I just got finished reading the third chapter Hans-Georg Moeller's The Radical Luhmann and wanted to get some thoughts out of the way.
Firstly, I should preface this with two things: one, Moeller's overview thus far is very good. Why it's very good is my second point; Moeller doesn't place Luhmann in a spot where loyalty and accuracy are placed above readability. Not only is Moeller willing to criticize Luhmann for his soporific flavour, but also his inability to stick to a straight line and repetitiveness. Actually, as a side note, I want to say that I've never found Luhmann soporific. This isn't to say that I'm some how above other readers since what I sometimes feel when reading Luhmann is perhaps even more critical of Luhmann; a deep anxiety and depression due to the nihilism Luhmann sometimes presents. It's this nihilism that brings me here now, and how this nihilism has found, to an extent, some presence in Moeller's overview.
This third chapter of Moeller's, titled "The Fourth Insult: A Refutation of Humanism" places Luhmann amongst Copernicus, Darwin and Freud due to their refutation of an anthropocentric theory of their respective fields. Copernicus placed the sun as the centre of the system, Darwin displaced the human from the centre of nature and Freud suggested that drives take precedence over will. Now that I'm writing all of this out, I've become less convinced than before that this is an apt comparison of the four researchers, but perhaps that's for another time. Luhmann is placed amongst these three because of his self-declared anti-humanist radicalism. What Luhmann means by this is not a rejection of the human, which would be absurd, by the rejection of the idea that the human is in control of its social surroundings. I agree with this, but it's too often that a slippage occurs where this idea of full control becomes presented as no control, which I think is as equally misdiagnosed.
What Moeller's uses to elaborate on this point is Luhmann's look at democracy. Democracy for both Moeller and Luhmann has something about it that seems off for me. These two seem to have a partial idea of what democracy is. Moeller strictly limits the definition of democracy to its Enlightenment roots. Democracy and the governments using the ideas of democracy are, for Moeller , synonymous. Democracy is chained to its specifically modern political expressions. What this does is suggest democracy as a thing rather than a descriptor. Do people use the idea of 'democracy' to achieve political sway? Of course, and its just as fanciful a notion as the idea that democracy can be located at all to any one time or place when the whole idea of democracy is for, not the equal presence, but a presence, of all those things that decide to make itself a part of it; human or not.
Perhaps I'm suggesting a wildly different conception of democracy, because for me democracy does not mean equality as much as it means openness; democracy is what allows for the choice of participation.
Why I think of democracy this way is because of Luhmann. And it's also because of how I've interpreted Luhmann that I take issue with the way Moeller presents the political system as it was perceived by him when reading Luhmann. Moeller presents politics as, in so many words, pointless for itself. In most part, I don't think this is his intention so much as it is his gross over-emphasis on certain aspects of social systems theory, primarily everything except change.
Let me remind you that I've only read up to this chapter, but, at this point, Moeller has presented politics as a social system that is overwhelmingly restrictive and all because of one oversight; that though we cannot steer politics, or any social system for that matter, change happens for better or worse. This oversight regarding change is best exemplified by how Moeller frames the Frankfurt School and their politics, as well as other critiques to the Enlightenment conception of democracy. What Moeller does is immediately write off the effect of critique to a social system instead of respecting what it is; a continuation of that system. What motivates him to do such a thing is to forward the notion that a better understanding of a social system comes from outside of it. But that's not what he's doing here; he's judging the efficacy of a political stance through the use of terms and values that are only relevant within the social system itself.
What Moeller does is present something and suggest that it has had no effect on the social system within which it is functioning. I do not think that this is something that should ever be suggested, primarily because, and I won't go too into it, time. It seems as though, with time, anything that is dismissed as ineffective at some point comes to do something that we never could have expected. By saying something is ineffective is to expose yourself to its potential effectiveness; this is no place for a scientist to position themselves. It's Moeller's look at Hardt and Negri that really gets my wheels turning when it comes how Moeller is presenting his reading of Luhmann (long quote warning):
"Hardt and Negri, for instance, have a far more humanist vision of democracy and are rooted in the Enlightenment tradition to a greater extent than Luhmann. Even if they no longer use some the old fashined concepts like the "people" or the "masses", but a postmodernist variation of it, namely (in their case), the "multitude," they continue to dream of theoretically contributing to an improved society that is more democratic, more equal, and more just than the world at present; ultimately, they are hoping for a new communism to be realized. Such an approach may well be labelled radical in the context of liberal political theory. But, after all, communism is not exactly an ideology that radically departs from common political ideas and ideals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; it simply is one of the more "fundamentalist" forms with the Western Enlightenment political spectrum. While thinkers like Hardt and Negri try to modify nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought to make it more applicable in the twenty-first century, the basic premises of political though remain the same, namely that political thought explores the social structures of oppression that prevent people from living a better, that is, more free, powerful, and just life. In this sense, authors like Hardt and Negri represent a radical wing within the mainstream tradition of modern Western political theory" (11th page of chapter 3, sorry, reading the ebook and can't figure the app out top find the specific page).
I have a lot of problems with this particular passage and what case it's trying to make by positioning Luhmann as a 'radical' (I thought the argument was that Luhmann is a scientific radical, not a political radical. Why bring the social system of politics into the discussion of Luhmann as a radical at all?). However, I think I'm going to be brief from here on out, perhaps exploring these other concerns of mine later on.
With his look at Hardt and Negri (note: I've never read them. Shh...) what Moeller suggests is that these two haven't achieved anything different from the Enlightenment-era discussions regarding democracy and freedom. Based on what Moeller has presented, not only would I beg to differ (there IS a difference between "the people" and "the multitudes"), but I would also say that the simple participation in the social system of politics is enough to warrant, at the very least, a prospect for something to happen, or change to take place, though this may not be seen as radical.
All in all, what I mean to say is that social systems create, produce if you will. What they produce is out of our control, but what is inputted into the social system is less so. No, one political side will never be able to achieve what it wants. Staying within the example of politics, no, the left and the right will never have their say in what comes out of all of this; but something will come out of all of this and it will be, at least in part, influenced by the participation of all sides in politics. So, if you wanna see something done politically, go for it, but don't expect your goal to be achieved and, simultaneously, don't expect it to not be achieved. Only expect that something unexpected will eventually come about.
If we can, at the end of the day, make a prediction between 'nothing', 'everything' and 'something', I think 'something' is the more reasonable answer.
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