The “Great Refusal” and Social Theory, 1961–1981 125
least two acting subjects.”^156 Social systems could be distinguished
by whether they were dominated by the principle of work or inter-
action.^157 But scientific-technical progress blurred the line between
technical power and institutional framework. The result was that “...
men lose consciousness of the dualism of work and interaction.”^158
What so impressed Habermas about the technocratic ideology and
consciousness was the way it rendered this fundamental dichotomy
invisible^159 : “It is a singular achievement of this ideology to detach
society’s self-understanding from the frame of reference of com-
municative action and... the concepts of symbolic interaction and
replace it with a scientific model.”^160 Habermas’s point was that the
technical and practical levels could and should be distinguished
analytically: The institutional organization of society “... continues
to be a problem of practice related to communication, not one of
technology, no matter how scientifically guided.”^161 The problems
of technology thus pointed beyond the particularism of class-based
politics to the politics of a universal class.
By “veiling” practical problems, technocratic consciousness “...
not only justifies a particular class’s interest in domination, and
represses another class’s partial need for emancipation, but affects
the human race’s emancipatory interest as such.”^162 By making
the practical interest “disappear behind” the technical interest in
control,
... the new ideology... violates an interest grounded in one of
the two fundamental conditions of our cultural existence: in lan-
guage... Or more precisely, in the form of individualization and
socialization determined by communication in ordinary language.
This interest extends to the maintenance of intersubjectivity of
mutual understanding as well as to the creation of communication
without domination.^163
In these formulations, we have already arrived at Habermas’s
search for the anthropologically universal features of communication,
(^156) Ibid., 62.
(^157) Ibid., 93.
(^158) Ibid., 80.
(^159) Ibid., 84.
(^160) Ibid., 81.
(^161) Ibid., 78–9.
(^162) Ibid., 89.
(^163) Ibid., 91.