The “Great Refusal” and Social Theory, 1961–1981 99
engagement were few and conditions unfavorable, reflection on the
practical consequences of science needed to be “... transferred to
the broader public forum of the general public.”^45 What Habermas
judged to be at stake was whether knowledge is “... merely transmit-
ted to men engaged in technical manipulation for purposes of con-
trol or is simultaneously appropriated as the linguistic possession
of communicating individuals”^46 Unless technical knowledge was
“translated” into practical knowledge, political power would remain
substantively irrational.^47 The public sphere is the only forum for
the translation, and that act of translation is the only way to make
a “... scientized society... a rational one.”^48 Technocratic thought,
Habermas insisted, dangerously distorted the proper relationship of
science to politics.
Habermas located Weber’s “decisionistic” description and
advocacy of a strict division of labor between expert and politi-
cian within a “tradition” that originates with Hobbes and leads up
to Schumpeter.^49 Fully echoing his arguments in Transformation,
Habermas described this tradition as the “unquestioned” orthodoxy
of contemporary political sociology.^50 Habermas then identified the
“technocratic” tradition – with roots in Bacon and Saint-Simon –
and argued that intellectuals such as Schelsky and Jacques Ellul
had abandoned the decisionistic model for the technocratic one.^51
With specialists trained to advise on the objective requirements of
new technologies and strategies, the sphere of decision remaining
to the politician begins to shrink. New techniques, such as systems
analysis and decision theory, “... rationalize choice as such by means
of calculated strategies and automatic decision procedures.”^52 This
reverses the pattern announced by Weber in which decision-making
power was to remain firmly in the hands of the politician, not his
or her scientific advisors. In both models, however, the role of the
public is reduced to giving its plebiscitary assent to the managers
of administration. The difference is that in the decisionist model,
politicians still had real choices to make.
(^45) Ibid., 144; TRS, 79.
(^46) Ibid.
(^47) Ibid., 145; TRS, 80.
(^48) Ibid.
(^49) Habermas,“Verwissenschaftliche Politik,” 128.
(^50) Ibid.
(^51) Ibid., 122; TRS, 63.
(^52) Ibid.