Harbermas' Invalid Reconstruction On Historical Materialism

My thesis mainly demonstrates that Harbermas'reconstruction on historical materialism is only the logical development instead of theoretical structure innovation, which hasn't altered the basis of historical materialism.Three part: the inner logic of reconstruction on historical materialism, the reconstruction on historical materialism, and the reflection on historical materialism. In the first part, we mainly discuss the inner logic of Harbermas'reconstruction on historical materialism. First, we analyze the time background of Harbermas'reconstruction theory. Harbermas lived in the late of capitalism. The government began to meddle in the economy. The science and technology became the first productive force and some realistic issues occurred. Then we explore the theoretical basis of his historical materialism. Harbermas mainly absorbs the"biological interpretative mode of new evolution"and"the structural mode of ontogeny", he used the two modes to study the issues of social development. Next, we discuss the logic argument of the reconstruction on historical materialism. Starting from the basic social problems, he proposed the"theory of communicative action"which is motivated by"learning mechanism". He proposed the formal similarity of normative structure on the issues of individual development and social evolution. He used"language"to connect the relations between the two structures. This is the general outline of Harbermas'reconstruction on historical materialism.In part two, we mainly analyze the detail content in Harbermas'reconstruction on historical materialism. First, on the basic social issues, Harbermas used"communicative action"to replace"social work". He didn't think the social work as the basis of social development, he thought that it played the basic role only in the particular social historical period. Communicative action runs through all the basis of all periods in our society.Then, on the issues of the impetus system of social development, Harbermas refuted the idea that take productive force and productive relations, economic base and superstructure, and class struggle as the impetus of social development. Next, on the classification of social forms, Harbermas opposed that the social history was classified into five or six forms according to productive force. He proposed the organization principle which classified the society into Age of new Stone, age of early highly civilized, civilized age and modern social age.In part three, it is the reflection on Harbermas'reconstruction on historical materialism. Harbermas replaced social work with communicative action, replaced the productive force and relations with work and communicative action, and replaced economic basis and superstructure with the living world and the system. He also used social organization principle to classify the social forms. Harbermas'reconstruction on historical materialism is based on the misunderstanding of the basic concepts, basic principles of historical materialism. It is not the reconstruction, but the discarding the basic principles of historical materialism.We first analyze Harbermas misunderstanding on the concepts of historical materialism.1) Historical materialism doesn't lack the concept of communication. Harbermas considered that the social work in historical materialism could only distinguish human from animals and could not serve as the base of human social evolution. Therefore, he replaced the social work with communicative action 2) language is the product of practice. Language is the media of communication, which is accepted by Harbermas and historical materialism, but historical materialism understanding of language is more scientific than Harbermas. Historical materialism understanding on language is a kind of practice.3) Social work has played double part. Harbermas held the idea that social work was not the basis of every society, and he considered communicative action as the basis. The material and social attributes of social work are dialectic. Harbermas interpretation on social work just focused on its materialistic production and neglected its social production.4) The science and technology is the first productive force. Historical materialism considers that science and technology is the first productive force. The science and technology promote the development in the field of awareness and society, which is all along the idea of historical materialism. The determining role of moral practice proposed Harbermas is the incorrect understanding on science and technology.5) social organization is only a layer of superstructure. The social form classification made by Harbermas misunderstood productive form as productive force and failed to realize the productive relations as only one dimension of productive force and exaggerated the importance of social organization principle in social development.Then, my thesis discuses Harbermas'distortion on historical materialism.1)Work and communicative action is different from the productive force and productive relations. This kind of substitution confuses the conception of productive force and work. It replaces productive relations with communicative action, is subjective to his replacation material with spirit.2) marx'idea of economic base and superstructure is more scientific than Harbermas'idea of living world. Harbermas refuted the idea that economic basis determined the superstructure, but he considered that the superstructure could counteract the economic basis. It inverted the social structure of historical materialism, which considered culture determined economy and politics and economic basis couldn't determine superstructure. Marx'idea of Superstructure is more scientific and comprehensive than harbermas'idea of living practice. Harbermas neglected the fact that culture is formed in the social production, it will lead to idealism if the principle of social production determining social development is abandoned.