Epistemology and Exchange: Marx, Nietzsche, and Critical Theory

Epistemology and Exchange: Marx, Nietzsche, and Critical Theory
Author(s): Nancy S. Love

Source: New German Critique, No. 41, Special Issue on the Critiques of the Enlightenment
(Spring - Summer, 1987), pp. 71-94
Published by: Duke University Press
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Epistemology and Exchange:
Marx, Nietzsche, and Critical Theory*
by Nancy S. Love
Jurgen Habermas argues that critical theorists' analyses ofthe dialectic

of enlightenment contain a performative contradiction. By identifying
reason with repression, they undermine the foundations of their own cri-
tique.' Habermas traces this performative contradiction to Friedrich
Nietzsche's influence upon critical theory, but a significant gap appears
in his analysis of it.2 Habermas argues that Adorno, by associating
identity with exchange, extends Marx's critique of political economy
to instrumental reason. He also maintains that Adorno adopts this
Marxian critique too hastily, neglecting its instrumental biases. Yet
* My thanks to the American Council of Learned Societies whose

Fellowship for the Study of Modern Society and Values supported the research for this ar-
tidcle.
1. Jiirgen Habermas, "The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Re-Reading

Dialectic of Enlightenment," New German Critique 26 (Spring/Summer 1982): 13-20.
2. By critical theorists, I refer to first generation members of the Institute for Social
Research. Since my primary concern is epistemology, I focus upon Theodor Adorno's
negative dialectics. I also consider his collaborative work with Max Horkheimer. For gen-
eral discussions of their relationship see: Susan Buck-Morss, The Origins ofNegative Dialec-
tics: Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (New York: The Free Press,
1977); David Held, An Introduction to Critical Theory (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984); MartinJay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History ofthe Frankfurt School and the In-
stitutefor SocialResearch, 1923-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1973).
More specific discussions of Nietzsche's influence upon critical theory appear in Mar-
tin Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukdcs to Habermas (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984); James Miller, "Some Implications of Nietzsche's
Thought for Marxism," Telos 37 (Fall 1978); Peter Piutz, "Nietzsche and Critical Theory,"
Telos 50 (Winter 1981-82): 103-114; Gillian Rose, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the
Thought ofTheodorAdorno (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). OnlyJay, who sug-
gests that Adorno and Horkheimer's analysis of exchange in the Dialectic ofEnlightenment is
drawn as much from Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals as Marx's Capital, discusses Nie-
tzsche's exchange principle (The Dialectical Imagination, 259).
For a more complete examination of contradictions between Marx and Nietzsche
themselves, see my Marx, Nietzsche, and Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press,
1986).
7'
72 Epistemology and Exchange
Adorno, aware of those biases, complements Marx's economic with Nie-

tzsche's psychological critique of exchange. It is this Nietzschean ex-
change principle which Habermas ignores.3
In this article I examine how Marxian and Nietzschean exchange
principles interact in critical theory, where they diverge and converge,
and why they simultaneously suggest and subvert such syntheses. I argue
that Habermas has identified a performative contradiction between
Marxian and Nietzschean principles of exchange. By including Nie-
tzschean exchange in critical theorists' genealogy, I clarify the conse-
quences of this contradiction. I portray critical theorists' epistemological
skeptism and political solipsism as products of logic as well as history.
This supports Habermas' argument that another response to modern
society is possible. Yet Nietzsche's exchange principle also reveals the
limitations of Habermas' alternative and the need for a more radical re-
construction of rationality.
The Contextfor Critical Theory
The performative contradiction Habermas identifies in critical theory

involves logic, but it originates in history. It is critical theorists' response
to the continued existence of capitalism and a series of socialist catastro-
phes. In "The Authoritarian State," Max Horkheimer describes the
problem history poses for critical theorists: "Despite pious references to
the Hegelian logic of leaps and reversals, transformation appeared
essentially as an extension of scale."4 Economic, political and psy-
chological transformations have thwarted and deformed socialist
revolutions.
Economically, the material preconditions Marx required for so-
cialism already exist. However, in the West, state planning has controlled
the business cycles which were to precipitate revolution. Eastern
economic plans have also increased, not decreased repression. State
capitalist and state socialist experiences suggest that Marx's theory of
revolution conflates two distinct stages: the imposition of state economic
control and the liberation from it. The former may inevitably occur, but
3. Jiurgen Habermas, Philosophical-Political Profiles (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1985)

111.
4. Max Horkheimer, "The Authoritarian State," in The Essential Frankfurt School Read-
er, ed. by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum Books, 1982) 107.
Nancy S. Love 73
whether liberation follows seems ultimately to depend more upon hu-

man will than economic progress. Domination, Adorno hardly needs to
remind us, can outlast the planned economy.
Domination has outlasted economic planning because instrumental
rationality retards revolutionary will. Instrumental rationality objectifies
life: it "recognizes no function other than the preparation of the object
from mere sensory material in order to make it the matter of subjuga-
tion" and it apprehends being "under the aspect of manufacture and
administration."6 Economically, capitalism and socialism similarly
objectify nature as matter, men as producers, and their interaction as
products. Politically, state capitalism and state socialism transform
market freedoms into administrative plans. Under the authoritarian
state, capitalist or socialist, repression becomes an administrative
necessity. Horkheimer says: "With each bit of planning completed, a
bit of repression was originally supposed to become unnecessary. In-
stead, more repression has developed in the administration of the
plans."7 Potential opposition sources, e.g., trade unions and proletarian
parties, become cogs in a bureaucratic machine. Even utopia follows the
administrative structure. Lenin's dream that society will become a single
office and a single factory with equality of labor and pay is a Weberian
nightmare.8 In the authoritarian state, commodities and plans rule and
"Men [are] conceived as objects, ifnecessarily as their own.""
This self-objectification is the most insidious transformation which
occurs. Critical theorists regard the subject itself as a psychological
"object" prepared from "mere sensory matter." We are quite literal-
ly subjected. However, according to Marcuse, liberalism at least
defended individuality, the assertion of self against society. In con-
trast, the technological society which has superceded it encourages
compliance and adjustment. Instrumental rationality is internalized:
"Individuals are stripped of their individuality, not by external compul-
5. Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum

Books, 1983) 321.
6. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic ofEnlightenment (New York: Con-
tinuum Books, 1972)84.
7. Horkheimer 112.
8. V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution, Selected Works in One Volume (New York: Internation-
al Publishers, 1971).
9. Horkheimer 97.
sion, but by the very rationality under which they live."'0

Although they describe these transformations differently, criticizing
one-dimensionality or instrumental reason or identity, critical theorists
similarly regard objectification, at least in modern society, as alienation.
Adorno and Horkheimer characterize the contradictory condition of
modern man: "The submission of everything natural to the autocratic
subject finally culminates in the mastery of the blindly objective and nat-
ural."" With this, they transform Marx's dialectic of production into the
dialectic ofenlightenment.
What though does this transformation involve? Needless to say,
Marx's conception of an inevitable, imminent revolution contains his-
torical errors. But do those errors also call for reconsideration of Marxist
theory? What is the relationship between practical and theoretical causes
of our contemporary condition? Is Marxism implicated in the dialectic
of enlightenment? How does critical theory stand with reference to the
Marxian dialectic?
Marx's Dialectical Materialism
The primary problem for attempts to articulate critical theorists' rela-

tionship to Marxism is their reluctance directly to attack Marx. Instead,
they criticize humanistic and scientific Marxism. To make explicit their
implicit critique of Marx, I examine his anthropological and anthropo-
morphic tendencies. These tendencies link the so-called early and late,
humanistic and scientific, Marx.
My focus is epistemology, and this raises a second problem. In the
effort to defend his materialism against its idealist adversaries, Marx
neglected epistemology. Engels' later attempts to fill this void are, to say
the least, controversial. Although I cannot explore their intellectual
collaboration here, I address this problem by emphasizing passages
where Marx, if only incidentally, corroborates Engels' views. I begin with
Engels' famous question, "Are we able in our ideas and notion of the real
world to produce a correct reflection of reality?," and his infamous an-
swer: "Yes.''2 By examining the component parts of dialectical material-
10. Herbert Marcuse, "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology," in The Es-
sential Frankfuirt School Reader 145.
11. Adorno and Horkheimer xvi.
12. Fredrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Age of Classical German Philosophy, (New
York: International Publishers, 1941)22.
Nancy S. Love 75
ism, I demonstrate that Marx concurs with this answer and how this im-
plicates him in the dialectic of enlightenment.
As a materialist, Marx argues that a material world objectively exists,
that is, exists independently of knowing subjects: "To say that man is a
corporeal, living, real, sensuous, objective being full of natural vigor is to
say that he has real, sensuous, objects as the objects of his being or of his life,
or that he can only express his life in real, sensuous objects."'" Our
thoughts reflect our sensory experience of this material world. Marx re-
fers to ideas as "the material world reflected by the human mind and
translated into forms of thought" and to ideology as the "reflex,"
"echo," or "sublimate" of material life.14
Although the objective existence of matter and the ability of our
thoughts to reflect it are premises of dialectical materialism, Marx
bypasses philosophical arguments to this effect. Dialectical materialism
is a "real, positive science" where "real" and "positive" mean sensuous-
ly ascertained: "This method of approach is not devoid of premises. It
starts out from the real premises and does not abandon them for a
moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidi-
ty, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development
under definite conditions."'5 These premises of dialectical material-
ism are to be neither understood nor defended abstractly. In fact, Marx
argues that philosophical abstractions have no value independent of
history.16 He rejects the Kantian (as Engels later rejects the neo-
Kantian) incomprehensible "thing-in-itself," and the related dis-
tinction between reality and appearances, practically not theoretical-
ly. As Engels says, "If we are able to prove the correctness of our con-
ception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into
being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes in the
bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible
'thing-in- itself'."7
13. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripnts of 1844, The Marx-Engels Reader,
ed. Robert C. Tucker (NewYork: Norton, 1978) 115.
14. Karl Marx, Capital, (New York: International Publishers, 1967) 1, 19. Also see:
Karl Marx, The German Ideology, ed. C. J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers,
1977)47.
15. Marx, The German Ideology 47-48.
16. Ibid.
17. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, 23. For a detailed discussion of practical knowledge, see
Len Doyal and Roger Harris, "The Practical Foundations of Human Understanding
New Left Review 139 (July 1983).
In accord with this emphasis upon practical activity, Marx criti-

cizes previous materialists. Like the idealists they criticized, they are
metaphysicians. Theirs is merely a metaphysics of matter, not mind.
Engels characterizes a metaphysician: "For him a thing either exists
or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and some-
thing else." Unlike metaphysicians, dialecticians "comprehend
things and their representations, ideas, in their essential connection,
concatenation, motion, origin, and ending."" Dialecticians explore
how man's productive and conceptual relations to nature and socie-
ty develop historically. They maintain that neither objects nor our
conceptions of them are immutable.
Marx's own critique of previous philosophical and social scientific
concepts illustrates this development. Marx argues that Hegel (and
presumably Kant) were the philosophers of political economy: "It is
self-evident.., that "spectres," "bonds," "the higher being," "con-
cept," "scruple," are merely the idealistic, spiritual expression, the
conception apparently of the isolated individual, the image of the
very empirical fetters and limitations, within which the mode of pro-
duction of life and the form of intercourse coupled with it move."'9
Contemplative materialists analogously expressed the standpoint
of civil society: they only substituted the domination of things for the
domination of"Being."20 Political economy, these philosophers' so-
cial scientific analogue, also has done "no more than interpret, sys-
tematize, and defend in doctrinaire fashion the concepts of the
agents of bourgeois production who are trapped in bourgeois pro-
duction relations.''21
Socialist science takes a "new standpoint," that of' 'social humani-
18. Friedrich Engels, "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific," in The Marx-Engels Reader,
ed. by Robert C. Tucker, (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1978) 696. Although Engels
develops the dialectics of nature and Marx focuses on man's dialectic with nature, Marx
explicitly agrees that nature, like history, verifies dialectics. This should notbe surprising,
since his premises require it. On the one hand, to declare that man imposes dialectical
structure upon nature is to revert to an idealist metaphysics, to declare mind predomi-
nant over matter. On the other hand, to declare nature undialectical is to revert to a mate-
rialist one. Matter exists objectively, but not structured as objects. Selected Correspondence
(NewYork: International Publishers), 189; Capital, 1:309 and 3: 373-375.
19. Marx, The German Ideology 52.
20. Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach," numberten.
21. Marx, Capital 3: 817. He also makes the same point in the final section of chapter
one, "On Commodities," ofvolume one.
Nancy S. Love 77
ty," to expose how these appearances distort reality.22 Marx's cri-

tique of political economy typifies this standpoint. Marx argues that
capitalist class relations alienate men from their productive activity,
their products, and their fellow men. Political economists objectify
each aspect of this alienation in a corresponding commodity fetish.
First, men are alienated from their productive activity. The reality
here is that laborers sell their labor-power to capitalists who control
whether or not and the conditions under which they may work. The
corresponding commodity fetish is that all sorts of human labor have
a quantitative equivalent form or exchange-value. This fetish ob-
scures the qualitatively different social utility of various sorts of la-
bor. Second, men are alienated from their products. The reality here
is that private laborers produce, private capitalists appropriate, and
all men exchange products. The corresponding commodity fetish is
that, given the equality of all sorts of human labor, all products have
a quantitative equivalent from or exchange-value equal to the labor-
power required to produce them. This fetish obscures the qua-
litatively different social use-value of various commodities. Third,
men are alienated from their fellow men. The reality here is that men
interact only in exchange. The corresponding commodity fetish is
that "the mutual relations of the producers, within which the social
character of their labour affirms itself, take the form of a social rela-
tion between the products."23 This fetish obscures the social charac-
ter of human labor.
When Marx demystifies these fetishes of political economy by ex-
posing their origins in capitalist class relations, his point is not that
political economists - or their philosophical compatriots - fail to
reflect reality. Theydo reflect it. More precisely, the appearances they
portray are distortions only because reality is itself distorted. Their
concepts are simply limited by their historical context. From a differ-
ent, more advanced, standpoint scientific socialists transcend those
limits.
Yet socialist science only exposes, it does not overcome the diver-
gence of appearance and reality in capitalist society. Although the so-
cialist scientist understands commodity fetishes as distorted appear-
ances of a distorted reality, those distortions persist. As G.A. Cohen
22. Marx, "Theses" numberten.

23. Marx, Capital 1: 72.
expresses it, "Things do not seem different to a worker who knows

Marxism. He knows they are different from what they continue to
seem to be."24 As long as labor remains alienated, things will not be
as they seem.
This introduces another, more profound Marxian relation be-
tween theory and practice. Man not only knows life through labor,
and can thereby overcome the "incomprehensible thing-in-itself."
Science also can only become true, reason can only correspond to reality,
practically, that is, through the creation of a society where things are as
they appear. This as I understand it is Marx's point in the second "Thesis
on Feuerbach": "The question whether objective truth can be attributed
to human thinking is not a question of thinking, but is apractical question.
Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness
of his thinking in practice."25 For Marx, the interrelated material and
mental separation of subject and object in capitalist society is cause for
revolution not skepticism. Engels argues that what Marx calls the "pure-
ly scholastic question of skepticism" actually signals incipient revolution:
"The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreason-
able and unjust, that reason has become unreason and right wrong, is
only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have
silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier eco-
nomic conditions, is no longer in keeping."'26
In a socialist society where subject and object correspond materially
they will do so mentally as well. Appearances will no longer distort be-
cause reality will no longer be distorted. For now, socialist science with its
premises (matter and men) and its standpoint (social humanity) is
needed to reveal the divergence of appearances from reality. However,
after realizing its truth, science will become superfluous.27 The socialist
negation of the negation is clearly a positive: "This communism..,. is the
genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature, and between
man and man .... Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it
24. This discussion draws heavily upon G. A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory ofHistory: A
Defense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), appendix 1, "Karl Marx and the
Withering Away of Social Science."
25. Marx, "Theses," number two.
26. Engels, "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" 701.
27. Marx says that "All science would be superfluous if the manifest form and the es-
sence of things directly coincided." Capital, 3: 797.
Nancy S. Love 79
knows itself to be this solution."28

In contrast, critical theorists' dialectic lacks premises, a standpoint,
and positivity. Clearly, they disagree with Marx on more than the immi-
nence and inevitability of revolution. They attack the identity of objects,
including the subject, with themselves and one another. Identity-think-
ing is "productive and conceptual species-imperialism" typical of
the dialectic of enlightenment.29 Such species-imperialism links the
early and late, humanistic and scientific Marx. Since the charge of
species-imperialism spans these standard divisions of Marxism, it is
best examined in terms of his anthropological and anthropomorph-
ic tendencies.
Although Marx rejects Feuerbach's natural anthropology, he posits a
self-proclaimed "historical anthropology" of social producers. Whether
man's social "nature" is ultimately a"species-being" or an "ensemble of
social relations," Adorno argues that the subsumption of empirically
unique individuals under a collective social subject represses individual-
ity.30 With this emphasis upon individuality, Adorno distances critical
theory from proletariat and party; both are repressive collectivities.
Adorno and Horkheimer also distance themselves from Marx's empha-
sis upon our productive nature. "To make labor into a transcendent hu-
man activity," says Horkheimer, "is an ascetic ideology .... In that so-
cialists adhere to this general concept, they make themselves into carriers
of capitalist propaganda."3' Only bourgeois ideologists portray labor as
man's self-realization. Instead of production - a realm of necessity
which persists in Marx's socialist society - critical theorists propose
various forms of"purposive purposelessness."32
Production involves not only the anthropological objectification of
humanity, but also man's anthropomorphic objectification of nature.
An ontology of labor epitomizes this objectification: nature exists to be
subjugated, to be made into products. Adorno argues that Marx's cri-
28. Marx, 1844 Manuscripts 84.

29. MartinJay uses this phrase in "The Concept of Totality in Lukics and Adorno,"
Telos 32 (Summer, 1977).
30. Adorno,Negative 141-143.
31. Max Horkheimer, Ddimmerung, published under the pseudonym Heinrich Re-
gius (Zurich 1934), 181, quoted by Martin Jay in "The Frankfurt School's Critique of
Marxist Humanism," Social Research 39:2 (Summer 1972): 294.
32. Adorno and Horkheimer 41. Also see Adorno, Minima Moralia, Aphorism # 144
and Marcuse's discussion of polymorphous perversity in Eros and Civilization.
tique of alienated labor "... confuses the need to approach the

heteronomous and thus irrational world ... with the archaic barbarism
that the longing subject cannot love what is alien and different, with the
craving for incorporation and persecution." He concludes that "If th
alien were no longer ostracized, there hardly would be any more aliena
tion."33 Other Marxist concepts are equally anthropomorphic. Adorno
criticizes "reification," in part, because it restricts dialectics to ep
phenomena, i.e., to symptoms, not causes, of human suffering. But
also argues that reification, like alienation, presents thingness as a "rad
cal evil" to be annexed by "philosophical imperialism."34 Attackin
Marx's distinction between reality and appearance, Adorno also chara
terizes the "image" or "reflection" theory of knowledge as a materialist
reversion to idealism, even barbarism.35
Productive and conceptual imperialism, anthropologism and anthro-
pomorphism, converge in Marx's notion that practice proves the truth
As critical theorists read it, the "second thesis" reduces truth to power
This makes scientific socialism the extension, not the transcendence, of
objectification. True revolutionary practice depends not upon scientific
formula, but upon the intransigence of theory. In response to those who
would characterize this position as left Hegelian, Adorno says,
The call for unity of theory and practice has irresistibly de-
graded theory to a servant's role, removing the very traits it
should have brought to that unity. The visa stamp of practice
which we demand of all theory becarrie a censor's placet. Yet
whereas theory succumbed in the vaunted mixture, practice
became nonconceptual, a piece of the politics it was supposed
to lead out of; it became the prey of power. 36
He suggests that:
The remaining theoretical inadequacies in Hegel and Marx

became part of historical practice and can thus be newly re-
flected upon in theory, instead of thought bowing irrationally
to the primacy of practice. Practice itself was an eminently the-
oretical concept.37
33. Adorno,Negative 172.

34. Ibid. 191.
35. Ibid. 205-207.
36. Ibid. 143.
37. Ibid. 144.
Nancy S. Love 81
A concept, he implies, which uncritically reflected enlightenment reas

on.
In accord with this analysis, critical theorists minimi

humanistic (labor, alienation, and reification) but also scient
tion and reflection) Marxist categories. These categories, and
extent that he adheres to them, are implicated in the dialec
enment. To transcend the theoretical limitations of Marxis
upon anew concept of exchange, that of Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche's Genealogy ofMorals
Although he is still often omitted from their genealogy, c

rists turn to Nietzsche to transcend Marx's complicity in th
enlightenment. Adorno and Horkheimer praise Nietzsche as
historian of the bourgeois ratio and base their critiques of
concept of psychological exchange.38 In examining that exc
ciple, I also focus upon Nietzsche's epistemology, exploring
ist and dialectical aspects. This strategy allows me to demo
critical theorists think Nietzsche can complement Marx.
Nietzsche criticized materialism, but he was still fund
materialist. Like Marx, he maintains that a material wor
dependently of knowing subjects. But he differs from othe
including Marx, in his conception of that material world an
in it. What Nietzsche criticizes is materialist atomism which
for materialism itself."9 He argues that materialist atom

idealists they criticize, are metaphysicians. In their search
they merely descend to things rather than ascend to being
both, Nietzsche asks us to "Suppose nothing else were 'g
except our world of desires and passions, and we could n
38. Adorno and Horkheimer 119.

39. Nietzsche equated materialism and atomism in the following passage: "As for
materialist atomism, it is one of the best refuted theories there are... thanks chiefly to the
Dalmatian Boscovich... Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the last part of the
earth that'stood fast' the belief in 'substance,' in 'matter,' in the earth-residuum and par-
ticle-atom: it is the greatest triumph over the senses that has been gained on earth so far."
(Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism #12). Elsewhere, he probes the "rudimentary
psychology" the faith in the ego as cause residual in the atom. (Twilight ofthe Idols, The Porta-
ble Nietzsche trans. Walter Kaufmann [NewYork: The Viking Press, 1954] 495.)
or up, to any other 'reality' besides the reality of our drives."'4 That re-
ality, he says, is will to power and nothing else:
... One has to risk the hypothesis whether will does not affect
will wherever 'effects' are recognized - and whether all me-
chanical occurences are not, insofar as force is active in
them, will force, effects ofwi 11.41
With this concept of matter, Nietzsche reveals that he is also a

dialectician, despite his critique of dialectics.42 His dialectic is simply
more radical than those - again, Marx's among them - which he crit-
icizes. Marx also rejects materialist atomism (he calls it empiricism)
and argues that neither subjects nor objects are entities. Yet for Marx,
boundaries between man and nature, man and man persist. Socialist
production and socialist science as negations of the negation presume
the existence of opposition and the need to master it. Mastering oppo-
sition, according to Nietzsche, differs from transcending it. His world
as will to power has no boundaries to be mastered.
Man as a subject is not related to objects, even in Marx's dialectical
sense, but only to other congelations of force: "The subject alone is
demonstrable; hypothesis that only subjects exist - that 'object' is
only a kind of effect produced by a subject upon a subject - a modus of
the subject."'4 Even the subject does not exist as an entity. Nietzsche de-
scribes the subject as "no subject, but an action, a positing, creative, no
40. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Basic Writings ofNietzsche, translated by
Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966), aphorism #36. Nietzsche explicit-
ly distinguishes his monist materialism from idealism: We are to see the world "not as a
deception, as 'mere appearance,' an 'idea' (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer)
but as holding the same rank of reality as our affect as a more primitive form of the world
of affects in which everything still lies contained in a powerful unity before it undergoes
ramifications and developments in the organic process." I should note that Nietzsche
can consistently espouse materialism and skepticism. The distinction between material-
ist and idealist ontologies must not be confused with that between skeptical and realist
epistemologies. For example, Kant and Hume belong together as skeptics, whereas
Hegel and Engels belong together as realists.
41. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism #36.
42. What Nietzsche criticizes and understands as dialecticsperse is a dialectic of reas-
on. (See: Twilight ofthe Idols, 476-479). This target he shares to some extent with Marx: both
deny that reason determines reality. Further, neither precludes the adoption ofa differ-
ent, both would probably say de-mystified, hypothesis that history is dialectically or-
dered by man's tendency to expand his creative - producing or willing - powers.
43. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J.
Hollingdale (NewYork: Random House, 1968), aphorism #569.
Nancy S. Love 83
causes and effects." The subject is merely an ordered plurality of drives

which discharges its will in relation to other such pluralities: "No
things remain but only dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all
other dynamic quanta: their essence lies in their relation to all other
quanta, in their 'effect' upon the same."44 For Nietzsche, the notion of
a world structured dialectically is profoundly undialectical; it is a con-
tradiction in terms. A dialectical world is fundamentally chaotic: "The
total character of the world..,. is in all eternity chaos - in the sense not
of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty,
wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic
anthropomorphisms. "4"
According to Nietzsche, subject, object, and their identity are aes-
thetic anthropomorphisms which originate in a psychological ex-
change coterminous with society and humanity. He argues that con-
sciousness, the capacity which distinguishes humans from nature, re-
sults from social repression. The "oldest state" was a "fearful tyranny"
which "brought man to reason" by punishing him for disobeying social
norms. The idea of punishment draws its power "in the contractual [ex-
change] relation between creditor and debtor, which is as old as the idea of
'legal subjects,' and... points back to the fundamental forms of buying,
selling, barter, trade, and traffic."' The original instinctual artists who
formed man exchanged the creditor's psychological pleasure in inflict-
ing physical pain for the debtor's infraction of the communal con-
tract. Later, theologians and moralists spiritualized punishment;
they replaced physical with psychic pain. The history of culture is the
spiritualization of cruelty. Nietzsche regards Christianity as its culmi-
nation: man now owes a debt (sin) to a creditor (God) which can never
be repaid. Guilt, which also originates in the "very material concept of
debts," is his torture. Needless to say, Nietzsche thinks humanity has
been "dearly bought." When man became reasonable, he also became
ascetic. Prevented by society from hurting others, he hurt himself. He
internalized his instincts.
It is the subject's imposed identity, its equivalence to an internalized
communal contract, which man projects outward in attempts to make
44. Nietzsche, The WilltoPower, aphorism #635.

45. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Ran-
dom House, 1974), aphorism #109.
46. Nietzsche, The Genealogy ofMorals, part 2, aphorism #4.
reality equivalent to reason. Nietzsche argues that.once one sees the

subject as a fiction many other realizations follow. With subject and ob-
ject, the idea of their identity, indeed distinctions between truth and illu-
sion, reality and appearance, disappear.
It is only after the model of the subject that we have invented

the reality of things and projected them into the medley of sen-
sations. If we no longer believe in the effective subject, then
belief also disappears in effective things .... At last the "thing-
in-itself'" also disappears, because this is fundamentally the
conception of a "subject-in-itself." But we have grasped that
the subject is a fiction. The antithesis "thing-in-itself" and
"appearance" is untenable; with that, however, the concept
"appearance" also disappears.47
Subject, object, and their identity are fetishes of psychological ex-

changes. Man has projected his self-denial outward, denying life as will
to power.
With his notion of psychological exchange, Nietzsche announces the
death not only of God, but also of truth as man has known it. Theism and
atheism, Christianity and science, rest on the same shaky foundation,
"on the same overestimation of truth (more exactly on the same belief
that truth is inestimable and cannot be criticized)."48 For although sci-
entists demystify metaphysical truths, they retain a metaphysical faith in
truth. They expose successive horizons as illusions, but leave man with a
horizon - the value of truth - which presumes that the resulting world
without truth is valueless. Their nihilism merely expresses a different
pole of man's mistaken faith in truth: the Christian's heaven is true; the
scientists' world is false. By showing the pyschological exchange in which
truth originates, Nietzsche demystifies both poles. He says, "The
categories aim, unity, being which we used to project some value into the
world we pull out again; so the world looks valueless." And, he con-
cludes: "Faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism. We have
measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to apurely
fictitious world .... What we find here is still the hyperbolic naivete of man:
positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things."49

48. Nietzsche, The Genealogy ofMorals, part 3, aphorism #25.
Nancy S. Love 85
Since Christianity and science express ascetic psychology, liberation re-

quires that both be overcome together. This Marx fails to do. With his
concepts of subject, object, and their eventual identity, he continues to
deny life and refuses to affirm the "innocence of becoming."
Yet Nietzsche's alternative, his conception of life as will to power is
equally, if differently, repressive. That conception contains two para-
digms of power: power as recurring energy and power as domination.50
Critical theorists adopt the former paradigm to expose the origins of
Marxian identity-thinking in psychological exchange, but they reject the
latter paradigm as expressive of economic exchange. It is the bourgeoisie
who posit a pre-social man, see society as an exchange, respond
skeptically to truth, and counsel love of fate.5' Nietzsche is a profound
critic of the bourgeois ratio, but he too conforms to it. According to
Adorno, Nietzsche's philosophy is profoundly positivistic.52 Critical the-
orists' task is to turn his reactionary argument against Western culture to-
ward progressive enlightenment, to combine Nietzsche's psychological
with Marx's economic critique of exchange.
Epistemology, Exchange, and Critical Theory
This combination of Marxian and Nietzschean exchange-principles

appears in Adorno and Horkheimer's "primeval history of the subject,"
which links economic and psychological expressions of equivalence.
Adorno tries to transcend those equivalences by establishing the non-
identity of subjects and objects with themselves and one another. He ar-
gues that transcending equivalence involves three related concerns: indi-
viduality, particularity, and non-conceptuality. Adorno and Hork-
heimer defend individuality by attacking subjectivity. They argue that
historically "Men have always had to choose between their subjection to
50. Ofelia Schutte develops this distinction in her Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche Without
Masks (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1984).
51. For these criticisms of Nietzsche see: Dialectic of Enlightenment, 97-99; Minima
Moralia, Aphorisms #59 #60 #61.
52. Adorno argues that Nietzsche ultimately is a positivist: "Nietzsche, the irreconci-
lable adversary of our theoretical heritage in metaphysics, had ridiculed the difference
between essence and appearance. He had relegated the 'background world' to the
'backwoodsman,' concurring here with all of positivism .... Ifa man rates all phenomena
alike because he knows of no essence that would allow him to discriminate, he will in a
fantasized love oftruth make common cause with untruth." (Negative 169).
nature or the subjection of nature to the Self."53 Fearing bondage to na-

ture, men have chosen to subject it to themselves. Yet in order to subject
nature to themselves, men first had to differentiate themselves from it.
Like Marx and Nietzsche, Adorno and Horkheimer claim that
rationality distinguishes man from nature. But their analysis of its origins
parallels Nietzsche's not Marx's. Adorno argues that rationality results
from fear of society as well as nature. Individuals became subjects, i.e.,
they internalized social norms, to avoid ostracization and/or punish-
ment. He claims that civilization was "unimaginably hard for people to
bring themselves to undergo": "The instinctual energy of the homo
economicus who lords it over the homo psychologicus is the compulsive
love for what was once hated; it had to be hammered in.''54 Psychological
and economic exchange coincide, and both are coterminous with hu-
manity.
Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the rationality with which man
subjects external nature reveals his internal subjection. As concepts re-
place the "primal cry" and objectify nature, so the "I" breaks the "im-
mediacy of primary relations" and objectifies the self.s5 Adorno says that
the "unity of consciousness" is itself "a reflection of the logical identi-
ty."56 He concludes that consciousness not only creates subjects, it also
destroys them, by making them objects.57 To escape this subjection, the
ego must become the locus of social opposition not social oppression.5
This is the meaning of Adorno's assertion of individuality instead of sub-
jectivity. Unlike subjects, individuals are not monads but pluralities of
drives. They are "boundlessly elastic, subjectless subjects."59
Adorno argues that subjectivity denies particularity as well as individ-
uality: "The superiority of objectification in the subjects, not only keeps
them from becoming subjects; it equally prevents a cognition of objec-
tivity."60 Idealists and materialists externalize the ego, projecting its
53. Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic ofEnlightenment, 32.

54. Theodor Adorno, "Sociology and Psychology," New Left Review, #46-47 (Decem-
ber67 andJanuary 68): 71-72.
55. Adorno, Negative 176.
56. Ibid. 172.
57. Ibid. 142.
58. Adorno, "Sociology and Psychology" 76 and "Subject and Object" 504. In t
latter passage, Adorno says, "The self-positing subject is an illusion and at the same tim
historically very real. It contains the potential of sublating its own rule."
59. Adorno, Minima Moralia, Aphorism #23.
60. Adomrno, Negative 171.
Nancy S. Love 87
identity upon objects. Their respective concepts of being and things tyr-
annize over reality and fail to reach it. Reality, contrary to their concep-
tions of it, is incomplete, contradictory, and fragmented. Adorno says
"While our images of perceived reality may very well be Gestalten, the
world in which we live is not; it is constituted differently than out of mere
images of perception."6' Unlike previous materialists, Adorno respects
the concrete particular's non-identity with itself and his concepts. The
particular is that which cannot be named: "The concept of the particular
is always its negation at the same time; it cuts short what the particular is
and what nonetheless cannot be directly named, and it replaces this with
identity."62 He concludes that the liberated subject will also liberate ob-
jects; he will be their agent, not their constituent.
As the object's agent, Adorno is a dialectician as well as a materialist.
But, again like Nietzsche, he would transcend dialectics dangerously
undialectical structure.63 Non-conceptuality must replace the conceptu-
al correspondence of subject and object. Adorno acknowledges the
difficulties this creates: "We can see through the identity principle, but
we cannot think without identifying."64 He concludes that dialecticians
must "think against thought." "As thinking," he says, "dialectical logic
respects that which is to be thought the object even where the object does
not heed the rules of thinking."65
Dialectical thought respects objects by excluding ontological con-
cepts, e.g., premises, standpoints, and positivity, and focusing instead
upon "inner-historical complexes." Like ontological theorists, critical
theorists distinguish between essence and existence, but in a profoundly
different way. The former seek concealed or manifest intentions by posit-
ing a metaphysical reality beneath or beyond phenomena. The latter in-
terpret unintentional realities within phenomena themselves, creating a
"nonmetaphysical metaphysics." Adorno describes his dialectical
method, which he says Marx "largely" (an important qualification)
shares, as immanent critique. Immanence illuminates essences by ex-
posing "the contradiction between what things are and what they claim
61. Theodor Adorno, "The Actuality of Philosophy," trans. Benjamin Snow, Telos 31
(Spring 1977): 126.
63. Adorno says, "The polarity of subject and object may well appear to be an
undialectical structure in which all dialectics takes place," Negative 174.
64. Ibid. 149.
65. Ibid. 141.
to be."66 Such illuminations do require externality, but as the creation of

constellations not the imposition of concepts. Constellations reconstruct
aphenomenon so that its essence becomes visible within it. Adorno ar-
gues that "By themselves constellations represent from without what
the concept has cut away within: the 'more' which the concept is equally
desirous and incapable of being."'67 Because they transcend con-
ceptualization, these "inner-historical complexes" represent a third
possiblity beyond positivism and idealism.68 Adorno exemplifies this
method in his critique of identity-thinking. Immanent critique reveals
that the more the subject is objectified, the less it is constitutive. That rev-
elation appears through the constellation of productive and conceptual
exchange.
According to critical theorists, individuality, particularity, and non-
conceptuality avoid extending the "coercion of conscience" to the
"realm of theory." These "concepts" allow their dialectic to transcend
Marxian and Nietzschean limitations, to overcome economic and psy-
chological exchange.
Critical Contradictions
We have seen that Marxian and Nietzschean exchange principles are

incomplete and that each illuminates the other's limitations. A Marxian
critique of Nietzsche exposes his denial of the identity, even the exist-
ence, of subjects and objects as bourgeois. Nietzsche's skepticism may
accurately express the real separation of subject and object (for critical
theorists their disappearance) in capitalist society. Still Nietzsche, like
political economists, mistakes this "given" reality of exchange relations
among egoistic individuals for nature. Marx says, "For the bourgeois it is
so much the easier to prove on the basis of his language, the identity of
commercial and individual, or even universal, human relations, since
this language itself is a product of the bourgeoisie, and therefore in actu-
ality as in language the relations of buying and selling have been made
the basis of all others."69 When Nietzsche rejects truth as equivalence, he
66. Ibid. 167.

67. Ibid. 162.
68. Ibid. 166. For a discussion of how Adorno creates constellations see Buck-Morss
The Origin ofNegative Dialectics, chap. 6.
69. Marx, The German Ideology 102.
Nancy S. Love 89
also reinforces the bourgeois separation of subject and object. He denies

that that separation and the suffering it causes can be overcome, and he
accepts separation and suffering by affirming life. Unlike Nietzsche,
Marx regards man's alienation under capitalism as an argument not
against truth, but against alife which fails to conform to it.
According to Nietzsche, this Marxian position is ascetic, an expression
of the life-denying will to truth. Marx does demystify metaphysical
truths, beings and things. But his concepts of subject, object, and their
eventual identity under socialism still express a metaphysical faith in
truth. Marx too has mistaken his "given" reality, psychological exchange
relations among egoistic individuals, for nature. By denying life because
it does not conform to truth, Marx reinforces man's psychological re-
pression. He creates a new secular "will to nothingness." Nietzsche says
of scientific socialism: "In summa: one has tranferred the arrival of the
'kingdom of God' into the future, on earth, in human form but funda-
mentally one has held fast to the belief in the old ideal."'7 Unlike Marx,
Nietzsche regards man's ascetic psychological sickness as an argument
not against life, but against truth which denies it.
The mutual limitations of Marx's and Nietzsche's exchange principles
suggest that syntheses of them might transcend economic and psycho-
logical oppression. Yet this mutual critique shows what subverts such
syntheses. Marx and Nietzsche each succumb to the exchange relation
which the other attacks: Marx criticizes capitalist economics from an as-
cetic psychological perspective; Nietzsche criticizes ascetic psychology
from a capitalist economic one. Their perspectives contradict, not com-
plement, one another, and this is not a dialectical contradiction. Combi-
nations of their critiques illuminate, but do not obviate, this contradic-
tion. They end in schizophrenia, not synthesis.
The contradiction between Marxian and Nietzschean exchange prin-
ciples appears in critical theorists' insistence that subject and object are
separated both historically and ontologically. Adorno expresses both
positions in the following quotation: "The subject erects that block [be-
tween subject and object] by claiming supremacy over the object and
thereby defrauding itself of the object. As truly non-identical, the object
moves the farther from the subject the more the subject constitutes the
object.))71
70. Nietzsche, The WilltoPower, Aphorism #339.

71. Adorno, "Subject and Object," in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader 507.
Adorno's insistence that subject and object are only separated histori-
cally is ascetic: he continues to deny life for truth. Along these lines,
Adorno argues that associating his critique of identity with irrationalism
is "horrid sophistry."72 Thought is currently a commodity, but ultimate-
ly it is inseparable from freedom. When Adorno associates rationality
and freedom, he abandons Nietzsche for Kant. He claims that Nie-
tzsche's merciless exposure of the identity of domination and reason
"implicitly liberates from its hiding place the utopia contained in the
Kantian notion of reason as in every great philosophy: the utopia of a hu-
manity which, itself no longer distorted, has no further need to dis-
tort."73 Adomno acknowledges the question he raises here: Do critical
theorists have a hidden conception of Being? But he refuses to answer,
maintaining only that such a conception of Being is unnecessary to criti-
cal theory.'7 If such a conception is present, it represents a reversion to
species-imperialism.
If a conception of being is absent, if subject and object are "truly non-
identical," Adorno becomes bourgeois. He also acknowledges this ob-
jection to critical theory. Some he says will accuse him of "unfruitful
negativity."''75 This accusation arises because Adorno's attack upon iden-
tity involves more than a critique of commodity exchange. Negative dia-
lectics, as Adorno describes it, is a critique of"constitutive consciousness
itself."'76 But, if rationality and society are repressive, then only the
speechless solipsist is free. Adorno does argue that the isolated individ-
ual now perceives reality better than a functional collective does. He also
says that direct communication is no longer a criterion of truth. Since
concepts establish equivalences, the isolated individual's freedom can-
not be communicated. Adorno criticizes even proletarian writing for
codifying oppression, and characterizes writing, now that demy-
thologization has destroyed language, as a Sisyphean task.77 Adorno
72. "Adorno's Radicalism: Two Interviews from the Sixties" trans. Russell Berman,
Telos 56 (Summer 1983).
73. Adornoand Horkheimer 119.
74. Adorno, "Actuality of Philosophy" 132. "I will not decide whether a particular
conception of man and being lies at the base of my theory, but I do deny the necessity of
resorting to this conception. It is an idealist demand, that of an absolute beginning, as
only pure thought by itself can accomplish."
75. Ibid.
77. Adorno, Minima Moralia, Aphorisms #65 and #142. For a more detailed
sion see: Seyla Benhabib, "Modernity and the Aporias of Critical Theory," Telos
1981).
Nancy S. Love 91
knows that he has assumed a privileged position beyond society: "Criti-

cal privelege becomes a privilege the world's course is as dialectical as
that."78 But he adopts this "position" not entirely with a bad conscience.
He maintains that his intransigent theory serves a true collective, though
he literally cannot say how.
Critical theorists leave this contradiction between Marxian and
Nietzschean exchange principles unresolved. To the charge of "un
fruitful negativity," Adorno responds "it is history which retards the
movement of thought to its presuppositions."79 History forces critica
theorists simultaneously to maintain the necessity and deny the possibil
ity of a rational society. Yet might this contradiction be product of logic as
well as history. Critical theorists cannot choose Marx or Nietzsche; bot
are implicated in exchange. Nor can they combine Marx and Nietzsche;
inadequate alone, together they are incoherent. But are these the only a
ternatives? Are they even alternatives, or do they share a certain logic?
By questioning these alternatives, Habermas claims to find a way out o
this cul-de-sac. Critical theorists cannot go forward, but they can go bac
They can retrace their steps and search for another path.so Adorno an
Horkheimer do not, as Habermas argues, hastily overextend Marx's ex-
change principle. But they do proceed hastily from Marx to Nietzsche,
from uncritical acceptance of instrumental rationality to uncompromisin
rejection of rationality as instrumental. Both responses follow the sam
logic, both are steps along the path of instrumental rationality. Both mi
another, more promising path - that of communicative rationality.
I cannot adequately examine Habermas' concept of communicativ
rationality, his alternative to the dialectic of enlightenment, here. I have
more limited purpose. To conclude, I want to show how this analysis o
Marx, Nietzsche, and critical theory clarifies the problem Habermas con
fronts: his reconstructed rationality must transcend psychological as well as
economic exchange. I also want to suggest that Nietzsche's exchange prin
ciple reveals a potential limitation of Habermas' solution.
If productive and administrative systems are adequately anchored in
communicatively rationalized life-world, then Habermas may provide
alternative to economic exchange." My concern is whether communica-
78. Adorno, Negative 41.

79. Adorno, "Actuality of Philosophy" 132.
80. Habermas, "The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment" 29.
81. Habermas' success in this has been questioned. See Anthony Giddens, "Reaso
tive rationality itself escapes psychological exchange. Habermas argues

that the dialectic of enlightenment reveals "coercive relationships of sys-
tematically distorted communication."82 However Adorno, by refusing to
ground critical theory, conceals the concept of non-coercive communica-
tion upon which this revelation rests. Traces of communicative rationality
nonetheless appear in Adorno's philosophy, specifically, in his concept of
reconciliation. According to Habermas, reconciliation "has the structure
of a life together in communication that is free from coercion."83
Habermas argues that this life is anticipated in speech whenever we try to
speak the truth: "Critique lays claim to no more than what is implied in
everyday discourse, but also to no less."s4 Habermas' ideal speech situa-
tion clarifies the pragmatic presuppositions of speech, the criteria for non-
coercive communication. Communicative ra-tionality requires "inter-
subjective symmetry" in "assertion and dispute, revelation and conceal-
ment, prescription and conformity." Habermas refers to these three
symmetries as "a linguistic conceptualization of what are traditionally
known as the ideas of truth, freedom, and justice.''"85
But are these presuppositions of speech adequate foundations for criti-
cal theory? And is symmetrical intersubjectivity an adequate image of non-
coercive communication? Although Nietzsche's analysis of psychological
exchange is too radical, it does suggest that Habermas' alternative isn't rad-
ical enough.86 Symmetrical intersubjectivity establishes equivalences be-
tween individuals. An instructive parallel appears here between proletari-
an dictatorship and ideal speech. They represent realizations, economic
and psychological, respectively, of exchange. Marx says that the dictator-
Without Revolution? Habermas' Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns," Habermas and Mo-
dernity, ed. Richard Bernstein (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1985) 95-119 and Thomas
McCarthy, "Complexity and Democracy, or The Seducements of Systems Theory," New
German Critique 35 (Spring/Summer 1985): 27-53.
82. Habermas,Philosophical 107.
83. Ibid. 109.
84. Ibid.
85. Jiurgen Habermas, "Towards a Theory of Communicative Competenc
quiry 13(1970): 372.
86. I want, then, to distinguish my criticisms of symmetrical intersubjectivity
poststructuralists' Nietzschean-inspired attempts to abolish subjectivity. Those att
manifest the same performative contradiction as critical theory. Poststructuralis
ever, address this paradox of total critique rather differently: they affirm a plur
meanings and powers. Habermas has argued that poststructuralists' use of Nietzsc
conservative implications. See his "Modernity versus Postmodernity," New Germa
tique 22 (Winter 1981): 3-14 and "The Genealogical Writing of History: On Some A
Nancy S. Love 93
ship of the proletariat recognizes no class differences. There are no

laborers, no capitalists because all are laborers, all are capitalists: "Both
sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality - labor as a
state in which every person is put, and capital as the acknowledged univer-
sality and power of the community.""7 The ideal speech situation analo-
gously recognizes no communication differences. In Nietzschean lan-
guage, there are no debtors, no creditors because all are debtors, all are
creditors. Again, both sides of the relationship assume an imagined uni-
versality: speech is a state in which every person is put, and truth orjustice
are the acknowledged universality and power of the community.
The problem with these equivalences - or symmetries - is that they
apply a universal principle to particular indivdiuals. In constructing social
relationships, they abstract from concrete individuals differing needs and
capacities. For this reason, Marx argues that equal right, like every right, is
inevitably unequal. "Right by its very nature can consist only in the applica-
tion of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be
different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an
equal standard in so far as they are brought under an equal point of view,
are taken from one definite side only... everything else being ignored."88
Freedom is not this realization of equal exchange, but the transcendence of
exchange altogether.
To transcend exchange, critical theorists must pursue what Seyla
Benhabib has called radical intersubjectivity. Radical intersubjectivity in-
volves the recognition of concrete, specific, not abstract, generalized indi-
viduals. This recognition is not found in the formal reciprocity of rights,
but in a norm of complementary reciprocity. Benhabib's definition of
complementary reciprocity is worth quoting at length: "Each is entitled to
expect and to assume from the other forms of behavior through which the
other feels recognized and confirmed as a concrete, individual being with
specific needs, talents, and capacities. Our differences in this case comple-
ment rather than exclude one another."89 She argues that such a norm con-
firms not only our shared humanity, but also our human individuality.
in Foucault's Theory of Power," Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 10:1-2 (1986).
Also see Kenneth Asher, "Deconstruction's Use and Abuse of Nietzsche," Telos 62 (Win-
ter 1984-5): 169-178.
87. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 83.
88. Marx, Critique ofthe Gotha Program, The Marx-Engels Reader 530.
89. Critique, Norm, Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1986) 341. Benhabib does not, however, draw her critique of
Habermas' universalism from Nietzsche's exchange principle.
Radical intersubjectivity is not absent from the history of critical theory.

Indeed, elements of it appear in the works of these authors. Marx says that
the "higher phase" of communist society crosses "the narrow horizon of
bourgeois right in its entirety" and inscribes on its banner: "From each ac-
cording to his ability, to each according to his needs!"'9 Nietzsche praises
the transcendence of justice: "Justice which began with, 'everything is
dischargeable, everything must be discharged,' ends by winking and
letting those incapable of discharging their debts go free." He calls this self-
overcoming of justice "mercy"; it is "the privilege of the most powerful
man, or better, his - beyond the law."9' Adorno's concept of reconcilia-
tion affirms interrelatedness without identity: "The reconciled state would
not annex the alien with a philosophical imperialism, but would find its
happiness in the fact that the alien remained distinct and remote within the
preserved proximity, beyond being either heterogeneous or one's own."92
Though he misinterprets Adorno on this point, Habermas' linguistic con-
cept of freedom as "significant rapport despite the inviolable distance be-
tween the partners," rapport which he describes as "communication un-
der conditions of individuation," does include aspects of radical
intersubjectivity.93 Like Nietzsche, Habermas also recognizes the limita-
tions of justice. He argues that a gain in rationality occurs when moral
questions are transformed into problems ofjustice. But this transforma-
tion also involves a loss of sensitivity to specific contexts. He concludes that
"This necessary disregard for the complexity of concrete life..,. calls for
specific compensations that make good the deficits with regard to the ap-
plication and realization of moral insights."94
Critical theorists must develop these elements of radical intersubjec-
tivity. They must redirect rationality from rights to needs, from justice to
mercy, from identity to interrelatedness. This path leads beyond psycho-
logical and economic exchange. Since Nietzsche prompts our search for it,
Habermas is wrong to reject his challenge to Enlightenment. But
Habermas rightly refuses to follow him, for radical intersubjectivity is a
path Nietzsche failed to find. Nietzsche's path, the path of non-identity,
leads beyond rationality and society, and leaves exchange behind.
90. Marx, Critique ofthe Gotha Program 531.

91. Nietzsche, The Genealogy ofMorals, second essay, section #10.
92. Quoted by Habermas, Philosophical 108.
93. Habermas, "Towards aTheory of Communicative Competence" 372.
94. Jiurgen Habermas, "Questions and Counterquestions," Habermas and Modernity
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1985) 210.

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Epistemology and Exchange: Marx, Nietzsche, and Critical Theory

Author(s): Nancy S. Love

Jurgen Habermas argues that critical theorists' analyses ofthe dialectic

* My thanks to the American Council of Learned Societies whose

1. Jiirgen Habermas, "The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Re-Reading

Adorno, aware of those biases, complements Marx's economic with Nie-

The Contextfor Critical Theory

The performative contradiction Habermas identifies in critical theory

3. Jiurgen Habermas, Philosophical-Political Profiles (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1985)

whether liberation follows seems ultimately to depend more upon hu-

5. Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum

sion, but by the very rationality under which they live."'0

Marx's Dialectical Materialism

The primary problem for attempts to articulate critical theorists' rela-

In accord with this emphasis upon practical activity, Marx criti-

ty," to expose how these appearances distort reality.22 Marx's cri-

22. Marx, "Theses" numberten.

expresses it, "Things do not seem different to a worker who knows

knows itself to be this solution."28

28. Marx, 1844 Manuscripts 84.

tique of alienated labor "... confuses the need to approach the

The remaining theoretical inadequacies in Hegel and Marx

33. Adorno,Negative 172.

A concept, he implies, which uncritically reflected enlightenment reas

In accord with this analysis, critical theorists minimi

Nietzsche's Genealogy ofMorals

Although he is still often omitted from their genealogy, c

for materialism itself."9 He argues that materialist atom

38. Adorno and Horkheimer 119.

With this concept of matter, Nietzsche reveals that he is also a

causes and effects." The subject is merely an ordered plurality of drives

44. Nietzsche, The WilltoPower, aphorism #635.

reality equivalent to reason. Nietzsche argues that.once one sees the

It is only after the model of the subject that we have invented

Subject, object, and their identity are fetishes of psychological ex-

47. Nietzsche, The WilltoPower, aphorism #552.

Since Christianity and science express ascetic psychology, liberation re-

Epistemology, Exchange, and Critical Theory

This combination of Marxian and Nietzschean exchange-principles

nature or the subjection of nature to the Self."53 Fearing bondage to na-

53. Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic ofEnlightenment, 32.

to be."66 Such illuminations do require externality, but as the creation of

We have seen that Marxian and Nietzschean exchange principles are

66. Ibid. 167.

also reinforces the bourgeois separation of subject and object. He denies

70. Nietzsche, The WilltoPower, Aphorism #339.

knows that he has assumed a privileged position beyond society: "Criti-

78. Adorno, Negative 41.

tive rationality itself escapes psychological exchange. Habermas argues

ship of the proletariat recognizes no class differences. There are no

Radical intersubjectivity is not absent from the history of critical theory.

90. Marx, Critique ofthe Gotha Program 531.

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