Recognition of Estranged Other: Politics of Identity and System Integration

Transcription

1 Title: RECOGNITOIN OF ESTRANGED OTHER: POLITICS OF IDENTITY AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION Authors*Kwon, Gibung - Kyung Hee University, Korea, Republic of, gibungkwon@gmail.com Abstract: The concept of recognition has gained a salience recently in contemporary politics and philosophy after a long dormant period, largely due to the efforts of Neo-Hegelian theorists such as Charles Taylor and Alex Honneth. The recent resurgence of recognition in the context of identity politics and multiculturalism deserves a careful investigation. In particular, it has relevance to those areas of research that deal with the issues of integrating and embracing minorities and foreigners. On a careful reading of the debates, however, it is revealed that it still remains at the early stage of conceptual discovery. It is yet to be fully developed as a theory of society and politics. Hence, the original Hegelian conception of recognition deserves a careful scrutiny and reconstruction. When properly conceptualized, the concept of recognition is even applicable to the case of estranged other like divided nations. It has much wider applicability in explaining contemporary political phenomenon of large and small. Hence it does not have to be confined to the issues of individual identity or justice as the contemporary philosophical discourses do with recognition. It even throws light on the issues ahead when the divided nations are integrated and on the possible ways to resolve them. From the recognition perspective, the paper argues that they first acknowledge the existence of the other. And they learn to live side-by-side. The next step is to engage in each other for common works. With these at hand, then, it is necessary to find common rules to abide by. Even under the same rules of existence, still they should be able to recognize and respect each other so that the unique identity of each is not obliterated or merged with the other. These steps of genuine recognition should happen not just at the level of political entities, but at all levels from individuals to associational activities and to economic and social interactions. Only then can two estranged others be united into one and form a single identity while each maintains the rights to choose its own forms of existence. 0

2 Recognition of Estranged Other: Politics of Identity and System Integration Gibung Kwon, Ph. D. Kyung Hee University 1. Introduction How we recognize others determines the relationship we form with them either as friend, enemy, comrade, or else. Likewise, the relationship a country has with neighbors is influenced by the identities that they reciprocally bestow upon themselves. Certainly, the identity that each has about the other may or may not be identical. What each wants from the other may or may not be what the other is willing to recognize. Despite the possibility of discrepancy in the process of identity negotiation, each country is eventually to acquire (or assume) a political identity that it has to live by whether it likes it or not. Otherwise, the raison d être of a country is not guaranteed, hence failing to secure what is necessary to maintain itself. That is, the political system cannot maintain its own boundary. The concept of recognition has gained a salience recently in contemporary politics and philosophy after a long dormant period, largely due to the efforts of Neo-Hegelian theorists such as Charles Taylor and Alex Honneth. 1 Ever since it was philosophically developed by Hegel over two centuries ago, it was almost forgotten except in everyday speeches, hence being regarded as a residual vocabulary of the by-gone era having no theoretical significance. It was so despite the fact that our discourse on personal identity cannot help but be structured around recognition and its cognates. As being attested by the importance we attach to status, honor, and glory, etc. recognition is such a deeply embedded value in our everyday activities and language. 2 The recent resurgence of recognition in the fields of identity politics and multiculturalism, therefore, deserves a careful scrutiny not only for its theoretical and heuristic value, but also for the reason of curiosity uncovering the contextual changes which led scholars to revive it. On a careful reading of the debates, however, it turns out that recognition still remains at an early stage of conceptual formulation. It falls short of being a theory of society and politics. The 1 For the contemporary debate on recognition as a moral category, see Amy Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), Nancy Fraser and Alex Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2003), Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995). 2 Recognition s failed theoretical and conceptual development contrasts to the central position that the concept of interests, for instance, takes in modern philosophy and social sciences. In a sense, its dormancy itself could be regarded as an enigma. However, it is easily explained away by the well-known discrepancy between theoretical language and everyday language. More importantly, it is accounted for by the predominance that the other theoretical concepts such as interests and rationality have enjoyed in the modern discourse. 1

3 debates are largely dominated by definitional conundrum of laboring the precise meaning and condition of recognition. As contending views are proffered and evaluated by scholars of different schools, they are mostly about the criteria of being recognized or giving recognition and to understand the consequences of recognition psychologically or socially. We see that Taylorian ontogenetic conception of recognition is jousting with the phenomenological and psychoanalytic approach of Honneth. Either recognition connotes the objective social conditions of status or material reward, or it means the intersubjective context of dignity or honor. Or it is strictly limited to personal psychological fulfillment (i.e., love and acknowledgement). 3 Although these philosophical debates are important and interesting, in a sense, the contemporary conceptualization of recognition is even less concretized and theoretically elaborated than that of Hegel found in his book, Phenomenology of Spirit or Philosophy of Rights. It is still a far cry from the level of theoretical formulation and practical application that such other concepts as interests, class, and rationality, etc. have achieved in social sciences. When properly reformulated, recognition has futile heuristic potential as a conceptual category for the contemporary political phenomenon including globalization and multiculturalism. It does not have to be confined to the issues of individual identity and justice as the recent discourse does with it. By carefully reconstructing the original Hegelian insights in this regard, I attempt to theorize recognition as an alternative paradigm and, as a way to expose its heuristic potential, to throw light on a neglected aspect of identity politics between estranged and divided countries like two Koreas. 2. Limitations of Contemporary Conceptualization of Recognition The discourse of recognition, Charles Taylor says, has become familiar to us on two levels: First, in the intimate sphere, where we understand the formation of identity and the self And then in the public sphere, where a politics of equal recognition has come to play a bigger and bigger one. (Taylor, 1994: 37) As a result, the politics of recognition means two different things in contemporary politics. Emphasizing the equal dignity of all citizens, on the one hand, it demands the equalization of rights and entitlement. Politics of equal dignity is based on the idea that all humans are equally worthy of respect. (41) On the other hand, according to Taylor, the modern notion of identity has given rise to a politics of difference. (38) It requires that everyone be recognized for his or her unique identity. With the politics of difference, he adds, what we are asked to recognize is the unique identity of this individual or group, their distinctiveness from everyone else. (Ibid.) Whether it is understood in terms of the difference of identity or the universality of 3 Patchen Markell s critique of recognition is based largely on his reading of it from the perspective of individual psychological conditions of recognition. Thus, he criticizes it as tragic and bounding. Patchen Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 2

4 entitlement, the concept of recognition has become relevant particularly to the contemporary politics of identity. That is because, as Nancy Fraser observes, the increased transcultural interaction and communication are fracturing and hybridizing all cultural forms, hence requiring institutions to adapt to this condition of increased complexity. In addition, she continues, status conflicts have achieved paradigmatic status at the moment when it is increasingly implausible to posit the Westphalian state as the sole container, arena, and regulator of social justice. (Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, 2003: 91-2.) Underlying the resurgence of recognition, thus, is the sensibility required by the emerging ethos of multiculturalism. As Charles Taylor puts it, we should be not too arrogant to ignore a priori the possibility that cultures that have provided the horizon of meaning for large numbers of human beings, of diverse characters and temperaments, over a long period of time are almost certain to have something that deserves our admiration and respect, even if it is accompanied by much that we have to abhor and reject. (Charles Taylor, 1994, pp. 72-3) Since a person or a group of people can suffer a real damage if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves, justice in the age of multiculturalism requires a regime of reciprocal recognition among equals which extends recognition to all the citizens, both as human beings in general and also as the bearers of particular social identities. It is certain that these demands of recognition cannot be made trans-historically. As Honneth admits, the distinctively human dependence on intersubjective recognition is always shaped by the particular manner in which the mutual granting of recognition is institutionalized within a society. (Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, 2003: 138) Thus, the bourgeois-capitalist society has emerged from the break-down of the honor based or estate-based order of pre-modern society. The separation of three modes of recognition (love, rights, and individual achievement) and their corresponding bifurcation of realms between the private and the public make the modern form of recognition quite different from that of the pre-modern society. Given the increased salience of both transnational and sub-national entities in global society, it is apparent that the traditional conception recognition in terms of rights or achievement again shall undergo a reformulation either in the way of deepening or extending the established categories, or creating or discovering a whole new way of recognizing individuals and groups of people. How and why is the mode of recognition transformed, then? What would be the implication of it on the contemporary politics? 2-1. Theorizing Recognition Whether recognition is understood as the constitutive principle of individual identity (i.e., rights) or as social position (Honneth s third type) or as a kind of desire requiring psychoanalytical investigation, the contemporary debate does not say much about how it motivates individual or groups to enact socially consequential actions, a congregation of which results in a large scale social or political event. When it is understood as the constitutive principle of identity, for instance, mis-recognition or insufficient recognition may cause an injury to the person in question. It may 3

5 prevent him/her from developing his/her full potential or from being empowered in the fullest extent so that he/she becomes a socially recognized person. Granting this moral or ontological argument in favor of recognition, however, is not tantamount to fully understanding or explaining the causes and conditions of moral injury. It is of no help in identifying necessary corrective actions on the part of the inflicted. Even if mis-recognition is a cause of injustice to the person for a moral reason, it cannot be shown that a lack of recognition is solely responsible for the person as s/he is or for the kind of person s/he has become. Even in the case of positive recognition, it could be at best only a contributing factor to the person. It still does not imply anything concrete for his/her personal development because it involves a whole range of factors from inherited personal characteristics to socio-economic conditions to legal entitlements. Unless it is supplemented by other social theory (or theories) explaining the relationship between personal motive for recognition and social institutions granting it, it is no more than affirmation of a principle of ethics or discourse, hence no theory of action. The other two conceptions of recognition face the same difficulty of underdetermination when they are called in to the task of explaining socially consequential action or phenomenon. The third conception of recognition cannot explain why and how a presumed mis-recognition at the onto-genetic process translates into a concrete psychological characteristic and/or a concrete personhood which results in a socially identifiable pattern of actions on the part of the afflicted person. When recognition is understood as a desire, it could be only one of many desires that a person has. Thus, recognition of this kind cannot explain a person s action against or for a socially consequential outcome. Social achievement in terms of roles or positions at a given society (the second type) does not provide particularly apt explanations for socially consequential actions either. It might motivate individuals to pursue a certain life goal to satisfy their desire for social recognition. But again, as happened in the typical traditional hierarchical society of honor that Taylor analyzed, it could be institutionalized into a stratified society in which individuality is lost. Unless it is liberated by other means of acquiring individual identity (e.g., the idea of liberty or equality as was the case in modern society), the desire for achievement is not likely to be translated into a social movement demanding for equal recognition. What we need, therefore, is not just the categories of recognition that we find in the contemporary discourse, but an operational concept of recognition which is applicable to the actual explanation of social phenomenon: that is, to find a way to translate it from a moral or psychological category to an objectively identifiable social one of either institutional or material embodiment. It has to be done without falling into the trap that makes the concept of recognition equivalent to or reduced to social roles or functions or purely to a kind of subjective feelings to which the currently available conceptions of recognition befall. What we need to do first in this regard is to see whether the concept of recognition is up to the tasks of meeting the requirements of social theory. 4

6 2-2. Recognition as Constitutive Principle of Social Theory In terms of the architectonic of theory, any social-political theory is a collection of theories on agent and interaction and society and structure. No theorization of society is possible without a theory of agent. No theory of agent is constructed without a prior postulate of social structure in which it acts and interacts, that is, society. From this general observation it is already apparent that the concept of recognition, if it is to be a socio-political one, must be internally related to (or embedded in) the constituent categories of social theory: agent, structure, society, etc. To argue that the concept of recognition, when properly conceptualized, meets the theoretical requirements, I now turn to an analysis of social relations in general. Suppose that an individual goes into an interaction with another (or others) on a continual basis. In that interaction, at least after the initial encounter between the partners, it is already presupposed that s/he is a certain kind of agent and that s/he engages in an interaction with another (or others) for a certain reason. Either s/he has a personal motive to do so. That is, s/he acts upon the other for such desires as love, friendship, and fear, etc. Or s/he is already in a structured relationship with the other for an achievement of socially aspired goals of political, social, and economic kinds. That is, they could be the members of a kin, corporation, profession, or community, etc. so that their interactions are required regardless one personally wants to come in contact with the other or not. All these, in turn, reflect on who that individual is and what kind of person s/he is and becomes, that is, a socially constructed agency. Therefore, the question in social theory comes down to: how to conceptualize the constitutive relationship between individuals and their motivations on the one hand and their specific relations structured through interactions on the other hand. Herein lies the necessity of and justification for the concept of recognition in constructing a truly auto-genetic theory of society and politics. Recognition is not only the existential category through which a determined agent is constructed in the first place. It also enables us to pay attention to the medium of interaction between interacting partners. That is, it contains in its conceptualization already a mode and medium of recognition. That is because recognition is only possible when a certain determinate medium is available in the society, the one through which one acknowledges the other as a lover, friend, comrade, equal citizen, business partner, or president, else. In modern society, what works as medium and is generally available in this regard are either intersubjective feelings (i.e., love and hate, and like and dislike), social institutions (i.e., rights, power and money), or socio-economic and political communities including corporations and the state. Once it is accepted that the concept of recognition reaches both to the determination of individual identity and to the ways and means of interactions among agents, it is also apparent that it already touches upon social structures of society or enabling and constraining contexts of social interactions. The agency recognized and the institutions of recognition socially constructed are only the outcomes of agent interactions. Once taken forms, they in turn reflect upon and are affected by the structures of society. Hence, the concept of recognition is perforce related to the 5

7 latter. That is, how an individual is recognized through the available medium of recognition is conditioned by both socially available resources and acknowledged (or institutionalized) rules and norms of society in either formal or informal nature. In other words, s/he becomes a determinate agency (i.e., worker, physician, politician or citizen) only if such a role or function is institutionally supported and guaranteed by the society. Only when institutionally supported can s/he continue to act and react in a socially prescribed way through a recognized medium of interaction. This is so even when recognition involves interpersonal relationship and thus inter-subjective feels like love and hate. Otherwise, the sentimental relationship lacks in institutional moorings that allow it to develop into socially recognized one. Love relationship, for instance, is socially institutionalized as that of marriage. Intimate relationship between friends is socially recognized as friendship and separated from that between strangers. Even the latter one is institutionalized into such a category as buyers and sellers, or producers and consumers, or enemies and strangers posing no threat to any one, i.e.; accordingly the society distributes rights and resources differently. All these theoretically derived presuppositions and implications can be discerned from the conceptualization of recognition that Hegel developed in the Phenomenology of Spirit or the Philosophy of Right. 4 From Marx s historical materialism we can also glean insights on not only how the concept of recognition is theoretically formulated in the context of individual and collective estrangement, but also how it is applied to the actual explanation of individual moral growth and societal transformations. 3. Estrangement in Marx and Hegelian Recognition of Estranged Other What are the necessary conditions for estranged countries to get close to each other and to form (possibly) a unified (or integrated) identity or vice versa? When we talk of the issue of alienation and estrangement, we cannot help but go back to the original thinkers who formulated the concepts: i.e., Marx and Hegel. They are of particular relevance in this regard because they used them not only to diagnose individual psychological make-ups and social relations in society but also to explain external relationships between groups of people including classes and political entities. When carefully read and reconstructed, both provide fruitful insights for the identity politics between estranged entities. For Hegel, estrangement arise when the individual is confronted by an independent, hostile power which has an objective life of its own, that the individual has no awareness of this power actually being the result of its own alienation, and that it lacks any control over this power. Alienation means, as Hegel puts it, a surrender by a subject, a giving up of essential being. 4 For Hegel s conception of recognition, see Robert R. Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other (Albany,NY: State University of New York Press, 1992), Paul Redding, Hegel s Hermeneutics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996) and Honneth (1995). 6

8 According to Hegel s scheme, alienation firstly implies a development from particularity to universality; secondly, in the course of this development estrangement is produced and recognition lost; and finally, recognition is achieved and estrangement overcome. 5 In contrast, for Marx estrangement and alienation have to do primarily with human laboring processes and ensuing external relationship between laborer and products. According to Marx, man is said to be separated from his own products a break between the individual and the material world. He is also said to be separated from his fellow men (competition and class hostility has rendered most forms of cooperation impossible) a break between man and man. In each instance, a relation that distinguishes the human species has disappeared and its constituent elements have been reorganized to appear as something else. Thus Marx states, [t]he externalization of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, and external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently of him and alien to him, and begins to confront him as an autonomous power; that the life which he has bestowed on the object confronts him as hostile and alien. 6 He also argues, [a]n immediate consequence of man s estrangement from the product of his labour, his life activity, his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man. What is true of man s relationship to his labour, to the product of his labour, and to himself, is also true of this relationship to other men, and to the labour and the object of the labour of other mem. 7 He also adds: through estranged, alienated labour, the worker creates the relationship of another man, who is alien to labour and stand outside of it, to that labour.... Private property is therefore the product, result, and necessary consequence of alienated labour, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself. 8 In short, for Marx, alienation or estrangement is a natural outcome and consequence of human labour or human existence, from which all other relations follow, including private property and capitalist relations. Based upon the anthropological or existential observation of human beings in production process, Marx develops the well-known theory of social transformation and the dialectic of social estrangement i.e., historical materialism. When carefully reexamined and reinterpreted from the perspective of general systems theory, it is revealed that Marxian historical materialism, if it is to be plausible, presupposes a few structural preconditions that need to be present for it to be constituted in the first place and to transform itself into another type of system overcoming estrangement and alienation. It also becomes apparent that Hegelian recognition provides a 5 See, Tamela Ice, Alienation and Estrangement in Hegel s, p. 3 Estrangement is discussed for the first time in Hegel s Phenomenology of Spirit in the section entitled Legal Status. This corresponds to Hegel s discussion of Imperial Rome. Hegel s concept of estrangement is further developed in Spirit in Self-Estrangement. It is overcome when the spirit reaches Revealed Religion and Absolute Knowledge. 6 p Ibid. 8 Ibid., p. 9 7

9 better analytical framework for inter-societal estrangement and eventual overcoming Intersoceital Estrangement in Marxian Historical Materialism It is said that two founding fathers of Marxism (Marx and Engels) were standing on the head of Hegel to establish historical materialism. 9 His anthropology of human condition in the Grundisse, 10 however, allows us a different understanding of historical materialism. As Justin Rosenberg states, the central claim of historical materialism is not what it is often taken to be, even by many Marxists, namely that economic relations determine political relations, rather that it is the centrality of those relations which organize material production to wider institutional reproduction of social orders [ ] what those relations are in any given society is always an empirical question. 11 In addition, Marx is quite explicit in emphasizing the role of coercion in bringing societies together to form a more encompassing one. In the Grundrisse, Marx distinguished three stages of social development: a primitive stage in which humans were governed by relations of personal dependence ; a succeeding phase in which they were associated in relations of personal independence ; and a final condition, yet to be realized, in which whole species would attain the condition of free individuality or socialized humanity. (Marx, 1973: 158) In the primitive society individuals belonged to a whole into which they were completely immersed, hence dependent on the whole not only for their subsistence but also for their identity. The whole to which Marx referred (the family, clan, tribe etc.) acquires its particular shape and identity in a historic process of intermixture and antithesis with others and nature. (490) Their relations to nature and to other communities as an alien and mysterious force (estrangement) were the two phenomena imprinted on the structure of the earliest societies. The connection between the two aspects of their alienation was displayed most vividly in the role which war played in the struggle to reproduce material life. 12 What is interesting in the primitive society is the influence that intersocietal estrangement has 9 Karl Marx, Afterward to the Second German Edition (1873), in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1972), pp In this regard, Dallmayr notes that what is turned around in Marx s approach is not so much metaphysics itself as rather the role of man in the historico-dialectical process. Marx relocates or redefines, following the method of transformative criticism, the central motor of historical development and self-actualization to man, who is regarded basically as a human natural being. See, Fred R. Dallmayr, G. W. F. Hegel: Modernity and Politics (Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1993) pp Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Random House, 1973) 11 Justin Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations (London: Verso, 1994), p Referring to communes, Marx notes: The only barrier which the community can encounter in relation to the natural conditions of production the earth as to its own property 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 defense of their property and for obtaining new property Karl Marx, Grundrisse, p

10 on the structure of society. This aspect of Marx s historical materialism, as Linklater notes, resembles the neorealist image of international relations, according to which the international structure of anarchy imposes the imperative of survival on the state as its raison d'être. 13 When carefully examined, however, Marx s communal estrangement amounts to an interaction system composed of communes. 14 The primitive communal system is composed of communes, whose identities are constituted around blood-lines, interacting with each other through the medium of violence (war). Understood as such, Marx s historical materialism is no other than a theory of system transformation from communal system through exchange system to socialist system which is induced by the changes of social mediums of interaction. That is, it is a diachronic theory explaining how the community identity is replaced by individual identities. This reconceptualization is quite important in interpreting Marx s historical materialism. Reconceptualized as such, it becomes evident that Marx already presupposes in his conception of commune the identities of communes constituted by blood as given. Without it, his category of estrangement becomes vacuous. If the category of estrangement is to be meaningful, there have to be fully constituted identities separating each other. Each commune has to know that it is different from others. As far as it goes, Marx s assumption that the identity was constructed around familial ties is a quite plausible one supported by anthropological evidences. But his next following assertion is not quite as self-evident as the first seems to be. The interactions among communes of separate identities, according to Marx, were of violent nature. That is, violence (war) was the medium of their interactions. This second observation, however, does not follow from the first with logical necessity. The separate entities would certainly have some sort of contacts with each other through a means of interactions (e.g., goods, violence, or signs) as long as they are in close proximity. There is no necessity that their interactions are of a violent-nature, however. Their interactions could be mediated by non-violent modes of contact (i.e., exchange of goods, tribute, or simple neglect), especially considering the fact that the community identity formation principle, blood-line, does not have an inherent fixed outer-boundary. Depending on the circumstances, communes could be formed around quite extended familial ties connecting several of them. The category of estrangement itself, therefore, has to be supplemented by another one that can justify Marx s observation of the violent prehistory. That category may be derived from Marx s anthropological observation of the human condition, as Eric Wolf succinctly presents: the human species is an outgrowth of natural 13 See, Andrew Linklater, Marxism, in Scott Burchill and Andrew Linklater, eds., Theories of International Relations (New York: St. Martin Press, 1996), pp Interaction system is the one that emerges when present individuals perceive one another (including the perception of mutual perception) as the object of his/her action, in that each one needs to adjust (or adapt) his/her behavior in consideration of the other s response. See, Luhmann, The Differentiation of Society, pp

11 processes; at the same time, the species is naturally social. 15 That is to say, humans subsist materially in and through their interaction with nature; and this interaction is carried on characteristically in groups made up of individuals connected to each other. These two facts are linked insofar as the interaction with nature is an organized activity. 16 What the Marxian concept of labor does is to express the existential fact analytically. In other words, Marx does not remain at the descriptive observation and transforms it into a substantive claim about how to understand and explain historical societies: The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers to ruled It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure, and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. 17 Wolf calls it the strategic relationship, partly because the lines connecting the interaction of the society with the material world, on the one hand, and the structured interaction of individuals which comprises the society, on the other hand, all cross here. 18 It is here that conflict over the appropriation of surplus labor happens routinely, hence slave rebellion, peasant revolt, and general strike. What is germane to the discussion at hand, however, are not the substantive theoretical claims but his anthropological observation. When we accept Marx s observation that the fundamental, original human condition is that of organized social activities against nature, it makes sense that inter-communal life is violence-ridden. If we are allowed to assume that possessiveness of proprietary kind is the primary motive of individual collectivities it is likely that the possessive competition over scarce resources could lead to a violent struggle. On a closer inspection, however, this reduction of human motives to a single motive of possession is problematic. His view of communal anarchy is untenable unless there are further evidences pointing to the necessity of violence in communal interactions. Human beings have other motives than the possessive one involved in the activities against nature, like self-fulfillment, aggrandizement, vanity, etc. Furthermore, it does not follow from the premise of possessive motive that the possessive struggle always takes a violent form because property rights over a land, for instance, do not have to be an exclusive one. If violence is still the outcome despite of 15 Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1982), p See, ibid., pp Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), vol. 1, p See, Justin Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society, pp

12 the possibilities of alternative property relationships between communes (i.e., communal ownership, use right, etc.), there must be some other causes that account for the violence. Logically speaking, war will be the dominant mode of interaction among collectivities (communes) either only if other possible negotiated arrangements over the resources (e.g., collective ownership) are not at hand to resolve a possessive conflict; or if an exclusive property right is already established; or if ingrained animosity (which is not rooted in the possessive struggle) exists between different communes. In the first case, violence between communes will be an historical contingency. As violence becomes a contingent outcome of the social labor of communes, Marx s concept of labor fails to supplement that of estrangement to necessitate the violence between communes. If the second is the case, Marx s communal prehistory is already implicated in a social system where exclusive property rights are its defining structure. Contrary to Marx s arguments, then the communal society is no different from the later capitalist one in its structures that define the nature of the systems except the types of actors. If the third, it means that Marx has in mind another mechanism of identity formation of communes, at least in conjunction with the one based on familial ties. Marx did not disclose clearly why violence had to be a necessary outcome of communal interactions. Nonetheless, according to Marx, the communal life could not be sustained indefinitely and had to be transformed into another kind of social system. Marx identified two possible sources for the dissolution of the early dependent societies: conquest and exchange relations. As these early societies were dissolved by conquest (an outcome of possessive struggle), a more encompassing social system emerged. The rise of empire, for Marx, was a major reason for the development of unequal yet more inclusive social formations, which destroyed the symbolic unity of exclusive tribal community. Conquest as the main agent of their dissolution had various effects upon the original forms of community. Either the conquering people subjugated the conquered under its own mode of production, left the old mode intact and contented itself with a tribute, or a reciprocal interaction took place whereby something new, a synthesis, arose. (Marx, 1973: 97) What is noteworthy in Marx s observation of conquest as a path of communal dissolution is the fact that Marx did not fully develop it to the extent Hegel did. As noted, Marx hinted at a possible synthesis arising from the transformation of horizontal estrangement into a hierarchical one. He did not take the insight further to probe the possibility that the hierarchical estrangement, mediated by authoritative relations, could lay the ground for another path of emancipation. As a result, the next historical transformation was limited to the mediation by exchange relations, which was Marx s second cause of the dissolution of the earliest forms of human society. The development of exchange relations first appeared in the connection of the different communities with one another, not in the relations between the different members of a single community. (103) Initially, exchange had not so much taken a grip on the life of entire communities as, rather, inserted itself between them. (159) Although the exchange of superfluous 11

13 products began as an accessory to production and only slightly modified the organization of domestic production, it did not maintain its relative indifference in respect of the inner construction of production for long. (156-7) When exchange relations became entrenched within these societies their members became incorporated within an ever-expanding and deepening social division of labor. As a result, not only was the mode of production altered thereby, but also all the economic relations that corresponded to it were dissolved. As the money economy emerged, thus Marx writes, the ties of personal dependence, of distinctions of blood, education, etc. are in fact exploded, ripped up [ ] and individuals seem independent [ ] free to collide with one another and to engage in exchange within this freedom. (163-4) Marx describes these relations of personal independence as the second great form of social life in which a system of general social metabolism, of universal relations, of all-round needs and universal capacities is formed for the first time. (158) What interests us the most here in Marx s second great form of social life is the individuation of individuals from the traditional communal identities which is induced by the commodification of labor, which is in turn made possible by the introduction of money as the universal medium of interactions (the formation of a money-community). If we reconstruct this second form of social life in terms of system, we can see the gist of Marx s arguments: if social interactions are standardized around a universal medium, other possible actor identities except that of labor lose meaning or become irrelevant, hence a determinate identity. Then, an organization system 19 is formed at the society around the action motives of money-making for the capitalist and subsistence for the proletariat (two are not differently expressed in the capitalist society because money is the only available medium of both); its boundary is also determined around the places where the buying-selling activities reach (e.g., world-markets). Its structure also takes on a particular characteristic in the system: that is, a hierarchical one wherein purchasing power determines the position of the parties in contract. Those who own the purchasing power contract out the labor time of laborers leaving their reproduction at their own means. The laborers who do not have any other means but their own labor to support the reproduction fall under the complete control of the owners of production. The hierarchical relationship in the private economic realm is then naturally transposed onto the political realm, resulting in a situation where formal equality among individuals is nullified in reality by the de facto control of the capitalist over the labor. In this total hierarchical relationship, it becomes obvious for the labor that they have fallen into the same dependent and alienated relation as in 19 Distinctive features of this type of social system derive from the fact that membership is linked to specific conditions that are imposed on them by the organization (e.g., economic corporations). In this regard, Luhmann states: The organization will not be dependent on the creation of spontaneous personal motives or moral commitment and consensus for every action required. Motives are generalized through membership: soldiers march, secretaries type, professors publish, and political leaders govern whether it happens, in this situation, to please them or not. Luhmann, The Differentiation of Society, p

14 other previous hierarchical relationships. When interpreted as an organization system theory of the capitalist society, Marx s historical materialism nicely captures the characteristic underlying logic behind the capitalist social formations. However, it is also evident that the reduction of bourgeoisie society in totality into an organization system requires a radical abstraction of labor, which is only possible if money becomes the only universal medium of social interactions. Even if we accept Marx s premises, there is no way to be deterministic about the relationship between the relations of production and other realms (or social relations in totality) as Marx did. The reason has to do with the structural requirement of organization system: that is, the homogeneity of actor identities. Is it possible to achieve the homogeneity in the essentially open system of capitalist society where the liberal principle of the separation of private and public realms is still intact? Subjects may receive a particular signal from the signifier (money), thereby form a particular relation with it (commodity relation). However, there is no necessity that the relation is perceived and constituted uniformly by the subjects as that of laborer as Marx argued it should be. Herein lies an over-determination between the signifier and the meanings that subjects will get out of it. Depending on the contexts in which they are situated, especially when they carry their own distinctive prior identities, the subjects may draw other meanings (hence other identities) from the signification than that of labor. If the over-determination is to be avoided, there has to be a mechanism that works to constrain and reshape them into a particular type of homogeneous agents. Marx certainly realized the necessity of a constraining category for which he suggested two well-known structures: class structure and political super-structure (or ideology). As these structures were the derivatives of the capital-labor-relations, he failed to give them an independent ontological existence. In his theoretical scheme, therefore, he was unable to incorporate the theoretical possibility that a social structure, ontologically existing prior to the system and hence making a system formation possible, may develop its own abstraction that constrains (or deflects) the capitalist social relations formative influences on actor identities. Ontologically speaking, social structure comes before actor. Otherwise, actor is not constituted to form a system. Without system, there is no system structure either. Marx violated this ontological rule Systemic Analysis of Hegel s Struggle for Recognition In his seminal book Hegel, Charles Taylor discusses the dialectic of master and slave as an illustration of Hegelian style of argumentation found in the Phenomenology of Spirit. 20 His rendition of the dialectic illuminates nicely the richness of Hegel s Phenomenology as a fuller rendition of Marx s historical materialism. A careful reading of the dialectic points to a possible way to remedy the shortcomings of Marx s historical materialism. 20 For the dialectic of master and slave the author relies on Taylor s interpretation. Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp

15 Being recognized by and recognizing others remain throughout the life a prime factor shaping the sort of person one is. In the first place, self-conscious beings characteristically want to be recognized as persons i.e., as conscious entities that are centers of agency, not just as mere objects in the world of interest only because of their use. In the second place, they also want to be recognized as persons of a certain sort, to be thought of as having a particular identity and particular worth. Logically, this kind of assurance requires that others beings acknowledge who and what the person is. That is, you cannot assure yourself that you are a person precisely because it is doubts about your personhood that are at issue. You need others to recognize you as a person to insure yourself that you are a person. In other words, recognition is a reciprocal process requiring the existence of other human beings. 21 Unable to realize the foundational requirement of recognition, men at an undeveloped stage of history simply attempt to wrest recognition from another without reciprocating. As they are self-centered parochial beings giving no recognition of others, human beings strive to achieve mere external confirmation by imposing their force against others. Naturally the attempted imposition leads to an armed struggle, which results in the death of one or both combatants. This outcome of annihilation obviously misses the combatant s original goal of confirming their existence. Although his negation of the other has been originated by his attempt to confirm himself, the death of the adversary defeats exactly what he has sought to achieve. That is, he cannot win recognition from the dead body. What is needed is a standing negation, one in which the opponent s otherness is overcome, while the other still remains in being. The upshot of the master-slave relation is the mediated nature between the two parties. As slave saves his life by giving up his individuality, its relationship with the master is no longer that of equality, but that of property and material inter-mediation. All that the slave can do with his body is to make and prepare things for the master s consumption. For the master, therefore, the slave is only an item of the things that surround the master for use. Or the slave is no other than a tool that helps his consumption. In this situation, the master is related to the slave in no other ways than through the material reality (consumable goods). The other s independent existence being lost, the master cannot achieve the desired recognition from the slave. If the master-slave relationship is ultimately a failure of recognition for the master, it has other meanings on the part of the slave. It lays a foundation from which the slave prepares himself for the ultimate success of achieving recognition. From the inhumane subjugated relationship slowly takes place a reversal of fortune. For Hegel, there are two crucial factors that induce self-centered individuals to the enlightening moment of discovering and actualizing the universal in themselves and for themselves, which is the ultimate goal of human development. One is the fear of death; the other disciplined work. The prospect of death shakes individuals loose from all the particularities of their 21 Brian Fay, Contemporary Philosophy of Social Sciences: A Multicultural Approach (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996), p

16 life. In ordinary life human-beings are too absorbed in their day-to-day particular activities. Only war and the danger of death can break them from the narrow preoccupations and bring them back to the universal. Death shows them that all the external particularities in their life are necessarily passing and destined to be negated. It invites the negation in thought, which is the true path to the universal. The reversal of fortune thus begins with the self-othering negation which the fear of death brings about. It is the slave that really suffers the fear of death, for he has been, and still is, at the mercy of another (the master). Therefore, it is the slave that is shaken loose from his particular sense of self while the victorious master is just hardened in his own world. This immanent fear of death alone is not enough to induce the slave to the abnegation of particularity, however. It would have no more than passing effects on the slave if the latter is not occasioned with the work he is forced to perform in providing services to the master. Whereas the master enjoys the luxury of life, it is the slave who experiences the objects resistance and independence. The master being in the world that offers him no effective resistance tends to sink back into self-absorption where he is simply a consumer and his relation to things is that of simple consumption. In contrast, the slave has to struggle with things to transform them. In so doing, he cannot help but imprint his own ideas on them. As he achieves a mastery over them sooner or later, his world is made up of his own creations. In short, the gist of the master-slave dialectic is the slave s realization of freewill and the fact that it is mediated and facilitated by the fear of death and the discipline of work. What makes the realization possible and historically necessary is Hegel s ontology of human being as essentially embodied being. 22 Hegel s thesis is that by controlling, making, and remaking objects, a person can establish his self as an objective feature of the world and transcend the stage in which it is simply an aspect of his inner and subjective life. 23 Why is the external embodiment necessary in the development of consciousness, then? Jeremy Waldron s explanation is useful here: The subject endows the object in the material world with a purpose which is not its own. When this is done, the subject recognizes that the object is such that the only purpose it could have is a purpose given to it by him. But merely directing one s will on an object is not sufficient to embody it therein. There has to be some physical relation between the body inhabited by the subject s will and the external object in which that will is to be embodied. Work bridges the gap between the subjectivity of the will and the perceived eternality of the objects of the world The embodiment of human existence is the foundational premise of the dialectic of recognition. For the phenomenological meaning, see, Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 21, pp Jeremy Waldron, The Right to Private Property (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p In this regard, Waldron states: When the subject labours in the world, his willing is such that it cannot be understood or explained except by making reference to the external objects of his labour; and those objects once they have been worked on become such that certain aspects of them cannot be understood or explained except by making reference to 15

17 According to Waldron, the underlying reason for the transformation of subject has to do with the logic of Hegelian dialectic. In the dialectic a being is defined only by contrasting it with something else. It is also the case with the self-definition of a human being. For instance, to define oneself as a person is, first, to mark off other bearers of rights and duties which one takes oneself to be, but then to realize that one s place in a network of other persons is itself constitutive of one s personality, and that one could not be a person except in a world of persons. Likewise, the universal consciousness through mutual recognition is a necessary outcome when the subject seeks its ultimate self-consciousness after achieving external embodiment through work. There is no other way to achieve it except the externalization of the self. The dialectical necessity of implicating the other in one self-identity (or the presence of nonbeing in being) in the process of achieving universal recognition brings into focus an important question of what the precondition is for its actualization. That is, the teleology of universal consciousness may or may not work out in itself in the history of human development insofar as it is only a potentiality present in the human being qua embodied being. There is no determinate reason why the dialectical necessity is actualized in the modern era unless the condition for its actualization has already been materialized. Logically speaking, at least, it has to be the case that the external embodiment is generalized enough to the extent that all the subjects are similar in their character and they can recognize each other as such. Otherwise, no condition exists for the generalization of the subject s material embodiments, hence no universality established. The private property right has played an important role in the development of this general self-understanding, Waldron argues. 25 Without the establishment of private property rights, there would not be the common denominator that not only unites them into the same category of free individuals, but also differentiates each other within it. The material condition for the actualization of mutual recognition is not present without the denominator of property rights. The ontological independence of social structure is not just the case with the subject s identity formation. For Hegel, it is also the case with the media of interactions that intermediate the relationship with material objects and with other subjects at the underdeveloped stages of human consciousness: that is, work in the first and violence in the second. These are the means through which the subjects confirm their existence. Both of them are certainly derivative categories from the fundamental one of human subjects as being essentially embodied socially and materially. Their ontological independence and priority to the subjects is inferred from the fact that the subjects have no other existence except through the media: that is, without them, they are not constituted as subjects in the first place. If the ontological pre-existence and logical independence both of social structure and medium of interaction are accepted, we can legitimately raise a theoretical question in regards to the workings of his will. Ibid., p Ibid., pp

18 the dialectic: Is there any necessary reason why social structure and medium of interaction in a social system should always take the forms of what the dialectic have taken. No determinate reason is found other than historical one in the Hegelian narrative. The dialectic of master-slave therefore does not have to be interpreted strictly in the literal sense. Theoretically speaking, it is quite possible to expand the Hegelian theoretical framework to other types of relations, as long as the theoretical components and their ontological presuppositions are kept in tact. Rather in such other relations is revealed the recognitive dialectic s richness as a theory of social change and human development. To reiterate, the key elements in the master-slave dialectic are a) human beings as being materially and socially embodied, b) violence against others as the means to confirm their existence (mediation by physical force), c) formation of the dependent relation mediated by things as an outcome of b), d) slave s achievement of material embodiment through the fear of death and the discipline of work, and e) eventual actualization of universal subjectivity aided by the social institution of property rights. Understood as such, a) and b) show that violence is inherent only in a society (or interaction system) where the self has no other way of confirming itself but by the exertion of physical force against others. Possibly only in two types of society will the violent confirmation be encouraged. One is the society where physical prowess is respected and honored by the social members; the other, one where subjects are related to each other through none other than material objects, hence no interpersonal relation is possible among them. When understood in such an expanded conception of social relations, Hegelian master-slave dialectic, in essence, is no other than a diachronic system theory on the development of human consciousness within the universalized social context of the thing-thing relation. Due to the dialectical process of recognition, the slave does not remain as a thing indefinitely. As time goes, the slave revolts against the master-imposed thingness by turning inward. That is, work creates a new subject. The slave regains his subjectivity through the work he does against the material objects for the master s consumption. When he realizes the nature of his free will and how his will leads to the transformation of the world, the slave begins to identify himself with the products of his work. He thus embodies himself onto the material objects. Then, his material embodiment is generalized thanks to the institution of private property rights. The universal subjectivity is achieved as each subject is recognized as an embodiment of material object. From this material embodiment, it is quite plausible to infer, as Marx did, that the emergent social relation among the universal consciousness is an exchange relation in which each subject is identified as an owner of properties. Each is linked to the others only through buying and selling activities of things ; that is, through the medium of market. What is crucial in Hegel s argument here is not the material embodiment itself, but universal consciousness of the subject, toward the achievement of which the work-induced material embodiment is a helpful intermediate stepping stone. For Hegel, the human subject qua the embodiment of universal consciousness, the Geist, is the ultimate terminal stage of human development. In order to be embodied in the 17

19 pure consciousness, the subject eventually has to take off the material embodiment. The key to this final transformation lies in the nature of the work-induced material embodiment. In this embodiment, in contrast to previous times, the subject takes on the material objects of its own making to express his consciousness (will); the subjectivity is not lost to the outer material manifestation. It is the owner of the material embodiment that is recognized by others in interactions; it is not submerged and lost in the latter. At the first interaction, it is likely that the subjectivity is recognized only through a particular material embodiment that is present in the goods. However, the subject cannot help but shed off the outer layer to become pure subjectivity later on. That is because it will be apparent to the participants that an authorship (universality) has to be found for the changing material embodiments of the subject. In phenomenological perspective the embodiment cannot remain unchanged; its manifestations will be different in time, location, workmanship and in many other aspects as the worker-producer makes goods for exchange. There has to be found a transcendental being whose authorship accounts for the variations of manifest subjectivity. Hegel does not present any other transcendental denominator for the manifest material embodiments than the pure subjectivity, to which all the outward expressions accrue ultimately. This idealistic component of Hegelian dialectic opens up a whole range of different possibilities of social relation in the interaction system. For Hegel, the subjectivity of subject does not have to take on a particular material form in order to become universal (i.e., trade goods), as is the case with Marx. Insofar as the discovery of subjectivity is a matter of phenomenological dialectics, it is very likely that the universality is derived from any kind of objective embodiments, regardless they are material or social, if they can be recognized as such. Even starting from the same premise of the work-induced material embodiment, it does not necessarily follow that the social relation as a whole degenerates into one particular type of relation ( exchange relation ) before it reaches the condition which is ripe for the emergence of universality in exchange relation, as Marx postulated in the historical materialism. If we accept the Hegelian position that what is important in the emancipation is the workinduced embodiment, we can infer that the nature of subject s embodiment will eventually determine what kind of relation is constructed amongst the subjects. Again when we take into consideration the possibility that work does not have to take only the form of work-againstmaterial-objects and the possibility that it can take the form of work-for-socially-meaningfulobjects (conquest, money-making, respect, etc.) or work-for-pure-aesthetic-objects (music, painting, writing, etc.), we may say that the subject s embodiment will be different in the nature and character, depending upon the type of work that a subject performs. We can also expect that its entailing social relations will be different by the type of embodiment For a detailed exposition of the latent potentialities of social relations in Hegelian dialectic of recognition, see the author s article, Re-conceptualizing Hegelian Master-Slave Dialectic as Diachronic Systems Theory of Inter-societal Relations, The Korean Journal of International Relations, vol. 46 number 5 (2006). 18

20 According to Hegelian conceptualization of recognition, in short, it can take various (materially or else) mediated forms. Although recognition can be achieved, at least in logic, either inter-subjectively or through mediation, individuals have been recognized historically by the latter, mostly through material embodiments (i.e., property, work, moral rules, and the state). Hence human motives are crystallized around a particular historical medium of interaction. Whether a person becomes a money-monger or power-seeker depends on how the person is to be recognized by others. The latter has ultimately to do with the socially constructed recognitive medium, which is the phenomenal manifestation of the social structuring process undergone by the society either peacefully (e.g., hegemonic inculcation) or violently (e.g., social revolution). The bourgeoisie class was, for instance, able to gain social recognition only when wealth had become the object of social status taking the place of aristocratic birth. Theoretically speaking, in the Hegelian diachronic theory three ontologically independent categories which need to be presupposed for the formation of a system (actors, social structure, and social medium of interaction) are dialectically inter-related and their relationship takes a concrete form by the phenomenological and existential category of recognition. Rules and resources, which are constitutive to each other, determine the mode of interaction medium at a particular historical juncture. The determinate medium has formative influence on the constitution of actors. A social system arises when a particular agent type is selected over other latent possibilities of human being in the making. No material determinism needs to be involved here. What kinds of system emerge from the reduction-cum-reification process is not predetermined by the determinate medium of interaction unlike historical materialism, but it is dependent upon the way that recognition qua politics is played out in the given rule-resource matrix. As signification in language is always a dialectical process of interpretation between speaker and hearer, the medium of interaction is also the process of internalization of the external and externalization of the internal to be a determinate medium. Since there is always room for maneuvering and ingenuity on the part of the actors in the dialectical interpretive process, the fundamental human desire (i.e., recognition) has a determinate influence on the latter. In that sense, the human beings qua freewill have the choice for their constitution of themselves and society although, as Marx s famous dictum says, they do so under the given constraints. 4. Systems Integration and Recognition qua Identity Politics What are the conditions of systems (or identity) integration? Political systems constitute themselves as a self-referential system as long as they can separate themselves from others in geography, culture, and political institutions. 27 Being autonomous, they construct around their 27 See. Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, trans. John Bednarz Jr. and Dirk Baeker (Stanford, CA: Stranford University Press, 1995). 19