What is dangerous, however, in Habermas’s view, is that the sorts of rationality and media appropriate to system integration inevitably, by their own “irresistible inner dynamics” (1981, 331), infiltrate the lifeworld, “suppress[ing] forms of social integration in those areas where a consen- sus-dependent coordination of action cannot be replaced” (196). This is what Habermas has famously called the colonization of the lifeworld by system imperatives. “Capitalist modernization,” he writes, “follows a pat- tern such that cognitive-instrumental rationality surges beyond the bounds of the economy and state into other, communicatively structured areas of life and achieves dominance there” (304). The result is a loss of freedom and meaning and the conversion of what had been opportunities for ethical and responsible behavior into occasions of “technicized” (342) and “norm-free” (307) sociality. Hence, any incursion of profit interests or monetization into areas of the lifeworld should, according to this theory, be protested (395).
Habermas did not invent this view of the economy. He draws deeply on the early twentieth-century work of Max Weber, whose use of the economy-as-machine metaphor is most famously expressed in this passage: “The tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order . . . today de- termine[s] the lives of all individuals who are born into this mechanism . . . with irresistible force. . . . The care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ‘saint like a light cloak.’ . . . But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage” (Weber 1930, 181). And, of course, Habermas draws deeply and explicitly on the nineteenth-century work of Karl Marx, as is especially apparent in his discussions of “intrinsic capitalist dynamics” (Habermas 1981, 343) and the pathology of the “wage labor relation” (335).
The roots of Habermas’s mechanical image of the economy go back further than Weber and Marx, however. Several times in The Theory of Communicative Action Habermas harkens back not to the nineteenth- century work of Marx but to the eighteenth-century social science of Adam Smith. This, he writes, is the origination point of theories of systems (Habermas 1981, 113, 173, 202, 402).
The two centuries preceding Smith’s era were marked by the rise of scientific thought and by great growth in technology and the use of ma- chinery. Not surprisingly, when Smith described economic and political life, he used the popular mechanistic metaphors of his day. “Power and riches,” he wrote, are “enormous and operose machines” ([1759] 1976,
182). Smith was impressed by what he imagined as “the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or oeconomy by means of which [power and riches are] produced” (182–83). Habermas’s assertion that capitalist economies are regulated unconsciously and mechani- cally—without subjectivity, deliberation, or communication—is a direct descendent of Smith’s idea that a person acting in a market is “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention” (Smith [1776] 2001, 351).
Of course, Smith’s view of the economic system is considerably less conflicted than Habermas’s. While Habermas fears the incursion of eco- nomic factors into the lifeworld, Smith bemoans the presence of non- economic grit within the economic machine. His thought provides the ideological basis for contemporary neoliberal policies that seek to remove any barriers to the expansion of markets: “The perfection of [policy], the extension of trade and manufactures, are noble and magnificent objects. . . . We take pleasure in beholding the perfection of so beautiful and grand a system, and we are uneasy till we remove any obstruction that can in the least disturb or encumber the regularity of its motions” ([1759] 1976, 185). While Smith and Habermas disagree on where the threats to society lie, they are firmly in consensus in believing that the economy is, at heart, a machine.
It is from the time of Smith, a classical economist, then, that we derive this metaphor. Rational self-interest has been assumed to be the energy source driving the gears of economic production.4 The affinity of “cal- culable amounts of” money-measured variables (Habermas 1981, 183) to mathematical treatment further cemented the perceived links between economics and impersonal science. In the late nineteenth century neo- classical economists began developing calculus-based models that bor- rowed directly from earlier developments in mechanical physics.
Thus while Habermas’s Marxist-influenced economic model is often per- ceived as radical, progressive, or part of critical theory, in fact, the mech- anistic image of economic functioning is thoroughly traditional and is a close cousin to the view of economic functioning that underlies contem- porary neoliberal thought. Habermas’s and mainstream modernist neo- classical economic thinking, while wildly different in their elaborations of
4 Proponents of this view are fond of quoting Smith’s famous lines, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages” (Smith
[1776] 2001, 19). A fuller reading of Smith’s work shows that he did, in fact, hold a more complex view of human nature and that he allowed a considerably larger role for regulation of markets than do contemporary neoliberal economists. But this does not change the fact that his notions of “system” and the motivating effects of self-interest form the original underlying inspiration for free market policies.the Smithian image of the mechanical economic system, are both firmly rooted in it.
But how much of this view of economics is informed by observation and experience of real-world economic dealings, and how much is simply belief? How much is backed up by studies of actual markets and business, and how much is simply the zeitgeist of the eighteenth century, still waft- ing through a twenty-first-century world?
Questioning the mechanical metaphor
Now, switching gears for a moment, imagine that you are a young feminist entering graduate study in a typical mainstream economics department. Reading Habermas, Weber, or Smith is not part of the curriculum. Read- ing much of anything, in fact, is not part of the curriculum. The image of the mechanical economy populated by autonomous, self-interested, rational “economic men” is so deeply taken for granted that no explanation of it is deemed necessary. Because the image of the economy is mechanical, neoclassical models based on mathematics borrowed from Newtonian physics form the core of instruction and research. You find yourself spend- ing the vast majority of your time slogging through lengthy mathematical problem sets. You hone your skills in multivariate calculus and matrix algebra and talk about economies in terms of “Agent A” and “Firm B.” Most of the faculty are male.
You think you might do a thesis about labor market discrimination but find that the issue is not taken seriously. Your instructors do not really believe it exists, explaining that firms that do not maximize prof- its—that is, do not make decisions that are purely profit oriented— will be run out of business. A firm that sacrifices some productivity because it discriminates against productive female job candidates, for example, will make lower profits than its competitors. Because in per- fect competition only the most profitable and efficient firms survive, the discriminator must, they say, soon be forced to close down. Dis- crimination might be a part of social life, your professors explain, but, since it cannot persist in competitive markets, it is not an interesting economic issue. Everyone knows that wages are set by the system— by market forces of supply and demand, which, in turn, reflect the free choices of economic agents. Therefore, social issues such as gender identities can play no part.
You might, in some departments, be allowed to do a data-intensive statistical study of the wage gap between men and women. (This is considered the relatively nonmathematical approach relative to studies