poiesis and techne - by joseph belbruno

7/29/2019 Poiesis and Techne - by Joseph Belbruno

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Technik und Kultur from Marx to Weber:A Tribute to Aaron Swarz

Traditional social theory begins with the individual taken from anontogenetic standpoint almost as if that in-dividual could exist

independently of the species and indeed of the environment with whichthe species interacts. It is understandable, then, why the passage fromindividual to society is so fraught with antinomies and antitheses andcontradictions and why theories aimed at filling this hiatus mustnecessarily be transcendentalist because they must posit a socialcontract that is the pro-duct of an idealistic interest a reason or aspirit or a freedom that is shared by all in-dividuals and thatallows them to co-exist. Social contract theories and rationalist theoriesof society start from the building bloc of in-dividuum. Yet this notion ofin-dividuum is itself a concept that depends on a division of social labourso extensive, so specialized, that it is possible to think and conceive of

the individual as independent of society! It is the very a-tomisation of social life operated by Christian-bourgeois society thatpermits the ab-straction of human beings from their being human! Allprevious social theory begins with the in-dividuum and convenientlyforgets that it is a pure fiction created by a particular type of society and specifically by Christian-bourgeois society with its religious notion ofsoul and its related socio-economic one of persona that extendsproperty, political and human rights. What we are seeking to do hereis to develop an immanentist approach to social theory that advancesa phylogenetic analysis of society and its members an approach thattreats human beings as aspects ofbeing human. We are trying to

reset the building blocs of social analysis starting not from the in-dividuum but rather from the fact of species-being just as greattheoreticians did, albeit inconsistently, like Marx with the concept ofGattungswesen, Nietzsche with the ontogeny of thought, and Hegelwith the dialectic of self-consciousness.

This lengthy quotation from Werner Jaegers Paideia (Vol.3) containsmany of the themes that we have discussed over the role of the Logosbetweenpoiesis and technein connection with Nietzsche.

RHETORIC AND CULTURE 61

More than any other sphere of life, the art of oratory resiststhe effort of systematic reason to reduce all individual facts to anumber of established schemata, basic forms. In the realm oflogic Plato calls these basic forms the Ideas. As we have seen,he took this three-dimensional mode of describing them fromcontemporary medical science, and applied it to the analysis ofBeing. In rhetoric we can see the same process in operation atthe same time, though we cannot definitely say that it was


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directly influenced by Plato's use of the term idea. Medicine andrhetoric were by their very nature the spheres in which this conceptionof basic forms or Ideas could be developedfor medicinereduces a number of apparently different physiologicalevents to a few fundamental types; and rhetoric likewise simplifieswhat seem to be separate and distinct political or legalsituations. The essence of both skills is to analyse the individualcase into its general aspects, so as to make it easier to treatin practice. The comparison of these general patterns to theletters of the alphabet here, and later in Platowas obvious enough.The act ofreading is just the same as that of political or forensicormedicaldiagnosis: a large number of variously assembled shapesare reduced to a limited number of basic 'elements', and thusthe meaning of each of the apparently manifold shapes isrecognized.59 In science too, the 'elements' which make up physical

nature were first called by that name in the same period, andthe same analogy, drawn from language and the letters of thealphabet, lies behind it.60

Isocrates of course does not by any means reject the doctrine of arhetorical system of Ideas. In fact, his writings show that he largelyadopted that doctrine, and that he took as the foundation of his ownteaching the mastery of the basic forms of oratory. But oratory whichknew no more than these forms would be as sounding brass and atinkling cymbal. The letters of the alphabet, immovable andunchangeable, are the most complete contrast to the fluid andmanifold situations of human life, whose full and rich complexitycan be brought under no rigid rule.61 Perfect eloquence must bethe individual expression of a single critical moment, a kairos,and its highest law is that it should be wholly appropriate. Onlyby observing these two rules can it succeed in being new andoriginal.6262 ISOCRATES

In a word, oratory is imaginative literary creation. Thoughit dare not dispense with technical skill, it must not stop shortat that.63Just as the sophists had believed themselves to be thetrue successors of the poets, whose special art they hadtransferred

into prose, so Isocrates too feels that he is continuingthe poets' work, and taking over the function which until ashort time before him they had fulfilled in the life of his nation.His comparison between rhetoric and poetry is far more than apassing epigram. Throughout his speeches the influence of thispoint of view can be traced. The panegyric on a great man isadapted from the hymn, while the hortative speech follows themodel of the protreptic elegy and the didactic epic. And, in


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these types, Isocrates copies even the order of his ideas fromthe well-established traditional order which was a rule in eachof the corresponding poetic genera. More than that: the positionand prestige of the orator are determined by this parallel withthe poet. The new vocation must support itself on an old andfirmly-established one, and take its standards therefrom. Theless Isocrates hopes or wishes to succeed as a practicalstatesman,the more he needs the prestige of poetry to set off hisspiritual aims; and even in the educational spirit by which hisrhetoric is inspired, he is deliberately emulating what the Greeksconceived to be the educational function of the poets of old.

One aspect of logic and science as languages or systems of symbolsis that they make possible the social synthesis that is to say, theyallow human beings to co-ordinate their actions and to fulfil theirhuman potential as members of the species. This is the technical

side of the Logos. The other aspect is the poetic one that elevatescommunication from the realm of technique to that of creation orinnovation or decision-making authority. Poiesis itself can exist only forthe in-dividual becausepoiesis as such, ea ipsa, is by definition in-communicable, in-effable. From the viewpoint of the social synthesis,therefore - which is all that does and can matter for our being human -,only the technical aspects of communication can be the subject ofpolitical analysis and action. These aspects correspond to theexecutive or administrative and bureaucratic side of social life, whilstthepoetic role is invariably invoked to describe and rationalise thedecisional and initiating, creative or authoritative (from the Latinauctor, initiator, author, creator) side of the social synthesis. Theformer role tends to the need-necessities of social life, and the latterserves the artistic needs. The very fact that the Sophists reduced thedialectical method that long pre-dates the Platonic dialogues(themselves a written version of spoken Socratic dialectics) from a dia-logue (thesis and anti-thesis) over a specific theoretical topic aimed atthe truth to a public address aimed at swaying public opinion istestimony to the changing political role oftechneandpoiesis in thelife of the Greek city-states, where political orators were now called onto persuade assembled crowds rather than individual debaters, andthen even by means of prepared written public addresses andmanifestoes (appropriately called propaganda) rather than by verbalextemporizing (see on all this, Giorgio Colli, La Nascita della Filosofia).

Nietzsches quarrel with the scientific and dialectical Socrates (andPlatonism, and Christianity as Platonism for the masses) starts withthis formulation of life, with the idealization of existence and its


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being a copy of the world of Ideas in short, with the reduction ofindividual experience to technique by means of the crystallizationand coagulation of human communication to achieve this socialsynthesis. By contrast, his elevation of the Sophists is based on theirpreference for the earthly and the real, for the apparent and the

tragic, for the kairos of seizing the moment to sway the audience. Inother words, Nietzsche seeks to overcome the very cleavage betweenpoiesis and techne that had been introduced by the Logos, yet hedoes so by simply denigrating techne, by reducing the social synthesisas such (tout court)to reification as against the authenticity ofpoiesis - and therefore in effect, by treating the two as opposites, heclearly ends up reifying or hypostatizing all human communicationand the social synthesis, just as Webers Rationalisierung andKalkulation will do years later. By failing to identify the exact politicalforces that have led to and constitute this rationalization, bothNietzsche and Weber commit the mistake of asserting that things

have power over human beings, however much they may end updenouncing this rationalization and disenchantment of the world.(Lowith, too, is wrong to claim that for Marx also there is a self-alienation of man through the reification of commodities becauseif alienation is simply the self-alienation of [abstract] Man, thenclearly it is only things or commodities and not some men andwomen that can govern this supposed self-alienation and impose itover otherhuman beings.) Because both Nietzsche and Weber startwith language as mere symbolic exchange between in-dividuals, theformer, and socialization as the rational settlementof conflict againbetween in-dividuals, neither of them manages to realise that both

communication and the division of social labour begin not with in-dividuals (the sociological equivalent of a-toms in chemistry), butrather with the phylogenetic unity of human being.

For Isocrates, it is the very committal of ideas to the written form thatdemocratizes them which is why he must then insist onimaginative literature to preserve the poetic aura of therhetorician, and why for him as for Plato the rhetorician and thephilosopher take poetical precedence to the practical man ortechnician or specialist or statesman in all cases, a bureaucrat.(Ciceros De Oratore offers a similar elevation of the mystique of

oratory in Romano-Hellenic society.) Similarly, in Weber, for whombureaucracy was paramount in understanding all developed societies(not just capitalist ones), the Sozialisierung is a product of the ironcage, the conflict of individual needs, and runs parallel to theDemokratisierung: the more that the division of social labour reducesthe provision of human needs to techneor routine to bureaucracy-, the greater becomes the accessibility of information required for thereproduction of society (the Kalkulation). Yet just as for Isocrates, for


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him this only leads to the dependence of the decision-makinghierarchy on a few charismatic leaders that can sway the masseswith their extraordinary poetic or charismatic powers.

Thus for Weber, surprisingly, it is the very specialization that

requires the centralization of decision-making power, as in theAmerican mass parties (cf. Politik als Beruf). This is befuddling becauseit is quite obvious that the more technical and specialized aprocess becomes, the more open to democratic control it growsprecisely because, as Weber himself (and even Isocrates!) would mostcertainly agree, (a) the decision is never and can never be atechnical matter, and (b) decisions based on more complextechnicalities become more, not less, open to democratic scrutinybecause the decisive aspect recedes. Yet both Isocrates and Weberattempt to turn even decision-making that is assisted by acutetechnical skill and information, not into a trulyparticipatory democratic

process, but rather into its opposite - into a matter of feeling oraesthesis, as Jaeger insightfully explains in connection with the Greekmedical profession:

The real doctor is recognized by his power to estimate what isappropriate for each individual case.38 He is the man who has thesure judgment to pick the right quantity for everyone. Thereis no standard of weight or measure by which one could fixquantities on a general basis. That must be done wholly byfeeling (aisthesis) which is the only thing that can compensate

for the lack of such a rational standard.39That is where practisingphysicians make most of their mistakes, and he who makes

only a small one now and then is indeed a master of his calling.Most doctors are like bad pilots. As long as the weather is allright their inexpertness is not noticeable, but in a bad stormeveryone sees that they are useless. (p.18)

The pilot of a ship sailing in good weather requires only techne; but inbad

weather he needs to rise up topoiesis or virtue (arete). Thiscategorization

rhymes with Nietzsches dualism of the rational man and theintuitive man,

of science and art, of false necessity and freedom, of reification andexpression or

authenticity (Heidegger, Sartre). Once again, Nietzsches politicalorientation is

exquisitely aristocratic, erecting a barrier between the Ubermenschand the

herd. Equally, in Weber the dualism is between the soullessness ofthe


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bureaucratic and administered individual who belongs to the masses,and the

Individualitatof the charismatic leader or hero with his leitenderGeist.

Nietzsches own intuitive man or aesthetic man the individual

whopossesses this aesthesis or feeling, or even the Ubermensch isclearly the

precursor of Webers charismatic leader. This aspect ofdemoticelitism is a

central feature of middle-European social theory from Weber toSchumpeter

(although it was first theorized by Pareto and Mosca). It is in a crisis,the

political equivalent of this medical storm, that the Weberianleitender Geistand

its charisma, the politics of responsibility, emerge prepotently.Similarly, it is

Schumpeters Unternehmer-geist (entrepreneurial spirit) that not onlyinter-venes

in a capitalist crisis by means of Innovation, but actually andactively causes

one! There is an element of initiation or mysticism leading toauthoritarianism

in all this that Jaeger also identifies with truly astounding acumen whenhe

describes the process whereby the Greek medical profession and its

demiourgoi sought to turn itself into a select dictatorship of quasi-religious

or charismatic leaders distinct from the demotai or idiotes:

Our word 'layman', originating in the mediaeval church, firstmeant a person not in holy orders, and thence a person not initiatedinto professional secrets; but the Greek word idiotes carries a socialand political connotation. It means a man who pays no attentionto the state and the community, but simply attends to his privateaffairs. In contrast with him, the doctor is a demiourgos, a'public worker'as indeed every artisan was called who madeshoes or utensils for the public. Often laymen are distinguished

from the doctor, viewed in this light, by being called 'the people'(demotai). The name demiourgos vividly brings together the two

sides of the doctor's professionits social and its technical

aspectswhile the difficult Ionic word cheironas (which is used

as a synonym for it) signifies only the latter aspect.21There isno word to distinguish the Greek doctor with his higher skillfrom what we should consider as an ordinary artisan; and thesame holds for the sculptor and the painter. However, there is


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something in Greek medicine which resembles our use of theword 'layman', with its implication 'uninitiated'. That is thebeautiful close22 of the Hippocratic Law: 'Secret things arerevealed only to initiates. It is forbidden to reveal them toprofane persons before they are initiated into the mysteries ofknowledge.'Here we have mankind divided, as if by a religious

rite, into two classes, one of which is severely debarred from anarcane knowledge. This line of thought raises the doctor'simportance above that of a mere artisan, both technically andsocially(p.11)

It is entirely obvious here that both Isocrates and Weber elevate thepoiesis of the leader well above the techneof the artisan (or demotaior idiotes) on two specific premises: - one is that public or politicaldecisions to be made on the basis of the available information areconflictual because (for Weber at any rate) decisions always involveconflictual and contro-versial matters, including the interpretation of

available information on which the decisions are to be made; and theother is that the taking of decisions involves a demos (the publicintended as spectators, as mass) that plays only a passive role inthat it needs to be led and persuaded by a dictatorship ofinitiates. This second point is strengthened by the spread of publicaddresses or rallies as against dia-logues between two dialecticians(in the Socratic sense), and by the fact that both public addresses andeven dia-logues are committed to writing (even by Plato, of course,who still qualified himself as a philo-sopher, a lover of wisdom, butnot as a sophist or wise sage like Socrates or Heraclitus orAnaxagoras) so they may be propagated to a wide public. (Again,

see G. Collis brilliant short study on La Nascita della Filosofia. Theequivalent structural change of the public sphere in the capitalist erawas the focus of Jurgen Habermass homonymous masterful earlystudy.)

There is an obvious apory in Webers reasoning between theDemokratisierung (occasioned by the spread and rise of the workingclass in capitalist industrial nations in his time) that requires both theextension of markets and the spread of the bureaucratic apparatusto regulate this process at a distance, as it were, so as to give theimpression that the social synthesis operates independently of political

control through economic laws: this is the Sozialisierung, on onehand. And then on the other hand there is the need for thisbureaucratic machinery to be guided by the leading Spirit of thecharismatic hero. This apory is why Marx instead reasons in theexact opposite direction to Weber (in the Grundrisse at any rate,because elsewhere he seems to justify Lukacss artisanal totality):democratization and consequent socialization require higherconcentration of power so as to preserve the power of those already in


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control (the capitalist managers) which serves only to intensify theantagonism of the existing social relations. (Benjamin Constant willdescribe this as the rise of the private rights as against the publicfreedom of Antiquity and so will Hannah Arendt.)

Here is the polar opposition of forces and relations of production which certainly does not mean, as Weber wrongly took it to mean, amechanical relation between the wind mill and feudalism and thesteam-mill and capitalism (cf. Marx: "The windmill gives you societywith the feudal lord: the steam-mill, society with the industrialcapitalist", The Poverty of Philosophy, ch.2). Indeed, the notion offorce of production could never be intended by Marx in amechanical sense (though often in his more scientistic moments hedoes give that impression), but simply to distinguish the directrelations of production from their legal aspects, that is, the socialclaim to distribution of what he called surplus value. There is no

great merit, then, in Webers attempt to reduce the Marxian metonymyto the crude distinction of base and superstructure and then suggestinstead the Sombartian analysis based on the mixture of Technik undKultur:

Es ist selbstverstndlich an sich etwas Willkrliches und sehr Zweifelhaftes, was man unter demBegriff Technik verstehen will. Marx gibt eine Definition des Begriffs Technik meines Wissensnicht. Es steht aber bei Marx, bei dem sehr Vieles steht, was, wenn man genau und pedantisch,wie wir es tun mssen, analysiert, nicht nur widerspruchsvoll scheint, sondern wirklichwiderspruchsvoll ist, unter anderem eine oft zitierte Stelle des Inhalts: Handmhle bedingtFeudalismus, Dampfmhle bedingt Kapitalismus. Das nun ist eine nicht konomische, sonderntechnologische Geschichtskonstruktion, und von der Behauptung selbst ist einwandsfrei zukonstatieren, da sie einfach falsch ist. (in http://www.zeno.org/Soziologie/M/Weber,

+Max/Schriften+zur+Soziologie+und+Sozialpolitik/Gesch%C3%A4ftsbericht+und+Diskussionsreden+auf+dem+ersten+Deutschen+Soziologentage+in+Frankfurt+1910/Diskussionsrede+zu+W.+Sombarts+Vortrag+%C3%BCber+Technik+und+Kultur)(This is Webers discussion of W.Sombarts lecture on Technik und Kultur.)

Of course, abstracted from its specific socio-historical context, both thewind mill and the steam-mill are technological and not economicentities. Here yet again we see how sterile and pedantic Webersneo-Kantian formalism becomes the minute one seeks to dissecthuman reality into separate scientific categories. Doubtless, whatMarx meant is that the steam-mill represents the application of

scientific practice to the production of commodities for a market(steam allows the constant capital invested on its machinery to beused round-the-clock and decreases its time of circulation), rather thanthe application of traditional methods for local subsistence production(the wind mill is subject to the vagaries of the weather)! There is anobvious dif-ference between the two machines and curiously this isa process that Weber himself identified also (apart from Marx) inScience as a Vocation and generally in his writings on capitalism as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmillhttp://www.zeno.org/Soziologie/M/Weber,+Max/Schriften+zur+Soziologie+und+Sozialpolitik/Gesch%C3%A4ftsbericht+und+Diskussionsreden+auf+dem+ersten+Deutschen+Soziologentage+in+Frankfurt+1910/Diskussionsrede+zu+W.+Sombarts+Vortrag+%C3%BCber+Technik+und+Kulturhttp://www.zeno.org/Soziologie/M/Weber,+Max/Schriften+zur+Soziologie+und+Sozialpolitik/Gesch%C3%A4ftsbericht+und+Diskussionsreden+auf+dem+ersten+Deutschen+Soziologentage+in+Frankfurt+1910/Diskussionsrede+zu+W.+Sombarts+Vortrag+%C3%BCber+Technik+und+Kulturhttp://www.zeno.org/Soziologie/M/Weber,+Max/Schriften+zur+Soziologie+und+Sozialpolitik/Gesch%C3%A4ftsbericht+und+Diskussionsreden+auf+dem+ersten+Deutschen+Soziologentage+in+Frankfurt+1910/Diskussionsrede+zu+W.+Sombarts+Vortrag+%C3%BCber+Technik+und+Kulturhttp://www.zeno.org/Soziologie/M/Weber,+Max/Schriften+zur+Soziologie+und+Sozialpolitik/Gesch%C3%A4ftsbericht+und+Diskussionsreden+auf+dem+ersten+Deutschen+Soziologentage+in+Frankfurt+1910/Diskussionsrede+zu+W.+Sombarts+Vortrag+%C3%BCber+Technik+und+Kulturhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmillhttp://www.zeno.org/Soziologie/M/Weber,+Max/Schriften+zur+Soziologie+und+Sozialpolitik/Gesch%C3%A4ftsbericht+und+Diskussionsreden+auf+dem+ersten+Deutschen+Soziologentage+in+Frankfurt+1910/Diskussionsrede+zu+W.+Sombarts+Vortrag+%C3%BCber+Technik+und+Kulturhttp://www.zeno.org/Soziologie/M/Weber,+Max/Schriften+zur+Soziologie+und+Sozialpolitik/Gesch%C3%A4ftsbericht+und+Diskussionsreden+auf+dem+ersten+Deutschen+Soziologentage+in+Frankfurt+1910/Diskussionsrede+zu+W.+Sombarts+Vortrag+%C3%BCber+Technik+und+Kulturhttp://www.zeno.org/Soziologie/M/Weber,+Max/Schriften+zur+Soziologie+und+Sozialpolitik/Gesch%C3%A4ftsbericht+und+Diskussionsreden+auf+dem+ersten+Deutschen+Soziologentage+in+Frankfurt+1910/Diskussionsrede+zu+W.+Sombarts+Vortrag+%C3%BCber+Technik+und+Kultur


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the regulation of free labour under the discipline of the factory aregulation meant to secure the pro-duction of excess labour force orexcess population (the unemployed) so as to maintain the disciplineof those who are employed.

The problem for capitalism and its regulated discipline of wagelabour is that it is getting increasingly harder for this excess labourforce to be kept in too large numbers (rates of unemployment areshrinking relative to previous historical crises) and toodisenfranchised in terms of their dependence on actual employmentfor their social reproduction (the living standards of even theunemployed are generally rising, again, relative to previous crises).The old distinction between intellectual and manual labour isfading away because most labour processes now are technical orintellectual in kind. As we have established in our study of Alfred Sohn-Rethels Intellectual and Manual Labour(and in our critique of

Cacciaris distinction of poiesis as against techne in El Hacer delCanto), no distinction is possible between intellectual and manuallabour for the simple reason that all human activity involves mentaland physical aspects that are impossible to separate let alonedistinguish! And with the fading of this notion and reality of labour astoil, the related parallel notion that knowledge is power no longerapplies because with growing specialization and ease ofcommunication it is not the actual knowledge that individualspossess that determines their position in capitalist industry and society- and therefore their power. Rather, it is access to information thatbecomes vital to determining this political power.

The only distinction possible is one based on specific skills requiredfor certain tasks. But these skills are de-fined by complex socialrules, by the regimentation of a society in a given manner. Now, itis precisely this regimentation that is giving way because the skeweddistribution of knowledge is incompatible with its immediateaccessibility as information except for legal-proprietary barrierserected by capital! In other words, the distance between skilled andunskilled labour is reduced greatly by the facility of bridging thisdistance through easier and faster means of communication. This iswhat the incessant Demokratisierung has achieved since at least the

age of Gutenberg something that Nietzsche and Weber understoodperfectly well. As did Kierkegaard:

Kaiser, Knige, Ppste, Jesuiten, Generle,Diplomaten haben bisher in einem entscheidenden

Augenblick die Welt regieren knnen; abervon der Zeit an, da der vierte Stand eingesetztwird, wird es sich zeigen, da nur Mrtyrer dieWelt regieren knnen.


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Das Eine, was not tut

(Emperors, kings, popes, Jesuits, generals, diplomats have hitherto been able to govern theworld without batting an eyelid. But since the time of the rise of the Fourth Estate [the workingclass], it has become evident that only Martyrs can rule the world.)

The repercussions of this realization are far-reaching and indeed

revolutionary. The fact is that it is becoming much harder for capital toreintroduce pain (or brawn) and brain into the rationale of thewage relation and indeed of its control over the allocation ofresources or capital. However much its distribution may be affectedby effort or skill, the growing identification of capital withresources evinces its growing socialization as a productive force asagainst the private nature of its allocation, in that the process ofallocation involves virtually no effort on the part of the decision-maker except for the naked reality of his proprietary right to makesuch decisions (made increasinglypolitical rather than technical by thevery spread of knowledge-as-information!). The information revolution

brings prepotently to the fore the sheer brutality and naked violence the real terrorism! of the capitalist command over living labour. Noteffort, not skill, determines the rule of capital over our living labourany longer but rather the sheer naked and violent fact of theimposition of capitalist command over the allocation and distribution ofsocial resources.

It is indeed extremely hard to justify both ownership of capital and theincome derived from it on the ground of managerial ability orinnovational genius or even of something as vague as leadership.The vacuity of Webers concept of charisma and of Schumpeters

entrepreneurial spirit (these are the great bourgeois exponents ofdemocratic elitism with Pareto and Mosca), was already obvious tothe latter scholar by the time he wrote Capitalism, Socialism &Democracywhich can be considered as the apotheosis and the coda ofthis particular stage of capitalism that came to an end with thecollapse of the Bretton Woods Gold-Dollar Exchange Standard in 1971.It is on this next phase of capitalist development that we willconcentrate in our forthcoming studies.

poiesis and techne - by joseph belbruno

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