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Redistribution as Recognition:A Response to Nancy Fraser*

Axel Honneth

In a series of articles and responses over recent years, NancyFraser has tried to outline a thesis that deserves our attentionnot only on account of its orienting power for a diagnosis ofthe times. Rather, if I understand her correctly, with herreflections she seeks to establish the conceptual underpinningsof an attempt to reconnect to crit ical social theory's old claim:both reflexively to conceptualize the emancipatory movementsof the age and prospectively to work towards realizing theirobjectives.1 As the texts that emerged from the Institute ofSocial Research in its founding phase already indicate, the twotasks taken together not only call for a sociologically richinterpretation of the normative claims implicit in the socialconflicts of the present. Beyond this, they also require ajustification, however indirect, of the moral objectives thatsocial-theoretical analysishas shown to determine or characterize the state of contemporary conflict . Now, in contrast to herearlier essays, the particular challenge of Nancy Fraser's contribution to this volume isthat both tasks are to be accomplishedin a single line of argument. In the course of an attempt toconceptually clarify the normative objectives now pursued ina rather diffuse and mostly implicit way by various socialmovements, a moral standard is to be formulated that can

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demonstrate the goals ' public justifiabili ty, while moreoverimproving their politicalprospects.

The theoretical originality and sociological circumspectionwith which Nancy Frasertries to renew the far-reaching claimsof Crit ical Theory are surely reason enough for deep engagement with the present essay. As well, in the course of herargument she alsomanagesto clarify the importance ofa seriesof contemporary political-theoretical approaches in the framework of the social conflicts that mark at least the highlydeveloped countries of the West. But another and, for me,more essential reasonfor considering her reflections with greatcare arises from the specificthesis that establishes the guidingthread of her attempt torenew Critical Theory: her conviction- indeed fear - thatthe shiftaway from key concepts ofcriticalsocial theory toward a theory of recognition will leadto neglectof the demands for economic redistribution that once constituted the normative heart of the theoretical tradition thatgoesback to Marx. And, alongside the relevant essay by CharlesTaylor,2 she views my own theoretical efforts since I startedinvestigating the "struggle for recognition" as typical of thisrecognition-theoretical turn.3

The starting point of Fraser's argument is the now hardlydisputable observation that a great many contemporary socialmovements can onlybe properly understood from a normativepoint of view iftheirmotivating demands are interpreted alongthe lines of a "polit icsofidentity" - a demand for the culturalrecognition of their collectiveidentity. The more recentemancipatory movements - as represented by feminism, ethnicminorities, gay and lesbian subcultures - no longer strugglemainly for economic equality or material redistribution, but forrespect for the characteristics by which they see themselvesculturally bound together. But if the rise of a specifictype ofsocial movement prompts a complete shift of criticalsocialtheory's key normative concepts toward demands for recognition, then, according to Fraser, something necessarilyfallsoutof view that has lost none of its moral urgency in view of


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112 REDISTRIBUTION OR RECOGNITION?.-


growing immiseration and economic inequality: the persistence, beyond "postmodem" forms of identity politics, andespecially under conditions of unrestrained neoliberal capitalism, of those social struggles and conflicts connected to theexperience of economic injustice.4If Critical Theory is stilltobe able to understand itself as a theoretical reflection of theemancipatory movements of the age, it must not hastily giveitself over to the conceptual framework of recognition that hasarisen over recent years. Rather, it should develop a normativeframe of reference in which the two competing objectives ofrecognition and redistribution both receive their due. ForFraser, in the end this means that the standpoint of the justdistribution of material resources continues to deserve priorityon account of its moral urgency, while demands for culturalrecognition must be adjusted to the resulting limits. Throughthis reassessment of contemporary goals, she moreover hopes,finally, to contribute to a harmonization of two wings of theemancipatory movement which threaten to fall apart absent theintroduction of a reflective mediating instance.

Now, in view of the social situation even in the highlydeveloped capitalist countries, there can hardly be disagreementbetween Fraser and myself when it comes to this generalconclusion. The trend toward growing impoverishment oflarge parts of the population; the emergence of a new "underclass" lacking access to economic as well as socioculturalresources; the steady increase of the wealthHof a small minority- all these scandalous manifestations of an almost totally unrestrained capitalism today make it appear self-evident that thenormative standpoint of the just distribution of essential goodsbe given the highest priority. The debate signaled by thejuxtaposition of the key terms "recognition" and "redistribution" can therefore not reside atthislevel of weighing politicalmoral tasks. Rather, in my view the argument is located on, soto speak, a lower level, where whatis at issue is the "philosophical" question: which of the theoretical languages linked to therespective terms is better suited to consistently reconstructing

and normatively justifyingpresent-day political demands withinthe framework of a criticaltheory of society? Not the superficialranking of normative goals, but rather their placement in acategorial framework shaped by the far-reaching claims ofCritical Theory thus constitutesthe core of our discussion. Andit is in fact at precisely thispoint that I depart from Fraser in adecisive and far-reaching respect. Contra her proposal that thenormative objectives of criticalsocial theory now be conceivedas the product of a synthesis of "material" and "cultural"considerations of justice, I am convinced that the terms ofrecognition must represent the unified framework for such aproject. My thesis is that an attempt to renew the comprehensive claims of Critical Theory under present conditions doesbetter to orient itself by the categorial framework of a sufficiently differentiated theory of recognition, since this establishesa link between the social causes of widespread feelings ofinjustice and the normative objectives of emancipatory movements. Moreover, such an approach does not run the riskFraser's does of introducing a theoretically unbridgeable chasmbetween "symbolic" and "material" aspects of social reality,since, on the assumptions of a theory of recognition, therelation between the two canbe seen as the historically mutableresult of cultural processesof institutionalization.

However, fundamental questions of social theory, likethose raised by this last problem, play only a subordinate rolein the debate between Fraserand myself In the foreground isthe general question of which categorial tools are most promising for reviving Critical Theory's claim to at once appropriately articulate and morallyjustifYthe normative claims ofsocialmovements. To be sure, the first step of my argument alreadyproblematizes a theoretical premise that this question seems toassume as self-evident: that in the interest of renewing CriticalTheory, it is advisable to be oriented by normative claimsthathave already gained public notice as social movements. Weneed only recall the originalintentions of the Frankfurt Institutefor Social Research, however, to realize that an abstractive


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114 REDISTRIBUTION OR RECOGNITION? REDISTRIBUTION AS RECOGNITION 115

fallacy is involved in such an attachment to goals that havealready been publicly articulated insofar as it neglects theeveryday, still unthematized, but no less pressing embryonicform of social misery and moral injustice. Simply recalling thiseveryday dimension of moral feelingsof injustice makes it clearthat - in agreement with much recent research - what is called"injustice" in theoretical language is experienced by thoseaffected as social injury to well-founded claims to recognition(I). Following these preliminary reflections - which might besomewhat pretentiously termed a "phenomenology" of socialexperiences of injustice - in a second step the category ofrecognition will be differentiated in order to clarify differentaspects of socially caused injuries to recognition claims. In thisway, I hope to be able to offer evidence for the strong thesisthat even distributional injustices must be understood as theinstitutional expression of social disrespect- or, better said, ofunjustified relations of recognition (II). If this can be shown and Fraser's dichotomy of "recognition" and "redistribution"thus turns out to be questionable - then the question of thenormative justification of demands for recognition remains asafinal and decisive problem. And here, too, I will formulate acounter-thesis to Fraser's: I would like to demonstrate thatwithout anticipating a conception ofthe good life, it is impossible to adequately criticize any of the contemporary injusticesshe tries to conceive in Marxist fashion, and I in terms of atheory of recognition (III).

1. On the Phenomenology of Experiencesof Social Injustice

In the last twenty-five years or so, it has become almost selfevident that when critical social theory reconsiders the normative goals of the present, it should be oriented toward a socialphenomenon whose name alreadysignalsa break with the past.Empirical indicators of the spark-point of moral discontent in

developed societies are no longer expected from the labormovement or similar protest currents, but rather from thediffuse complex of newer activist groups and protest movements brought under the umbrella concept of the "new socialmovements." It is true that from the start there was a certainlack of clarity about what the commonality in the "new" ofthese movements consisted in. Thus, with the initial selectiveorientation toward the peaceand ecology movements, the ideapredominated that we were facing the result of a cultural turnaway from "material" valuesanda growing interest in questionsabout the quality of our way of life;5 while today, with thefocus on the phenomenon of multiculturalism, the idea of a"politics of identity" is dominant, according to which culturalminorities increasingly strugglefor recognition of their collective value convictions.6 But in any case, the theoretical motivehidden behind these different versions of an orientation to the"new social movements" remains the same insofar as thetraditional problems of capitalistsocieties are no longer held tobe the key to present moral discontent. Rather, it is suggestedthat only such newly emerging movements can inform us ofthe moral objectives toward which a critical social theoryshould be oriented in the long term.It is with this indirect demand for a link between criticalsocial theory and present-day social movements that I aminterested in this first round of our debate. The danger I see insuch an affiliation isan unintended reduction of social sufferingand moral discontent to just that part of it that has already beenmade visible in the political public sphere by publicity-savvyorganizations. A critical social theory that supports only normative goals that are already publicly articulated by socialmovements risks precipitously affirming the prevailing level ofpolitical-moral conflict in a given society: only experiences ofsuffering that have already crossedthe threshold of mass mediaattention are confirmed as morally relevant, and we are unableto advocatorially thematize and make claims about sociallyunjust states of affairs that have so far been deprived of public


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attention. Of course, it has long since become clear in theMarxist tradition that endowing the working class with aprivileged status in the articulation of moral discontent incapitalist society, prior to any empirical scrutiny, is merely anunaddressed residue of metaphysicalhistorical speculation. Anda great merit of the thinkers brought together in the earlyInstitute for Social Research was to have opened the way forshaking off this philosophical-historical dogma by programmatically subjecting the task of scouting out system-transcendingconflict potentials to the check of empirical social research.7But the now widespread acceptance of a merely opposedperspective, whereby only moral discontent articulated by the"new" social movements isvalid asa theory-guiding objective,holds no less danger for the project of a critical social theory. Itis all too easy to abstract from socialsuffering and injustice that,owing to the filtering effects of the bourgeois public sphere,has not yet reached the level of political thematization andorganization.

Now, Nancy Fraser seems to be completely clear about thisrisk, as her contributions over recent years show. Indeed, thewhole drift of the present essaypursues precisely this aim bywarning against hastily adjusting our normative terminology topolitical objectives that owe their prominence to selectiveattention to only one type of socialmovement. Nevertheless, Iwould like to suggest that in the dramaturgy of Fraser's line ofthinking, her choice of examples and positioning of arguments,a conviction comes to dominate that is not so far from today'swidespread idealization of the "new social movements." For inher case, too, the legitimacy of a critical social theory's normative framework is primarily to be measured by whether it is ina position to express the political objectives of social movements. This is why she is so concerned to point out again andagain the extent to which, even today, demands for "materialredistribution" are among the objectives of organized politicalmovements. The point at which I depart from the conceptualmodel underlying this argumentative strategy is best anticipated

by a rhetorical question: what would be the implications forthe categorial framework of a critical social theory if, at aparticular time and for contingent reasons, problems of distribution no longer played a role in the political public sphere?Would the consequence of the doctrine that basic normativeconcepts must essentiallymirror the objectives of socialmovements then be that demands for redistribution would completely disappear from the theory's moral vocabulary? Theobvious answer makes it clear that the introduction of centralnormative concepts into a critical social theory should notfollow directly from an orientation toward "social movements."Rather, an "independent" terminology is required, since theforms of institutionally caused suffering and misery to beidentified also include those that exist prior to and independently of political articulation by social movements. Beforetrying to show how carryingout this task raises a certain typeof moral-psychological question that has long been neglectedwithin the tradition of CriticalTheory (2), I would firstl ike tobriefly explain why Nancy Fraser is not altogether free fromunreflective ties to the contingent successes of social movements (1).

1. On the demystif ication


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idealized characteristics of the white, male, heterosexual citizen. The struggle thus aims to change a country's majorityculture by overcoming stereotypes and ascriptions in a waythat can also in the end win social recognition for one's owntraditions and way of life. It is true that in view of thetendency to elevate precisely this type of social movementinto the embodiment of a post-socialistconflict scenario, certain doubts may arise about whether Fraser's initial diagnosisalready involves an overgeneralization of American experience.For in countries like France, Great Britain, and Germany,social struggles of the "identity politics" type have so farplayed only a subordinate role, whereas the "traditional" problems of labor policies, social welfare, and ecology morestrongly shape debate in the politicalpublic sphere. But whatinterests me in this suggestive picture of a new, post-socialistera is a different question altogether, which has less to do withtendencies to empirical overgeneralization than with a certainreductionism: which morally relevant forms of social deprivation and suffering do we have to abstract away from in orderto arrive at the diagnosis that today we are essentially facingstruggles for "cultural" recognition? I see three such reductiveabstractions at work, which had to be carried out sequentiallyfor the "identity politics" of certain social movements toemerge as the central conflict of our time.a) Anyone seeking a rough overview of typical forms ofsocially caused suffering in the highly developed capitalistcountries would not be ill advised to consult the impressivestudy The Weight of the World, by Pierre Bourdieu and hisassociates.Here we find a multitude of reports and interviewsthat make it clear that the overwhelming share of cases ofeveryday misery are still to be found beyond the perceptualthreshold of the political public sphere.8A few remarks sufficeto sketch in broad outline the characteristicsof these phenomena of social deprivation: they include the consequences of the"feminization" of poverty, which primarily affects single

mothers with limited job qualifications;long-term unemployment, which goes along with social isolation and privatedisorganization; the depressingexperience of the rapid disqualification of job skills that had enjoyed high esteem at the startof a career and now have been made useless by acceleratedtechnological development; the immiseration of the rural economy, where, despite deprivation and back-breaking work,yields on small farms never seem to be sufficient; and finally,the everyday privations oflarge families,where low pay renderseven the efforts of both parents insufficient to support thechildren. Each of these social crisis situations - and the listcould easily be expanded - goesalong with a series of exhausting, embittered activities for which the concept of "socialstruggle" would be entirely appropriate. Such tendenciestoward immiseration are constantlyfought by the afflicted withforms of opposition extending from confrontations with theauthorities, to desperate effortsto maintain the integrity of bothfamily and psyche, to the mobilization of aid by relatives orfriends. But, as Bourdieu insistsin his Postscript, none of thesesocial efforts is recognized by the political public sphere as arelevant form of social conflict. Instead, a sort of perceptualfilter ensures that only those problemsthat have already attainedthe organizational level of a political movement are takenseriously in moral terms:

With only the old-fashioned category of "social" at theirdisposal to think about these unexpressed and often inexpressible malaises, political organizations cannot perceivethem and, still less, take them on. They could do so only byexpanding the narrow vision of "politics" they haveinherited from the pastandby encompassingnot only all theclaimsbrought into the publicarenaby ecological, antiracistor feminist movements (among others), but also all thediffuse expectations and hopes which, because they oftentouch on the ideas that peoplehaveabout their own identityand self-respect, seem to be a private affair and thereforelegitimately excluded frompoliticaldebate.9


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Referring Bourdieu's vehement objections back to Fraser'sinitial image of a post-socialist conflict scenario, the full extentof the retouching this construction required becomes visible: inunintended agreement with the exclusionary mechanisms thatdirect the attention of the political public sphere, out of themultitude of everyday strugglesonly the relatively insignificantnumber that have already found official recognition as "new"social movements are picked out, as if by artificial light. Thisgives rise, first of all, to the misleading notion that developedcapitalist societies are marked primarily by social conflictsdriven by demands for cultural recognition. And to counteractthe normative consequences of considering only these objectives within the framework of a critical social theory, themarginalized social movements (still) demanding distributivejustice must then be remembered in a second step. The errorhere lies in the tacit initial premise that "social movements"can serve critical social theory as a kind of empirically visibleguiding thread for diagnosing normatively relevant problemareas. What such a procedure completely overlooks is the factthat official designation as a "social movement" is itself theresult of an underground strugglefor recognition conducted bygroups or individuals afflictedby social suffering to make thepublic perceive and register their problems. But this co-enactment of an exclusion already contained in the designation"social movement" -is not the only retouching Nancy Fraserhad to carry out to arrive at her initial diagnosis.b) For all its one-sidedness, it is of course not entirely wrongto locate a new focus of conflict within the highly developedsocieties in the growing tendency of cultural groups to demandrecognition of their collective identities. Albert Hirschman alsobasically assumes that we are facing a shift from "divisible" to"indivisible" conflicts, whose peculiarity consists in the fact thatthe contested good - precisely this"collective identity" - cannotbe parceled out from the standpoint of distributive justice. On

his premises, the danger istherefore growing of social conflictswhose resolution can nolongerrelyon the normative agreementof the members of a political community.10 But those whobelieve they can in fact discern in this tendency the centralconflict scenario of the higWydeveloped societies must alsotakethe next step and considerin their empirical diagnosis that manysuch cultural groups try to assert their collective identity byaggressively excluding all "outsiders." The social movementstoday demanding recognition oftheir value convictions includenot only peaceful groups likefeminists or marginalized minorities, hut also racist and nationalist groups such as Farrakhan'sNation of Islam and German skinheads. In this respect, thesecond retouch Fraser had to carry out to her initial picture ofa new post-socialist conflict scenario consists in leaving outa not inconsiderable portion of the "identity politics" enterprise. The different movements, that is, can only be tied tothe common aim of non-exclusive, democratically-orienteddemands for cultural recognition when we abstract away fromthose that militantly try to asserttheir "particularity" with thethreat of violence by tacitly applying a normative criterion. Inan essay that grapples with contemporary theoretical approachesto the "new social movements," Craig Calhoun leaves no doubtabout such a tendency toward normative idealism in the conception of "identity politics":

The new social movements idea is, however, problematicand obscures the greater significance of identity politics.Without much theoreticalrationale, it groups together whatseem to the researchers relatively"attractive" movements,vaguely on the left, but leavesout such other contemporarymovements as the new religiousright and fundamentalism,the resistance of white ethniccommunities against people ofcolor, various versionsofnationalism,and so forth. Yet theseare equally manifestationsof "identity politics" and there isno principle that clearly explainstheir exclusion from thelists drawn up by NSM theoristsY


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122 REDISTRIBUTION OR RECOGNITION? '"--


To this extent, the current privileging of the social movements with which Fraser opens her analysis not only resultsfrom leaving out many of the socials truggles that occur in theshadows of the political public sphere. Moreover, it mustabstract away from those "identity politics" projects that pursue their goals by means of social exclusion in order to arriveat the idea that today feminism, antiracist movements, andsexualminorities are at the center of socialconflict. However,these two bits of retouching do not yet complete the initialpicture. Before it can take its final form, in a third step allhistorical precursors that might reveal similarities with themovements in question are excised. For only thus can thesuggestive impression emerge that with today's struggles for"cultural" recognition we face an entirely novel historicalphenomenon.c) In the famous essay that revealed the "politics of recognition" to a broad public as a contemporary problem, CharlesTaylor in a way already supposes a highly misleading chronology. According to his central historicalthesis, while the historyof liberal-capitalist societies has hitherto been marked by strugglesfor legal equality, today their place has largely been takenby the struggles of social groups demanding recognition of theirculturally defined difference.12 What interests me at this pointis not that, by assuming a much too narrow notion of legalrecognition, Taylor schematically shrinks. it into a kind ofhomogenizing equal treatment; I will have to return to thislater in the context of conceptual clarification, since the sametendency seems to be at work with Fraser as well. For themoment, however, what is of interest are the historical stylizations and one-sidedness that give Taylor's thesis its linearchronology. Just as all legal components of contemporarystruggles for recognition must be suppressed in advance, so,conversely, must all the cultural, "identity-political" elementsbe removed from the legal conflicts of the past in order toarrive at the idea of a historical sequence of two distinguishable

types of social movement. The thesis that today we face aboveall struggles for the recognition ofculturaldifference thus tacitlyassumes a specific picture of traditionalsocial movements - asif, despite all the focus on legal equality, an objective likedemanding social recognition for one's values and ways of lifehad been completely alien to these movements. It does notrequire much detailed historicalknowledge to see how misleading - indeed false - this characterizationis.The notion that identity politicsisa new phenomenon is, insum, clearly false. The women's movement has roots at leasttwo hundred years old. The founding of communes was asimportant in the early 1800sas in the 1960s. Weren't theEuropean nationalisms of the nineteenthcentury instances ofidentity politics? What of the strugglesof African-Americansin the wake of slavery? What of anticolonial resistance?Neither is identity politicslimited to the relatively affluent(the "postmaterialists" as Inglehart calls them), as thoughthere were some clear hierarchyof needs in which clearlydefined material interests precedeculture and struggles overthe constitution of the nature of interests - both materialand spiritual. 13Today's "identity-political" movements can no more bereduced to their cultural objectivesthan the traditional resistance movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries can be pinned down to material and legal goals. Inthe end, even the efforts of the labor movement - to nameanother important example Calhoun leaves off his list - aimedin essential part at finding recognition for its traditions andforms of life within a capitalist value horizon.14 The wholesequential schema on which Taylorbaseshis historical diagnosisis therefore misleading: it suggeststwo phases in the history ofmodem social movements, where it is to a large extent merelya matter of differences of nuance and emphasis. And insofar asFraser lets her initial picture be influenced by this suggestiveperiodization, she necessarily takes on the false premises of ahistorical opposition of interest-based or legal politics on the


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one side, and "identity politics" on the other. As a result, shetoo, in a third and final retouch, must leave out all the culturalelements of the traditional social movements in order to arriveat the idea that the struggle for cultural recognition is ahistoricallynew phenomenon.Bringing together these three abstractions, it becomes clear thatFraser's initial diagnosis is a sociological artifact: first, from themultitude of current social conflicts, only those are picked outthat have attracted the attention of the political public sphereas social movements (in the USA) under the official tide of"identity politics"; then, tacidy applying a normative criterion,from these identity-political movements precisely those areexcluded that pursue aims by the illegitimatemeans of socialexclusion and oppression; and finally, by leaving out historicalforerunners, the small group of social movements that remainare stylizedinto the new key phenomenon of the post-socialistera, to which the normative conceptualization of critical socialtheory must feel partially bound. What chiefly concerns meabout such an approach in this first round of the debate is whathappens in the first of the sequential exclusions.On the dubiouspremise that a critical social theory should be normativelyoriented toward social movements, the whole spectrum ofsocialdiscontent and suffering is reduced to that small part of itthat wins official recognition in the political public sphere. Thejustification for this thematic one-sidedness isfor the most partimplicitly supplied by the fatal mistake Marxist theory madeover and over again, from its beginnings up to the recent past.While Marx and his successors had a historical-philosophicaltendency to see the proletariat alone asthe stand-in for all socialdiscontent, in a countermove, all dogmatic definitions are nowto be avoided by interpreting social movements as the empiricalindicators of such discontent. IS This gives rise to the questionable tendency of merely taking on board allthe prior thematicdecisionsby which, on the basis of selection processes, certainforms of social suffering move to the center of the political

public sphere. Today, such a - surelyunintended - complicitywith political domination can only be undone by introducing anormative terminology for identifying social disconte~t independently of public recognition. Of course, this requires precisely the kind of moral-psychological considerations Fraserseeksto avoid.

2. Injustice as humiliation and disrespectSo far, I have demonstrated nothing more against Fraser thanthat normatively orienting a critical social theory toward thepublicly perceptible demands of social movements has theunintended consequence of reproducing political exclusions.This does not, however, seem to show all that much in viewof her further arguments, since in a second step she proceedsto insist on the normative relevance of questions of distribution against the hegemony of "identity-political" goals. However, if we recall the argumentative rollof her initial diagnosis,then a not insignificant - in the end, even decisive - difference already becomes visible: while Fraser can only considerthe introduction of vocabulary of recognition into the categorial framework of a critical social theory justified to theextent that it expresses the normative demands of a new postsocialistconflict scenario, for me, following what has been saidso far, there can be no such historical restriction. Quite apartfrom the fact that the whole idea of a "politics of identity"seemsto me a sociological artifact, I instead have to justify theconceptual framework of recognition apart from any referenceto social movements. In contrast to Fraser, I assume that it isnot the rise of identity-political demands - let alone the goalsof multiculturalism - that justifies recastingthe basic conceptsof critical social theory in terms of a theory of recognition,but rather an improved insight into the motivational sourcesof social discontent and resistance. For me, in other words,the "recognition-theoretical turn" represents an attempt toanswer a theory-immanent problem, not a response to present


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social-developmental trends. Because of this systematic difference, in the further course of my argument I will also have toshow that even questions of distributive justice are betterunderstood in terms of normative categories that come from asufficiently differentiated theory of recognition. And, in theend, even the problem of the normativejustification of criticaltheory of society as a whole cannot remain unaffected by thisdistinction.

Firstof all, however, an explanation is required of the set ofproblems that introducing a conception of recognition is meantto solve. For this I need only continue the line of argumentalready laid out in my remarks on the precarious role of the"new socialmovements" within the framework of critical socialtheory. As should already have become clear there, a normativeorientation toward the social movements that happen to bedominant represents precisely the wrong response to a questionthat has become increasingly urgent since the collapse of thehistorical-philosophical premises of Marxism: if the proletariatcan no longer represent the pretheoretical instance whichtheory can self-evidently call upon, how then isa form of socialdiscontent to be determined as constituting the necessary reference point for empirically justifying critique? It is probablybetter, however, to free this question from its hermeneuticcontext and first formulate it independently of its specific rolewithin Critical Theory in order to be as clear as possible aboutits substantive core. With what conceptual tools, then, can asocialtheory determine what in socialreality is experienced bysubjectsas socially unjust?

It is clear that no definitive answer to this question offeelings of injustice is possible without first establishing theactual reactions of those affected with the tools of empiricalsocialresearch. Since, however, all investigations of this kindare informed, via categories and criteria of relevance, by atheoretical pre-understanding, it isnecessaryto treat this problem on a conceptual level. What is at issue here are the basicconcepts to be used to inform usbeforehand about the respects

in which subject's expectations can be disappointed by society.Thus, it is a matter of a conceptual pre-understanding of thosenormative expectations we must assumefor the members of asociety if forms of social discontent and suffering are to beinvestigated at all. With respect to this problem, it may behelpful first to recall somewhat more precisely two figures ofthought already at work in our opposed positions. This willmake clear that the level in question - that of the categorialdetermination of moral vulnerabilities- need not be entered atall, since, according to prior decisionson matters of principle,they pass either above or below it.This is not difficult to show for the tradition of criticalsocial theory that remained largelyconfined to the premises ofthe Marxist history of philosophy. Where the proletariat wasnot, following Lukacs, endowed with the traits of AbsoluteSpirit from the start, this was argued on the basis of thesociological figure of ascribable interest, which so to speakgave it a historical-materialist twist. A unified interest was tobe ascribed to the working classasa collective subject according to instrument-rational considerations - which, it couldthen be shown in a second step, would be forever disappointed by capitalist relations. Even if the content of any"ascribable" interest could vary depending on the underlyingposition and could even include normative goals, the theoretical research could for good reason be broken off before thelevel that concerns us here. There was no need for a separateexplanation of subjects' moral expectations of society, sincethe place of such expectations was taken by completely instrument-rational interests. Hence, the normative dimension ofsocial discontent was never able to come into view at all inMarxism because of the implicit assumptions of a more or lessutilitarian anthropology: socialized subjects were basicallyregarded not as moral actors, marked in advance by a numberof normative claims and corresponding vulnerabilities, but asrational-purposive actors, whose particular interests could beascribed accordingly. 16


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Now, in my view, the second of the positions discussedabove, which isnonnatively oriented by the empirical indicatorof the "new" social movements, relates to thisfuiledintellectualtradition by simply making the opposite mistake. Whereasearlier too much was presumed about subjects' predeterminedinterests ,here there is too li ttle prior orientation to be able toperceive any stratum of normative expectations whatsoever.What predominates in these newer versions of critical socialtheory isthe conviction that further clarificationof this kind isnot required, since the objectives articulated by social movements already tell us enough about existing forms of socialinjustice. Any additional experiences of sufferingthat we maysuspect lie beyond such publicly articulated discontent belonginstead to the field of theoretical speculation, where sociologicalascription prevails over empirical indicators. The consequenceof this kind of short-circuit between "social movements" andsocialdiscontent as a whole is not simply the already criticizedtendency merely to theoretically confirm a society's politicallyestablishedlevel of conflict. Graver still, in my view, is the factthat all conceptual efforts to make sense of possible forms ofsocialsufferingare nipped in the bud. While within Marxism acertain tendency toward utilitarian anthropology always predominated, allowing a unified interest to be collectivelyascribedto a social class, the second position lacks any conceptual tools for hypothesizing about the potential causes offeelings of social injustice. Subjects remain, as it were,unknown, facelessbeings until precisely such time as they unitein socialmovements whose political goalspublicly disclose theirnormative orientations.

With these historical-theoretical reflectionswe begin to seein outline why the attempt has never really been undertakenwithin the tradition of critical social theory to come to apreliminary conceptual understanding of the normative sourcesof socialdiscontent. With the great exception of]iirgen Habermas - alongside whom Antonio Grarnsci should perhaps beplaced - for various reasons a certain tendency to anti-norma-

tivismhas prevailed, which essentiallyprohibited subjects frombeing endowed with normative expectationsvis-a-vis society.For this reason, what must be considered a kind of socialtheoretical premise for categorial reflection on possible forms,ofsocial discontent could never even comeinto view: namely,that every society requires justification from the perspective ofits members to the extent that it has to fulfill a number ofnormative criteria that arise from deep-seated claims in thecontext of social interaction. Ifthe adjective"social" is to meananythingmore than "typically found in society," social sufferingand discontent possess a nonnative core. It is a matter of thedisappointment or violation of nonnative expectations ofsociety considered justified by those concerned. Thus, suchfeelings of discontent and suffering, insofaras they are designated as "social," coincide with the experience that society isdoing something unjust, something unjustifiable.

The decisive question now, of course, iswhether this coreof normative expectations amounts to more than what isalready contained in the formal criteria of the concept ofjustification itself On this minimal interpretation, the experience of social injustice would alwaysbe measured by whetherthe procedural criteria built into establishedprinciples of publiclegitimation or justification are consideredsufficient for institutional regulation. What is ascribed to the participants here isthus a kind of conviction of legitimacyoriented by the moralimplications of the existing procedures for justifying politicaldecisions.Suggestions for such a proceduralmodel are of courseto be found above all in the Habermasianidea that every formofpolitical legitimation must satisfyspecificstandards of discursiverationality; 17 but Joshua Cohen, too,followingJohn Rawls,has more recently tried to show by examining historicalaccounts that the violation of institutionallyexpected justifications leads to morally motivated protest.18 From a sociologicalperspective, such reflections generally amount to the empiricalhypothesis that social feelings of injustice primarily arise whenindividually understandable reasons for particular institutional


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measuresand rules are lacking. And it must further be assumedthat, by virtue of moral socialization processes, these reasonsavailableto individuals make up the elementsof public practicesofjustification that are valid in a givensociety. In other words,social injustice is experi~nced the moment it can no longer berationallyunderstood why an institutional rule should count onagreement in accordance with generallyaccepted reasons. It istrue that this line of thinking takes into account the fact thatthe individual evaluation of social processespossesses a formalstructure that cannot be completely independent of the structure of public practices of justification: what counts as a goodargument for general recognition will also sooner or laterachieve validity and shape subjective standards. But, on theother hand, this restriction to only a form ofjustification seemsto entirely lose sight of the normative perspectives from whichindividuals decide how far they can follow the establishedprinciples of public justification in the first place. It is as if thegenerallyaccepted reasons need not correspond to the normative expectations that the subjects bring - in a certain way ontheir own - to the social order. Sociologicallyapplied proceduralism thus lacks a counterpart to individual claims andvulnerabilities, which for those affected form the moral substance through which the legitimacy of institutional rules isrefracted. What counts as a "good" reason in the legitimationof institutional rules, then, depends for individuals on whethertheir moral expectations of society as such find appropriateconsideration. Thus, when it comes to understanding theexperience of social injustice categorially, the material horizonsof expectation that make up the "material" of all publicprocessesof justification must alsobe taken into account. Foran institutional rule or measure that, in light of generallyaccepted grounds, violates deep-seated claims on the socialorder, is experienced as social injustice.19

With this turn against sociologically-oriented proceduralism,however, comes the not unreasonable demand that we be ableto say something theoretically convincing about the normative

expectations that subjects generallyhave of the social order.The most serious problem here, of course, turns out to bearriving at determinations that are abstractenough to grasp themultitude of different claims and, if possible, tie them to anormative core. Such an endeavoris not, however, completelyhopeless, since over the last two or three decades a number ofstudies in different disciplines have all pointed in one and thesame direction. And, in light of what has been said so far, itshould not be surprising that this common goal consists in theidea that what subjects expect ofsocietyis above all recognitionof their identity claims. This ideabecomes clearer if we brieflyname the stages through which this research gradually reacheda breakthrough.

In the beginning it was historical research on the labormovement that first made clear the extent to which goalsof recognition had already marked the social protest of thelower classes in emerging and gradually prevailing capitalism.Taking aim at the tendency to consider only economicinterests, historians like E.P. Thompson and Barrington Moorewere able to show that, when it came to the motivationalsources of resistance and protest, the experience of the violation of locally transmitte


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132 REDISTRIBUTION OR RECOGNITION?

where their convergence with completely different life-situations and constellations of experience could come into view.Comparison with the social resistanceof colonized groups orthe subterranean history of women's protest then showed thatthe proletarian struggle for respect for claims to honor was byno means a special case, but onlya particularly striking exampleof a widespread experiential pattern: subjects perceive institutional procedures as social injustice when they see aspects oftheir personality being disrespected which they believe have aright to recognition.

Even these empirical findings provided litde more thanillustrative raw material requiring conceptualization to serveas a tenable basis for a generalizable thesis. Referring back tothe problem under discussion here, the mutually reinforcingfindings said no more than that perceptions of social injusticedepend not only on established principles of legitimation, butalso on different expectations of social recognition. But howa social order's standards of public justification were specifically connected with these relatively stable claims - how themoral form of justification was to be thought together withideas of integrity and worth - largely evaded clarification inthis empirically and historically focused discussion. Furtherprogress could only come when, under the impact of researchthat had accumulated in the meantime, social theory and political philosophy began to open up to the theme. Alongsidework that further developed Hegel's theory of recognition,studies by Tzvetan Todorov, Michael Ignatieff, and AvishaiMargalit are especially noteworthy here.22 Despite their different methods and aims, their efforts are nevertheless unitedby the initial premise that the experience of a withdrawalof social recognition - of degradation and disrespect - mustbe at the center of a meaningful concept of socially causedsuffering and injustice. With this, what had previously onlyhad the status of generalized empirical findings was raised tothe level of a normatively substantive social theory: the basicconcepts through which social injustice comes to bear in a

'1-::\llREDISTRIBUTION AS RECOGNITION 133

theory of society must be tailored to subjects' normativeexpectations regarding the socialrecognition of their personalintegrity.

Of course, this finding is stilla far from satisfactory answerto the question of how such deep-seated claims to recognitionare influenced by the forms ofjustification that inform subjects'evaluative standards by way ofsocialdiscourses of justification.Moreover, it is not yet entirely clear what is meant by thepersonal integrity which people generally expect their societyto recognize. But the researchjust described already providesthe initial oudine of a thesisthat lends additional weight to theobjection I made against Fraser:the conceptual framework ofrecognition is of central importance today not because itexpresses the objectives of a new type of social movement, butbecause it has proven to be the appropriate tool for categoriallyunlocking social experiences of injustice as a whole. It is notthe particular, let alone new, central idea of oppressed collectives - whether they arecharacterizedin terms of "difference"or "cultural recognition" - that is now to provide the basis forthe normative framework of a theory of recognition. Rather,what gives rise to - indeed compels- such a categorial revisionare the findings that have been compiled concerning the moralsources of the experience of social discontent. BarringtonMoore's path-breaking investigation of proletarian resistance;the scattered studies of the significanceof damaged self-respectamong colonized peoples; the growing literature on the centralrole of disrespect in women's experiences of oppression; Avishai Margalit 's systematic treatise on the key place of "dignity"in our ideas of justice - allpoint in the same direction: to thenecessity of adopting the terms of recognition. According tothe knowledge now availableto us, what those affected regardas "unjust" are institutional rules or measures they see asnecessarily violating what they consider to be well-foundedclaims to social recognition.

For the project of a criticalsocialtheory Nancy Fraser and Iseek to renew, a consequence follows from this line of thinking


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134 REDISTRIBUTION OR RECOGNITION? REDISTRIBUTION AS RECOGNITION 135that diverges significandy from her own strategy. More theoretical innovation is needed today than Fraser has in mindwhen she tries to categorially expand theory's normative frameof reference so that both the older and the newer objectivesofemancipatory movements can fmd appropriate expression.Quite apart from the above-mentioned risk of merelyaffirmingthe existing level of conflict, such an approach fuilseven totouch on the problem of systematic lack of accessto everydayexperiences of injustice. This difficulty - a legacy of thesociological anti-normativism that also prevailed in the olderFrankfurt School - must now stand at the beginning of anyrenewal of critical social theory. For without a categorialopening to the normative standpoint from which subjectsthemselves evaluate the social order, theory remains completelycut off from a dimension of social discontent that it shouldalways be able to call upon. Neither the idea of ascribableinterests, stemming from Marxism, nor an atheoretical attachment to "new" socialmovements, is of any help here. Rather,in accordance with the research I have briefly summarized,what is needed is a basic conceptual shift to the normativepremises of a theory of recognition that locates the core of allexperiences of injustice in the withdrawal of socialrecognition,in the phenomena of humiliation and disrespect. In this way,the "recognition-theoretical turn" I am recommending forcritical social theory moves one level beneath Fraser'sargument. Such a categorial transformation would not serve toinclude emancipatory movements that have thus far beeninsufficiently thematized, but to solve problems having to dowith the thematization of social injustice as such. To be sure,pursuing this more comprehensive strategy also entails takingthe second step that arisesfrom the basic recognition-theoreticalshift: even the "material" inequalities that most concern Frasermust be interpretable as expressing the violation of wellfounded claims to recognition.

II. The Capitalist Recognition Orderand Struggles over DistributionIn the firstround of my debate with Nancy Fraser,I wanted tocall into question two connected premises that tacidy underlieher determination of the relation between conflictsover recognition and distribution. First, it seems highlyimplausible tome to interpret the history of political conflictwithin capitalistsocieties according to a schema that asserts a transition frominterest-based to identity-oriented social movements, andhence a shift in nonnative semantics from "interest" to "identity," or from "equality" to "difference." If we take intoaccount reports of moral discontent and socialprotestin earliertimes, it quickly emerges that a language is constantlyused inwhich feelingsof damaged recognition, respect,or honor playa central semantic role. The moral vocabulary in which nineteenth-century workers, groups of emancipated women at thebeginning of the twentieth century, and Mrican-Americans inbig US citiesin the 1920s articulated their protestswastailoredto registering social humiliation and disrespect. True, this doesnot yet tell us anything about how they saw themselves asdisrespected or not recognized, but the evidence nonethelessshows unmistakably that injustice is regularly associatedwithwithheld recognition. To this extent, it seemsto me inadvisable simply on the descriptive level to divide experiencesof injustice into two diametrically opposed classes,the firstcomprising questions of distribution, the second questions of"cultural recognition." Not only is the spectrum of moraldiscontent not exhausted by this simple opposition; it wouldalso suggest that experiences of "material" disadvantagecan bedescribed independendy of individuals' and groups' problemswith social recognition. It therefore seems more plausible tome that experiences of injustice be conceived along a continuum of fonns of withheld recognition - ofdisrespect- whosedifferencesaredetermined by which qualitiesor capacitiesthose


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affected take to be unjustifiably unrecognized or not respected.Such an approachalso allows us to consider that differencesinthe experience of irtiustice can be determined not only withregard to the object, but also by the form of the missingrecognition. Thus, when it comes to the sorts of "identityconflicts" Fraser stresses, it makes a fundamental differencewhether the culturally defined groups are demanding a kind ofsocial appreciation or the legal recognition of their collectiveidentity. In any case, simply mentioning these two alternativesgives rise to the suspicion that, because of the rigid distinctionbetween "redistribution" and "cultural recognition," Frasersimply does not have the categorial tools to take adequateaccount of this "legal" form of recognition. Her argumentcreates the impression that social groups basicallystruggle formaterial resources or cultural recognition, while the strugglefor legal equality surprisingly finds no systematic expression atall.23

These preliminary considerations, which I will explain further in the course of my response, give rise to the second ofFraser's conceptual premises I wish to callinto question. Thosewho argue along the lines I have just indicated cannot historically restrict the concept of recognition to a new phaseof social"identity conflicts." Rather, this framework should serve tomake visible a deep layer of morally motivated conflicts thatthe tradition of critical social theory has not infrequentlymisrecognized, owing to its fixation ort the concept of interest.To be sure, such a recognition-theoretical reconceptualizationrequires more than opposing, as if from the outside, a series ofrecognition expectations which can potentially produce socialconflicts to an otherwise conceptually unaltered socialreality.Those who proceed this way have not sufficientlyappreciatedthat forms of reciprocal recognition are always alreadyinstitutionalized in every social reality, whose internal deficits orasymmetries are indeed what can first touch off a kind of"struggle for recognition." What is therefore required first ofall is an attempt to explicate the moral order of society as a

fragilestructure of graduated relations of recognition; only thencan it beshown in a second step that thisrecognition order cantouch offsocial conflicts on various levels,which asa rule referto the moral experience of what is taken to be unfoundeddisrespect.With such an approach it ismoreover clear from thestart that the expectations of recognition attributed to subjectscannot be treated like a kind of anthropological yardstick, asFraserseems to reproach me for in some places.Rather, suchexpectationsare the product of the socialformation of a deepseatedclaim-making potential in the sensethatthey always owetheir normative justification to principles institutionallyanchored in the historically established recognition order. Oncewe seethisinternal entwinement of expectationsof recognition- or, put negatively, experiences of disrespect- and historicallyinstitutionalized principles of recognition, we alsosee the initialoutlines of how the so far unexplained connection betweensocial discourses of recognition and justification must beconstrued.

This short summary of the conclusions of the first part ofmy responsetheoretically anticipates the direction I will pursuein continuing the argument. Before I can attempt to interpretdistribution conflicts according to the "moral grammar" of astrugglefor recognition, a short explanation isrequired of whatit can mean to speak of capitalist society asan institutionalizedrecognition order. To this end, in a first step I will explain howthe development of bourgeois-capitalist society can be understood asthe result of the differentiation of three social spheresof recognition (1). Only then can I set myself the task ofinterpreting distribution conflicts - contra Fraser'sproposal - asthe expressionof a struggle for recognition; thismorally motivated struggle takes the specific form of a conflict over theinterpretation and evaluation of the recognition principle of"achievement" (2).



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1. On the historical dif ferentiation if three spheres of recognition:Love, law, achievement

In light of the mere ly preparatory aims of the firs tpart of myremarks, in the following I will have to content myself withonly a rough sketch of the argument. I thus rely for the mostpart on research that at least implicitly attempts to interpretbourgeois-capitalist society as an institutionalized recognitionorder. In thisway,it should not only become clearinwhich ofthe particular spheres of recognition what are traditionallyandin shorthand termed "conflicts of dis tribution" take place.Beyond this, I amalso concerned to show that the distinctivelyhuman dependence on intersubjective recognition is alwaysshaped by the particular manner in which the mutual grantingof recognition is institutionalized within a society. From amethodological point of view, this consideration has the consequence that subjective expectations of recognition cannotsimply be derived from an anthropological theory ofthe person.To the contrary, it isthe most highly differentiated recognitionspheres that provide the key for retrospective speculation onthe peculiarity ofthe intersubjective "nature" ofhurnan beings.Accordingly, the practical self-relation of human beings - thecapacity, made possible by recognition, to reflexivelyassurethemselves of their own competences and rights24 - is notsomething given once and for all; l ike subjective recognitionexpectations, this ability expands with the'number of spheresthat are differentiated in the course of social development forsocially recognizing specific components of the personality.Following these preliminary reflections, it seems to make

sense to understand the breakthrough to bourgeois-capitalistsociety as the result of a differentiation of three spheres ofrecognition. In order to allow for the socialization of progeny,the estate-based order of premodern society must already haverudimentarily developed the attitudes of care and love - without which children's persona lities cannot develop a t all - as aseparate form of recognition.25 But this practice of affective

recognition, through which growing individualsacquire trustin the value oftheir own bodily needs, went ononly implicitlyuntil childhood was institutionally marked offasa phase of thelife process requiring special protection.26 Only then couldawareness develop within society of the specialduties of carethat parents (historically, of course, at first only the mother)have to assumewith respect to the child in order to preparethe way from organic helplessness to the development of selfconfidence. Parallel to this process, the recognition form oflove similarlybecame independent: the relationsbetween thesexeswere gradually liberated from economic and social pressures and thus opened up to the fee ling of mutua l a ffection.Marriagewassoon understood - albeit with class-specificdelays- asthe institutional expression of a specialkindof intersubjectivity, whose peculiarity consists in the fact that husband andwife love one another as needy beings.27 With these twoprocessesof institutionalization - the marking offof childhoodand the emergence of "bourgeois" love-marriage - a generalawareness gradually arose of a separate kind of social relation,which, in contrast to other forms of interaction,is distinguishedby the principles of affection and care. The recognition thatindividuals reciprocally bring to this kind of relationship isloving care for the other's well-being in light of his or herindividual needs.Of course, another developmental process was incompara

bly more important for the emergence of the core institutionsof capitalistsociety, since it laid the foundationfor their moralorder. Not only in the estate-based socialconstitution of feudalism but in all other premodern societies,the legal recognition of the individual - his or her recognized status as amember of society protected by certain rights - was directlyconnected to the social esteem he or she enjoyedby reason oforigin, age, or function. The scope of the rightslegitimatelyat a person's disposal arose in a sense direcdy from the"honor" or status conferred on him or her by a ll other members of societywithin the framework of an establishedprestige

139EDISTRIBUTION AS RECOGNITIONEDISTRIBUTION OR RECOGNITION?38


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order. This alloyoflega! respect and socialesteem- the moralfundament of all traditional societies - broke up with theemergence of bourgeois capitalism. For with the normativereorganization of legal relations that developed under thepressure of expanding market relations and the simultaneousrise of post-traditional ways of thinking, legal recognition splitoff from the hierarchical value order insofar asthe individualwas in principle to enjoy legal equality vis-a-vis all others.28The normative structural transformation that went along withthis institutionalization of the idea of legal equalityshould notbe underestimated, since it led to the establishment of twocompletely different spheres of recognition, revolutionizingthe moral order of society: the individual could now - certainly not in actual practice, but at least according to thenormative idea - know that he or she was respected as a legalperson with the same rights as all other members of society,while still owing his or her social esteem to a hierarchicalscaleof values - which had, however, also been set on a newfoundation.The transformation that occurred in the socialstatus order

with the transition to bourgeois-capitalist society was no lesssubversive - indeed revolutionary - than what happened at thesame time within the autonomized sphere of legal respect.With the institutionalization of the normative idea of legalequality, "individual achievement" emerged as a leading cultural idea under the influence of the religious valorization ofpaid work.29 With the gradual establishment of the new valuemodel asserted by the economically rising bourgeoisie againstthe nobility, the estate-based principle of honor conversely lostits validity, so that the individual's social standingnow becamenormatively independent of origin and possessions.The esteemthe individual legitimately deserved within society was nolonger decided by membership in an estate with correspondingcodes of honor, but rather by individual achievement withinthe structure of the industrially organized division of labor.30The entire processof transformation triggered by the normative

reorganizationof legal status and the prestigeorder can thus bevividly described as a splitting of the premodern concept ofhonor into two opposed ideas: one part of the honor assuredby hierarchy was in a sense democratized by according allmembers of society equal respect for their dignity and autonomy as legal persons, while the other part was in a sense"meritocracized": each was to enjoy socialesteemaccording tohis or her achievement as a "productive citizen."Of course, the latter kind of social relation - which repre

sented a third sphere of recognition alongside love and thenew legalprinciple in the developing capitalistsociety - washierarchicallyorganized in an unambiguously ideological wayfrom the start. For the extent to which something counts as"achievement," as a cooperative contribution, is definedagainst a value standard whose normative reference point isthe economic activity of the independent, middle-class, malebourgeois. What is distinguished as "work," with a specific,quantifiable use for society, hence amounts to the result of agroup-specific determination of value - to which whole sectors of other activities, themselves equally necessaryfor reproduction (e.g. household work), fall victim. Moreover, thisaltered principle of social order at the same time represents amoment of material violence insofar as the one-sided, ideological valuing of certain achievements can determine howmuch of which resources individuals legitimatelyhave at theirdisposal.Between the new status hierarchy - the gradation ofsocialesteem according to the values of industrialcapitalism and the unequal distribution of material resources there is, tothis extent, more than a merely external relation of "superstructure" and "basis," of "ideology" and objective reality.The hegemonic, thoroughly one-sided valuation of achievement rather represents an institutional framework in which thecriteria or principles for distributing resources in bourgeoiscapitalistsociety can meet with normative agreement.31Thisadditional consideration gives rise to what Richard Munch hasrightly calledthe intermeshing of payment and respect in the


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142 REDISTRIBUTION OR RECOGNITION? REDISTRIBUTION AS RECOGNITION 143capitalist economic sphere.32 It would be wrong to speak, withLuhmann and Habermas, of capitalism as a "norm-free" system of economic processes since material distribution takesplace according to certainly contested but nevertheless alwaystemporarily established value principles having to do withrespect, with the social esteem of members of society. It is nothard to see that these considerations will have far-reachingconsequences for defining what have been traditionally termed"distribution struggles."Summing up these brief remarks on the social-moral devel

opment ofbourgeois-capitalist society, it turns out that we canspeak of a differentiation of three spheres of recognition withsome plausibility. These violent transformativeprocesses established three distinct forms of social relationsin which membersof society can count, in different ways and according todifferent principles, on reciprocal recognition. In terms of thenew kind of individual self-relation made possible by therevolution in the recognition order, this means that subjects inbourgeois-capitalist society leamed - gradually,and with manyclass- and gender-specific delays - to refer to themselves inthree different attitudes: in intimate relationships, marked bypractices of mutual affection and concern, they are able tounderstand themselves as individuals with their own needs; inlegal relations,which unfold according to the model of mutually granted equal rights (and duties), they learn to understandthemselves as legal persons owed the same autonomy as allother members of society; and, finally, in loose-knit socialrelations - in which, dominated by a one-sided interpretationof the achievement principle, there is competition for professionalstatus- they in principle learn to understand themselvesas subjects possessing ahilities and talentsthat are valuablefor society. Of course, this does not mean that the developingcapitalistsocialorder did not also produce other forms of socialrelations allowing individuals hitherto unknown types of selfrelation. Thus, for example, the increased anonymity of interaction in rapidly growing cities led to a rise in individuals'

opportunities to test new patterns of behaviorwithout sanction,experimentally broadening their horizons of experienceY Butunlike other newly developing pattems of communication,each of the three forms of relation I have outlined is distinguishedby intemal normative principlesthat establish differentfouns of mutual recognition. "Love" (the central idea ofintimaterelationships), the equality principle (the norm oflegalrelations),and the achievement principle (the standard of socialhierarchy) represent normative perspectiveswith reference towhich subjects can reasonably argue that existing forms ofrecognition are inadequate or insufficient and need to beexpanded. To this extent, unlike other structurally producedsocialrelations in the new society, the three spheres of recognition form normatively substantive models of interaction inthe sense that they cannot be practiced if their underlyingprinciplesare not somehow respected. Finally,a further difference concerns the fact that only social relations that requirean attitude of mutual recognition contribute to the development of a positive self-relation. For only by participating ininteractionswhose normative preconditions include reciprocalorientation to specific principles of recognition can individualsexperience the enduring value of their specific capacities forothers. Thus, with the institutional differentiation of spheresof recognition, the opportunity for greater individuality alsorises - understood as the possibility of increasingly assuringthe singularity of one's own personality in a context of socialapproval:with each newly emerging sphere of mutual recognition, another aspect of human subjectivityis revealed whichindividuals can now positively ascribe to themselves intersubjectively.These additional points should make it clear how much the

idea of a social differentiation of three spheres of recognitionowes to a kind of social-theoretical transformation of Hegel'sPhilosophy oj Right. Just as Hegel spoke with regard to the"ethical" (sittlich) order of modem society of three institutionalcomplexes (the family, civil society, and the state), whose


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internal constitution as spheres ofrecognition allows the subjectto attain the highest degree of individual freedom throughactive participation, the same basic idea is to be found in myown reflections in the form of a differentiation of threedifferently constitut


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with his idea of political standing or honor. The disadvantageof this institutionalist way of thinking is not only that institutions are interpreted much too one-sidedly in terms of asingle recognition principle - as emerges, for instance, in thecurious absence of any reference to legal recognition in the"family" or "state." Under the pressure of this concretism,the borders between the institutional complexes on the oneside, and the spheres of recognition on the other, break downaltogether. But an even more serious problem is that Hegelis no longer free to systematically bring other institutionalembodiments of the recognition principles into his analysis.Thus, to name only the most striking example, his discussionof the ethical relation of love lacks any reference to the socialimportance of "friendship," although this would seem tohave been strongly suggested by his orientation to classicalideals.

In order to avoid such inconsistencies, it seems much moreplausibleto me to introduce the differentspheresof recognitionabove the concrete level on which we speak of social or legalinstitutions: such spheres refer to the forms of socially establishedinteraction that have a normative content insofar as theyare anchored in different principles of reciprocal recognition. Ifthe basicidea of the Philosophy of Right istaken up again todayin this altered form, it is clear from the start that the idea ofsocial Sittlichkeit can designate only the most abstract possibleidea of an ensemble of historically specific spheres of recognition.38 And it is also self-evident that institutional complexesrepresent a single recognition principle only in the rarest ofcases; as a rule, they rather result from an intermeshing ofseveral of them. Thus, to take another obvious example, themodem "bourgeois" nuclear family is an institution in whichthe recognition principle of love has been gradually complemented by the legal regulation of intrafamilial interactions.The introduction of the legal principle of recognition - anexternal constraint of legal respect among family members typically has the function of guarding againstthe dangers that

can result from the "pure" practice of only the principle ofreciprocal love and concem.39Ifwe consider the possibilities of suchinstitutional intercon

nections, we also see that the third sphereof recognition I haveintroduced - the "achievement principle" as a selectiveembodiment of social esteem - was already complementedearly in the history of capitalist society by references to legalrecognition. The development of social-welfare measures canbe understood such that individual members of society shouldbe guaranteed a minimum of socialstatusand hence economicresources independently of the meritocratic recognition principle by transforming these claimsinto socialrights. And withthissuggestion, I can pick up the threadofmy argument whereI leftit before this short excursuson the Hegelian Philosophy ifRight: we cannot adequately analyzethe significance of" distribution struggles" within the framework of a theory of recognition without first briefly describingthe social-welfare state'sincorporation of the sphere of socialesteem.The individualistic achievement principle, which emerged as anew criterion of social esteem after the dissolution of the estatebasedstatus hierarchy, was from the beginning a double-edgedsource of legitimacy. On the one hand, as mentioned, itrepresented little more than part of an influential ideologyinsofar as it simply expressed the one-sided value horizon ofthose social groups which, because they possessed capital, hadthe means to reorganize economic reproduction. Thus, what"achievement" means, and what guaranteesa just distributionof resources, was measured right from the start against anevaluative standard whose highest reference point was investment in intellectual preparation for a specificactivity. But thischaracterization is in a certain way already misleading, sincehardly any of the criteria used beneath the surface is free fromone-sided evaluation - as is shown, for example, by thedefinition of individual risk-taking by the investment risk ofthe owner of capita1.40 Beyond this, the whole way of evaluat-


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ing achievement was also influenced from the start by encompassing horizons of interpretation whose origins lie not in theevaluations of the capitalistelite, but in much older worldviewsthat nonetheless help determine what counts as an expressionof individual effort. Naturalistic thinking, which attributesessentialist collective properties to social subgroups so that theirpractical efforts are not viewed as "achievement" or "work,"but merely as the realization of an "innate" nature, plays anespecially big role here. Within the social-ontological horizonof this naturalism, the activitiesof the housewife or mother, forinstance, are never viewed as a "producrive" contribution tosocial reproduction that wouldjustify any form of social esteem,while women's work in the formally organized sector is notbelieved to be as productive asthat of men, since according towomen's nature it involves lessphysical or mental exertion.41Once we become cognizant ofthe many superimpositions anddistortions inherent in the capitalistachievement principle, it ishard to see any normative principle of mutual recognition in itat all. Nevertheless, putting the new idea into social practiceindeed did away with the estate-based form of social esteem,and at least normatively sustainsthe demand that the contributions of all members of societybe esteemed according to theirachievements.On the other hand, then, for the time being the individualist

achievement principle isalsothe one normative resource bourgeois-capitalist society provides for morally justifying theextremely unequal distribution of life chances and goods. Ifsocial esteem as well as economic and legal privileges can nolonger be legitimately governed by membership in a certainestate, then the ethico-religious valorization of work and theestablishment of a capitalistmarket suggest making social esteemdependent on individual achievement. To this extent, theachievement principle henceforth forms the backdrop of normative legitimation which, in case of doubt, has to providerational grounds for publiclyjustifying the privileged appropriation of particular resources like money or credentials. And the

fact of social inequalitycanonly meet with more or lessrationalagreement because, beyond all actual distortions, its legitimatingprinciple contains the normative claim to consider the individual achievements ofallmembers of society fairly and appropriately in the form of mutual esteem. To be sure, the unequaldistribution of resources also found normative support fromanother side, which would serve as the gateway for a farreaching restructuring of the capitalist social order. For alongside the newly-created achievement principle, it was themodern legal order, with its inherent claim to equal treatment,that saw to it that the state-approved, and hence sanctionsupported, appropriation ofresources by structurally advantagedgroups could be considered legitimate.42 But it was alsoprecisely this principle of equal legal treatment that could bemobilized in countless social struggles and debates, especiallyby the working class, to establish social rights. Thus, therecognition sphere ofthe achievement principle was ina certainway contained by the social-welfare state by making a minimum of social esteem and economic welfare independent ofactual achievement and transforming them into individualrights claims.43The changes that take place in the capitalist recognition

order with the emergence ofthe welfare state can perhaps bestbe understood asthe penetration of the principle of equallegaltreatment into the previously autonomous sphere of socialesteem. For the normative argument which made socialwelfare guarantees in a certain sense "rationally" unavoidable isessentially the hardly disputable assertion that members ofsociety can only make actual use of their legally guaranteedautonomy if they are assured a minimum of economicresources, irrespective of income.44 Here we have an especiallyvivid example of how historical changes can be brought aboutby innovations whose origins lie in nothing other than thepersuasive power - or better, the incontrovertibility - ofmoralreasons45: thanks to their underlying principles, the socialspheres of recognition that together make up the socio-moral

149EDISTRIBUTION AS RECOGNITIONEDISTRIBUTION OR RECOGNITION?48

.j'ill:;:!Ii:1:!I!'"j !~

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order of bourgeois-capitalist society possess a surplus of validity, which those affected can rationally assert against actualrecognition relations. The social-welfare innovations that wereachieved in this way in at least some western capitalistcountries placed social stratification on an altered moral basis,inasmuch as the group-specific appropriation of resources isina certain way normatively dividedand subjected to two different principles: a lesser share of socially available goods is nowguaranteed to individuals aslegalpersons in the form of socialrights, while the far greater share continues to be distributedaccording to the capitalist achievement principle. But withthis, the social conflicts designated as "distribution struggles"take on a double form, since they can occur either by mobilizing legal arguments or by revaluing prevailing definitions ofachievement.

2. Distribution conflicts as strugglesfor recognitionAs is well known, Marx already expressed a number of gravereservations about the political idea of distribution struggles, asadvocated in his time mainly by Social Democrats. Essentially,his objections were based on the conviction that the goal ofmerely redistributing economic resources leaves untouched theasymmetry between capital and labor, the real cause of socialinequality.46 Now, I have no intention of dusting off thiscriticism in my debate with Fraser, since I share with manyothers the conviction that Marx makes some serious mistakesin his analysis of capitalist society. The central objection hereconcerns his unmistakable propensity to dismiss the moralpower of the equality and achievement principles as culturalsuperstructure, although they provided the newly emergingmarket society with its legitimating framework in the firstplaceY Nevertheless, a reflex resembling the Marxist reservation kicks in when I see Fraser attempting to politicallyvalorize distribution struggles against the (putative) predominance of identity struggles. Are not the social phenomena the

151EDISTRIBUTION AS RECOGNITION

latter category is meant to designate far from transparent, sinceneither their moral-motivational backdrop nor the standardsoflegitimation connected to them are adequately grasped? True,there has been a pronounced tendency in the debate sparkednot least by Fraserto considerdistribution struggles, asagainstthe newly emerging cultural conflicts of the 1990s, asunproblematically given.48 But thisoften amounts to merely projectingprinciples of justice based on distribution theory onto socialreality, as if this type of moral consideration would selfevidently play a motivating role. In the end, therefore, oftenlittle more remains of the phenomenon of distribution strugglesthan the redistributional measures negotiated in public wagebargaining or parliamentarydebates over tax policy. There can,to be sure, be little talk here of social struggle in the real senseof the term, i.e., everyday conflicts in which those affectedattempt by their own symbolic and practical efforts to alter adistribution order they feelisunjust.49 To this extent, a conceptof distribution struggles must be reconstructed that is nottailored to the level ofstateredistributional measures, but rathertakes into account the non-state spaces where the initial effortsto delegitimize the prevailingdistribution order are undertaken.Only then will it emerge whether Fraser is right to establishanunbridgeable chasm between these conflicts and so-called identity struggles.My account of the capitalistrecognition order so farshould

have made it clear that I regard the restriction of social r ecognition to just one form - the "cultural" - as seriouslymisleading. Rather, there are three recognition spheresembedded in the moral order underlying capitalism at least inwestern societies, whose respective "surplus of validity" produces different experiences of injustice or unwarranted disrespect. Here one dimension - which Fraser surprisingly leavesout of her critical diagnosisof the times altogether - playsanabsolutely central role in the history of these societies: a conflict dynamic runs through the history of capitalism up to thepresent day over the appropriate interpretation of the principle

REDISTRIBUTION OR RECOGNITION?50


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of legal equality, starting with Marx's account of the debatesover the justification of stealing wood and continuing today,for instance, in women's strugglefor special pregnancy provisions in labor law.50The medium through which this sort ofsocial struggle unfolds is modem law, which promises all

, members of society equal respect for their individual autonomy.51 It may be that Fraser was misled into leaving out thelegal form of recognition by Charles Taylor's suggestive presentation, according to which the struggle for equality in acertain way belongs to a now superseded phase of historicaldevelopment that was still free from demands for the recognition of cultural "difference." This seems to me to be mistaken, however, beyond the above-mentioned grounds,because the battle for legal recognition itself never occursexcept by asserting a specific "difference" in life-situation,which so far has not received legal consideration, with normative reference to the equality principle. All struggles forrecognition, it could be more pointedly said, progress througha playing out of the moral dialectic of the universal and theparticular: one can alwaysappealfor a particular relative difference by applying a general principle of mutual recognition,which normatively compels an expansion of the existing relations of recognition. 52

Now, the confiictual playing out of this moral dialectictakes an especially capricious and opaque form within thoserecognition spheres that normatively underlie the social stratification of capitalist society; for here there are in a sense twoways in which subjects can demand recognition of their particular life-situations or personalities in order to struggle forgreater social esteem and hence more resources. On the onehand, up to a certain, politically negotiated threshold, it ispossible to call for the application of social r ights that guarantee every member of society a minimum of essential goodsregardless of achievement. This approach follows the principleof legal equality insofar as, by argumentatively mobilizing theequality principle, normative grounds can be adduced for

making minimum economic welfare an imperative of legalrecognition. On the other hand, however, in capitalism'severyday social reality there is also the possibility of appealingto one's achievements assomething "different," since they donot receive sufficientconsideration or social esteem under theprevailing hegemonic value structure.53 To be sure, a sufficiently differentiated picture of this sort of recognition struggleis only possible when we take into account the fact that eventhe social demarcation of professions - indeed, the shape ofthe social division of labor as a whole - is a result of thecultural valuation of specificcapacities for achievement. Todayit is becoming especiallyclear that the social construction ofprofessional fields is shot through with prejudices about thelimits of women's capabilities.

An examination of the relevant research quickly showsthatthe undervaluing of predominately female professions is notdue to the actual content of the work. Rather, it is the otherway around: every professionalized activity automatically fallsin the social status hierarchy assoon as it is primarily practicedby women, while there is a gain in status if the gender reversalgoes the other way.54Gender functions here in the organizationof the social division of labor as a cultural measure thatdetermines the socialesteemowed a particular activity independent of the specificity of the work. Only this cultural mechanism, the (naturalistically grounded) denigration of femalecapacities for achievement, can explain how 'it is that that, onbourgeois-capitalist society'sunderstanding ofits own premises,the de facto women's activitiesof housework and childcaredonot conceptually register as "work" at all. And th

honneth - redistribution or recognition[1]

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