Chapter 6: Systems Analytic -- Systems Theory

6c

Systems Theory 

  Underlying the systems-analytical model is ‘systems theory’. Because the model is rather difficult to understand particularly through Habermas’s writings, Held’s interpretation on Habermas’s theory is useful. From the position of systems theory, change involves “alterations of structures essential to the stability and maintenance of a particular social configuration.” (Held, p. 285) Change is required to address crisis. Paraphrasing Held on Habermas (in "Critical Theory, Horkheimer to Habermas"), we know that human history contains the constant drive to free humanity from environmental and personal restrictions. Development in the production and normative structures is ongoing and we can see development from our current vantage point, but nevertheless there is never a guarantee of progress, particularly progress that eradicates crises. There are developmental stages, however exploitation and repression are still experienced by humanity. Held underlines Habermas’ note that “the extent of exploitation and repression by no means stands in inverse proportion to these levels of development.” Held writes, “New stages of learning expand both choices and the range of possible problem solutions. A higher level of, for example, productive forces does not remove certain burdens.” (p. 284) New problems emerge. There is a ‘dialectic of progress’. Habermas applies a general theory of social evolution for societies. Social evolution of societies has produced class societies. Habermas defines social crisis occurring when an ‘objective force’ deprives a ‘subject’ of sovereignty. Crisis resolution requires that the subject experiences freedom. The theme of advanced capitalism explored by Habermas is framed by a dialectical explanation of social evolution and social crisis. A contradiction is set up between individual agency (socially related acting subjects existing in “life-worlds”) and self-regulated systems. Per Habermas:

We speak of social integration in relation to the systems of institutions in which speaking and acting subjects are socially related (vergellschaften). Systems are seen here as life-worlds that are symbolically structured. We speak of system integration with a view to the specific steering performance of a self-regulated system. Social systems are considered here from the point of view of their capacity to maintain their boundaries and their continued existence by mastering the complexity of an inconstant environment. Both paradigms, life-world and system, are important. (LC, p. 87)

Looking at the systems theoretical side of the equation, change requires shifts in structures that support a particular social arrangement, such as the wage-capital dichotomy in capitalism. The challenge to systems theorists is to identify the essential structure of society. On the side of action theory within the domain of the symbolically structured life world, social integration is in crisis when individual identity is in crisis. Habermas proposes a “historically oriented analysis of social systems,” because systems theory interested in the steering and control of society’s structure is compromised in its explanation by the life-world when the systems theory does not recognize human agency. Human agency is the sum total of each social agent determining a tipping point. The principle for Habermas is organizational. Held writes that Habermas’s conceptual framework is organizational.  With this framework Held interprets Habermas’s exploration of capitalism in “Legitimation Crisis.” The interpretation is Marxian, the relationship of wage labour and capital is organizational. An essential contradiction exists between wage labour and capital, and more specifically, “The fundamental contradiction of capitalism is formulated as that between social production and private appropriation, namely social production for non-generalizable interests.” (p. 286) Habermas asks questions that are also useful to the data analysis in this dissertation. He explores these questions in “Legitimation Crisis” developing his theory on advanced capitalism which includes public education as a “non-material infrastructure indirectly contribut[ing] to the production of surplus value by increasing the productivity of human labour.” (The question is whether this labour (“reflexive labour”) should be regarded as “productive.”)(p. 288) Questions summarized by Held on Habermas’s theory are (p. 286): 1) Have events in the last one hundred years altered the mode in which this contradiction effects the dynamic of society? 2) Has the logic of crisis changed? (from the path of crisis growth, unstable accumulation, to something fundamentally different) 3) Does the developmental dynamic of advanced capitalism ward off economic crises permanently? and 4) If so, are there consequences for patterns of social struggle? 

   Habermas begins to look for answers to these questions in his book describing the systems-analytic theory selected for analysis of the data, “Legitimation Crisis.” He delineates three sub-systems – the economic, political-administrative and socio-cultural sub-systems with their related crises as indicated in the following table (constructed by Held, p. 287):

Point of origin	System crisis	Identity crisis
(Sub-systems)
Economic	Economic crisis
Political	Rationality crisis	Legitimation crisis
Socio-cultural		Motivation crisis

    According to Habermas with advanced capitalism a new ideology has emerged -- a technocratic ideology, identified by the following characteristics (as interpreted by David Held) --  1) the veiling of practical problems; 2) the repressing of ethics; 3) the legitimizing of the pursuit of particular interests; 4) the concealing of class interests. (p. 264) We may expect to find any or all of these characteristics in public education policies produced in advanced capitalist societies.