Page 22 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

Xxili Translator’s Introduction

structurally limited adaptive capacity of a society, is contingent;
whether the necessary, but not yet institutionalized, structures of
rationality (technical and practical) are available, whether social
movements arise to meet the challenge by drawing on this po-
tential, whether they succeed in institutionalizing new forms of
social integration, and whether these institutions can be stabilized,
are also dependent on contingent circumstances. Nevertheless the
structural descriptions of the different stages of development can
be ordered in a developmental logic, that is, in a hierarchical
sequence of increasingly complex and encompassing forms of
rationality.

4. Critical theory does not exhaust itself in the construction
of a theory of social evolution (the reconstruction of historical
materialism); its ultimate aim remains an historically oriented
analysis of contemporary society with a practical intent (a re-
construction of the critique of capitalist society). By comparison
to the retrospective explanation of past developments, the projec-
tive analysis of contemporary society has an immediately practical
reference.
Evolutionary statements about contemporary social formations have an
immediately practical reference insofar as they serve to diagnose devel-
opmental problems. The restriction to retrospective explanations of
historical material is dropped in favor of a retrospective projected from
the perspectives of action; the diagnostician of the present adopts the
fictive standpoint of an evolutionary explanation of a future past...
As a rule, Marxist explanations of developed capitalism also share this
asymmetric position of the theoretician who analyzes developmental
problems of the contemporary social system with a view to structual
possibilities that are not yet (and perhaps never will be) institutional-
ized. It can be seen from this that the application of evolutionary
theories to the present makes sense only in the framework of a dis-
cursive formation of the will, that is, in a practical argumentation deal-
ing with reasons why specific actors in specific situations ought to
choose specific strategies of action over others.18

Habermas’ principal contribution to the analysis of contem-
porary capitalism is to be found in Legztimation Crisis.'° The last
essay translated for the present volume, “Legitimation Problems
in the Modern State,” provides an elaboration on the argument