The “Great Refusal” and Social Theory, 1961–1981 113
stated.^108 The actionists “... fancy themselves revolutionary fighters
against fascism while they are actually doing nothing but exploiting
the unexpected latitude granted them by liberal institutions.”^109 In
intellectual-historical terms, they have a “neoanarchist worldview”
that reminded Habermas of Sorel’s political doctrines.^110 What
Marx called “critical-revolutionary activity” must take the path of
“radical reformism.”^111
Most interesting from the perspective of Habermas’s later devel-
opment is the way his encounter with “actionism” helped to solidify
his understanding of a nonviolent, but still radical, reform project.
The most damaging consequence of the actionist deviation from
radical reformist praxis was that it sabotaged the practical reform of
the university. Habermas observed: “Students are not a class, they
are not even the avant-garde of a class, and they are certainly not
leading a revolutionary struggle. In view of the results of actionism,
I consider this self-delusion in the grand style pernicious.”^112 A “fatal
division of labor” had grown up between the protest movement and
pragmatic university reform. While Habermas credited the SDS for
being the “motor” of a movement that opened unexpected possibili-
ties for radical reform, elements of the SDS were now threatening
this progress: “In Berlin and Frankfurt the goal of the action-
ist groups is the hindering of reforms. The hitherto energetically
demanded Drittelparität^113 has been reinterpreted as the distinctive
emblem of technocratic university reform.”^114 In 1969, Habermas
was losing whatever control of the discourse on technocracy he may
have had earlier. He fought back, arguing that the antireform radi-
cals only played into the hands of the reactionaries:
While the government and political parties put forward hesitant,
mainly technocratic reform policies and call for law and order, the
population’s sentiments against students are growing. Thus the defi-
nitions of revolution upheld by left and right, while equally fictions, can(^108) Ibid., 44.
(^109) Ibid., 29.
(^110) Habermas, “Studentenprotest,” in PuH, 171.
(^111) Ibid., 49.
(^112) Habermas, “Einleitung,” in PuH, 48 (emphasis added).
(^113) Drittelparität is the system of academic codetermination in which all three
“estates” – students, university staff, and professors – would share in uni-
versity governance.
(^114) Ibid., 11.