Page 141 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

118 Communication and Evolution of Society

of the knowledge that can be transposed into technologies, into
strategies or organizations, and into qualifications; (b) the mech-
anisms that can explain the acquisition of this knowledge, the
corresponding learning processes; and (c) the boundary condi-
tions under which available knowledge can be implemented in a
socially significant way. Only these three complexes of conditions
together can explain rationalization processes in the sense of the
development of productive forces. However, there is now the
further question of whether other rationalization processes are
just as important or even more important for the explanation of
social evolution. In addition to the development of the forces of
production, Marx regarded social movements as important. But
in conceiving of the organized struggle of oppressed classes as
itself a productive force, he established between the two motors
of social development—technical-organizational progress on the
one hand and class struggle on the other—a confusing, in any
event an inadequately analyzed, connection.
In contradistinction to purposive-rational action, communica-
tive action is, among other things, oriented to observing intersub-
jectively valid norms that link reciprocal expectations. In com-
municative action, the validity basis of speech is presupposed. The
universal validity claims (truth, rightness, truthfulness), which
participants at least implicitly raise and reciprocally recognize,
make possible the consensus that carries action in common. In
strategic action, this background consensus is lacking; the truth-
fulness of expressed intentions is not expected, and the norm-
conformity of an utterance (or the rightness of the norm itself)
is presupposed in a different sense than in communicative action—
namely, contingently. One who repeatedly makes senseless moves
in playing chess disqualifies himself as a chess player; and one
who follows rules other than those constitutive of chess is not
playing chess. Strategic action remains indifferent with respect to
its motivational conditions, whereas the consensual presupposi-
tions of communicative action can secure motivations. Thus stra-
tegic actions must be institutionalized, that is, embedded in inter-
subjectively binding norms that guarantee the fulfillment of the
motivational conditions. Even then we can distinguish the aspect
of purpostve-rational action—in Parsons’ terminology, the task