Oldal 26 [26]
24 | Tue Puttosopuy or Eco-Pouitics
the theories developed by the neo- and post-Marxist thinkers of the
Frankfurt school that had the greatest effect on their contemporaries.
In their works they unmasked the knowledge embodied in the form of
bureaucratic rule and technological systems as an oppressive power
alienated from man. ‘The existing order of society is harder to untangle
than ever, since it no longer serves this or that goal, but quite the
contrary: it emphasises its independence from particular interests and
worldviews. The expert and decision-making bodies henceforth prove
the legitimacy of their proceedings with reference to their scientific
objectivity, for one cannot argue with the facts. “The actual is validated,
knowledge confines itself to repeating it, thought makes itself mere
tautology. The more completely the machinery of thought subjugates
existence, the more blindly it is satisfied with reproducing it. ... Justified
in the guise of brutal facts as something eternally immune to
intervention, the social injustice from which those facts arise is as
sacrosanct today as the medicine man once was under the protection of
his gods.”* This critique, formulated in Dialectic of Enlightenment is
not directed against scientific reason. On the contrary, it seeks an
explanation for the later developments which rendered impossible the
achievement of the Enlightenment, rational life management based on
a mutual understanding among the actors. Jiirgen Habermas describes
this situation as the conflict between system and lifeworld — instrumental
and communicative rationality: instrumental (economic, administrative)
rationality takes over the role of a dialogue directed towards mutual
understanding and agreement within the area of cultural contact and
social integration.‘
Other critics of knowledge-as-power are occupied instead with the
effect of the scientific-technological revolution on the everydays,
especially its direct effect on the world of work: how man becomes, to
use the expression of Jacques Ellul, the king of the slaves of technology.
Their forerunner is Lewis Mumford, who wrote the cultural history of
the development of the giant machine, i.e., the modern social machine
from the Egyptian pyramid-builders through the era of machines to
the age of scientific planning.’ Ihe prophecy of Ellul® has come fully
5 Max Horkheimer — Theodor W. Adorno: The Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical
Fragments, p.50-51. Stanford CA, The Stanford University Press, 2002.
6 Jiirgen Habermas: The Theory of Communicative Action. Wiley, 1986.
7 Lewis Mumford: The Myth of the Machine, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York,
1967.
8 Jacques Ellul: The Technological Society. A. A. Knopf, New York, 1964.