human beings are engaged in at specific contexts. It is thus a critical international theory that can identify the concomitant emancipatory/de-emancipatory character of ongoing social struggles, in the various forms these might express themselves. It is a critical international theory that is capable of, from an anticipatory standpoint of orientation, simultaneously supporting some emancipatory struggles that hold within them the potential to expand the limits of the possible of human self-determination, while maintaining a critical perspective on those movements and their frequent de-emancipatory outcomes and strategies. It is thus a critical international theory that remains connected to concrete historical struggles, maintaining an attitude of critical solidarity that embraces their frequently contradictory character, rather than escaping to the comfort of theoretical abstraction or utopian expectations. And second, it is a critical international theory that avoids not only the disconnect between theory and practice of more abstract approaches to critical theorising but also the Eurocentric shortcomings that tend to affect grand narratives. The

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proposed approach is not based on identifying the stages through which all human societies are expected to go through in their development. Instead, it is a grand narrative based on what has here been called process-concepts that capture social dynamics that are universal to all human societies, but which can assume very different expressions in different historical and spatial circumstances. This approach thus maintains a commitment to the search for a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition – and in this manner avoids falling into contextualist relativism – while also avoids confusing specific expressions of those processconcepts, such as those found in the development of Western European societies, as the universal yardstick by which all human societies should be measured. Furthermore, it is an approach that is particularly attuned to the agency of non-Western societies in the development of the emancipation/alienation dialectic at the level of world politics, thus moving beyond diffusionist models of human development that see non-Western societies as mainly adapters or resistants to an expanding Western modernity. Consequently, it is a form of critical international theory that is, simultaneously, cosmopolitan, non-teleological, contingent, and open-ended, as the concrete expressions that process-concepts can assume can never be predicted a priori, rather requiring constantly ongoing historical-sociological analysis. Multiple possible paths of future research arise from the approach to critical international theory proposed in this book. The process-concepts here identified are in no way exhaustive and are still predominantly based on research on the historical development of Western European societies. The test of the validity of these process-concepts as true social universals, as well as the disclosure of other relevant process-concepts, depends on more research on the development of non-Western societies. Furthermore, the identification of these process-concepts also arises from research focused on the last few centuries. By the very nature of the approach to critical international theory here being proposed, no period of human history is inherently more relevant than any other for testing and identifying the universality of process-concepts. Consequently, further research on more ancient human societies and their respective patterns of the tetrad of controls is required. Finally, at the end of Chapter 6, some preliminary observations were made concerning the immanent potential that contemporary world politics hold for an expansion of the limits of the possible of human self-determination. It was observed that an emergent cosmopolitan orientation towards the planned regulation of the global webs of ecological and social interdependence could open the way for the actualisation of a more self-determined and ecologically sustainable pattern of the tetrad of controls. However, it was also argued that the actualisation of that potential depends on the outcome of concrete historical struggles. Namely, on an emergent alliance between sections of the international managerial cadres and nationally-based social movements structured around struggles for the emancipation of the working class, women, racial or sexual minorities or indigenous groups, that seeks the socialisation of world politics and their international regulatory institutions. Further research is required to assess the adequacy of the identification of this immanent potential, as well as the actual concrete shape it might assume as the outcome of historical and ongoing class struggles. This research is inherently

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multidimensional and can assume multiple forms. Particularly interesting in this context are inquiries of how post-colonial developing states, nationally-based movements around class, gender or race and international managerial cadres concerned with the management of global interdependence might link up across state borders in ways that promote a socialisation of world politics. An area where these various social actors intertwine is that of science diplomacy, and within it, those interactions between states, scientists, and social movements specifically related to the development of answers to the global ecological crisis confronting human and non-human life on the planet. In that field, the interests of developing states in promoting their own scientific and technological development, of national-based social movements in promoting their social emancipation, and of the international managerial cadres in promoting a more sustainable management of the global webs of social and ecological interdependence come together in ways that might lead to the emergence of concrete class alliances that promote the actualisation of a new pattern of the tetrad of controls. Future research can thus be conducted on historical and contemporary examples of how the field of science diplomacy holds the potential to escape the logic of geopolitical competition and promote a more cosmopolitan orientation to planned interdependence. Such research will actualise critical international theory’s fundamental role as a means of orientation helping human beings find their way in the complex challenges characterising an increasingly interdependent planetary community of fate.

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Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Adorno, TW 26 anthropocentric perspective 19 anticipatory dimension 8, 17, 28, 34, 35, 37, 44 anticipatory orientation 17, 47, 51, 114 Aristotle 52 automation 68–71, 74, 86n1 Bacon, F. 57 Benhabib, S 8, 133 capitalism: emancipation and alienation 73; free labour 69; global revolutionary movement 73; human self-determination 71; post-capitalist civilisation 72; production process 68, 69; social development 67; social intercourse 68–70, 72, 73; social labour 70, 71, 74 Carr, EH 5 civilisation 31, 72, 90, 98–101, 114–116, 120–123, 127 civilising processes: and civilisation 90, 99 (see also civilisation); ecological 100; European 98–99, 114–115; global 20, 129; as grand narrative 101–109; monopoly mechanism 116, 124 class struggles 12, 66, 101, 125; domestic slavery 80; emancipated slavery 77–78; emancipatory 75, 76, 105, 107–108, 114, 128; human self-determination 80; impurity 76–77; inter-societal relations 118– 124; latent slavery 78; liberation 75, 76; monopoly mechanism 103; multidimensional conception 48,

63, 67–68, 74, 79, 80, 90, 116, 134; negro republics 78; revolutionary impatience 81; social power 81; and utopian limitations 66–86; wage slavery 77–78; world politics 74 collective learning process 31, 32 communicative action 27–28, 32–35 contextualist relativism 2–3, 15–16, 89 cosmopolitan constitutionalisation, world politics 38–42 cosmopolitan harm conventions 16, 18–20 cosmopolitanism 5, 8, 39, 61 cosmopolitan perspective 4, 5, 7, 28, 61, 66; innovative potential 9; revolutionary 8 Cox, RW 5 critical international theory 1–3, 136, 137; grand narratives 44, 66, 133, 134; historical-sociological approach 48, 115; reconstruction of 122–124, 135 critical orientation, world politics: emancipatory struggles 124–125; inter-societal relations 118–124; political communities 113; triad to tetrad of controls 114–118 critical theory 1–3, 9, 16, 20; class struggles 74; process sociology 91–92; violence monopolisation and control 84; see also philosophical-transcendental grand narratives Darwinian revolution 63n1 developed civilisations 31–32 Devetak, R 14, 15 discourse ethics 35, 37, 41–43 domestic slavery 80

152

Index

early civilisations 31 Elias, N 2, 16, 17, 20, 90; autonomous evaluations 91; civilisation 98–101; civilising processes 101–109; detached empathy 92; egocentric emotional needs 91; ethical conviction 92; heteronomous evaluations 91; human interdependence 114, 115, 124–129; intra-societal relations 118–124; learning-oriented behaviour 93, 94; process sociology 90–92, 113, 115, 135; socialisation 114, 124–129; survival units 116– 120; symbol emancipation 93–97, 110n4; tetrad of controls 116, 122; triad of controls 93–97, 116 emancipated slavery 77–78 emancipation 80; and alienation 68, 79, 80, 121, 124, 136; class struggle 75; economic 76; gender-based oppression 78; see also symbol emancipation emancipatory class struggles 105, 107–108, 114, 128 Engels, F 54, 56, 58, 63, 64n3, 66–67, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 82–84, 108, 120 Eurocentrism 1–3, 5, 6, 9–13, 15–17, 19, 43, 47, 48, 89, 133–134 European/Western modernity 32 evolutionary social theory 29 explanatory dimension 8, 9, 17, 28, 44 Feuerbach 57 Foster, JB 49 functional democratisation 105, 106, 108, 109, 125–126 Gabriel, N 117 global civilising process 20, 129 Goudsblom, J 99 Gramsci, A 57 grand narratives 1–3, 5–9; critical international theory 44, 66, 133, 134; and Eurocentrism 13; evolutionary social theory 29; historical-sociological approach 13–20, 47, 48, 63, 66, 74, 81, 113, 135; human development 10, 12, 25, 28, 53–55, 60, 61, 68, 79, 124; Marx’s critical theory 28, 33, 123; objective ethics 80, 85; see also philosophical-transcendental grand narratives

Habermas, J 2, 3, 9, 20, 25–27, 89, 134; collective learning process 31, 32; communicative action 27–28, 32–35; cosmopolitan constitutionalisation, world politics 38–42; developed civilisations 31–32; discourse ethics 10; early civilisations 31; European/ Western modernity 32; historical materialism reconstruction 27; neolithic societies 31; orientation 42–44, 97; purposive-rational action 27, 28, 32–34; social evolution 29–33; systems theory 32; universal communication community 34–38; universal competences 28, 30 historical-sociological grand narratives 2, 3, 48; critical theorising 63, 66, 81, 113, 134; possibility of 13–20; reconstruction of 89–109, 115, 135 Hobson, JM 19 Holbach 57 Horkheimer, M 26 Hoseason, A 3 human competences 29 human self-determination 2, 8, 44, 48, 50, 51, 61, 62, 81, 96, 133, 135; capitalism 71; class struggles 80 Hutchings, K 6 interdependence 114, 115; functional democratisation 105; global 39, 41, 119, 137; social 101–104, 107, 108, 114, 124–129, 136 International Relations 7, 8, 12 Kant, I 6, 7, 9, 28, 35, 37, 40, 42 Kantian-Habermasian approach 1, 3, 5, 9, 47, 124; grand narrative 12, 13 Kaspersen, L 117 Kilminster, R 91–92 Kohlberg, L 30, 31 latent slavery 56, 78 learning-oriented behaviour 93 Lincoln, Abraham 76–77 linguistification 26 Linklater, A 3, 10, 16–20, 99, 100, 106, 125–127, 135 Losurdo, D 67, 74–82, 98, 105, 107 Loyal, S 101 Luhmann, Niklas 32

Index Marx, K 2, 3, 16, 20, 25–28, 33–34, 44, 47, 108, 120; capitalism 67–74; class struggles 66, 67, 74–81, 90; critical theory 3, 28, 33–35, 47–48, 53–54, 61–63, 66, 67, 74, 89–97, 109, 135 (see also critical theory); dialectical movement 86n1; human development 89–91, 95–97; human-nature metabolism 129n1; learning-oriented behaviour 93; mutual guarantee 85; occupational bonds 116, 117; technological development 129n4; utopianism and social monopolies 67, 81–86; see also materialist-emergentist conception Marxian immanent critique 35 materialist-emergentist conception: emancipation 59–63; human development 54–59; humans in nature 48–51, 55, 57, 61, 71, 72, 74, 86n2, 100, 113, 116, 119, 128, 129n1, 130n4; objective ethics 51–54; orientation 59–63; universal social dynamics 47 Mennell, S 98, 99, 108–109; etic/emic distinction 98, 99 monopoly 17; civilising processes 116, 124; class struggles 103, 114, 118; development of 104, 105, 120, 121; functional democratisation 106; inter-state relations 119, 122; socialisation 107, 108, 114, 115, 125, 127; supranational 40, 41 Moore, JW 86n2 moral-practical knowledge 27, 30–33, 38, 44n1 national liberation struggles 75, 76, 78, 79, 116, 120 naturalistic materialism 57 neo-Gramscian approach 1, 3, 5, 9, 12 neolithic societies 31 New International Economic Order (NIEO) 121–122 Newton, T 94 objective ethics 35, 47–48, 51–54, 64n4, 79–81, 90, 95–96 orientation 47–48, 53, 74, 97, 134–135; philosophical-transcendental grand narratives; anticipatory dimension 89, 90; behavioural 94; in critical international theory 1–20, 30, 90, 113, 115–116, 133, 135; and

153

emancipation 59–63, 73; grand narratives 9, 12, 42; monopoly 103; see also critical orientation, world politics pacemaker, human development 64n3, 67, 109n1 Parsons, Talcott 32 Pedersen, J 29 philosophical-transcendental grand narratives: cosmopolitan constitutionalisation, world politics 38–42; critical theorising 134; moral and social evolution 25–34; orientation 42–44; universal communication community 34–38 physical violence 84 post-colonial states 125, 127, 137 productive activity 26, 27, 33, 48–50, 54–62, 68–71, 96, 128 plasticity, human behaviour 109n1 political agency 2, 8, 133 political community 7–11, 32, 44 politics of impartiality 8 post-Cartesian conception 63n1 post-conventional orientations 11 post-Eurocentric approach 6, 20 process sociology 3, 16–18, 20, 90–92, 96, 97, 99, 113–115, 117, 123, 135 purposive-rational action 27, 28, 32–34 Renaissance Humanism 14 Sayers, S 54 Schmid, D 11 Schmittian global order 39–40 social intercourse 49, 50, 54–62; capitalism 68–70, 72, 73 social labour 26, 28 society-bound perspectives 1, 12, 39 sociocultural evolution 26, 27 survival units 104, 116–120, 125 symbol emancipation 90, 93–97, 109 symbols 94, 117 technical-organizational knowledge 27, 33 technolinguistic emancipation 94 teleological movement 7, 38 tetrad of controls 113–118, 121, 122, 128, 135–137 Thompson, M 51, 52, 80–81 transcendental ethics 36, 37, 47, 51–53 triad of controls 16–19, 90, 93–104, 109, 113–118

154

Index

universal communication community 10, 34–38 universal social dynamics 102 utopianism 14, 67, 90; social monopolies 67, 81–86 van der Bergh, G 129n2 van der Pijl, K. 57, 125–128

wage slavery 77–78 world politics: class struggles 74; cosmopolitan constitutionalisation 38–42; critical orientation 113–129; immutability of 8; presentism 7; reflexivity 13 Zalewski, M 13