Jean Phillipe Deranty e Nicholas Smith - New Philosophies of Labour

New Philosophies of Labour
Social and Critical Theory

Editorial Board
John Rundell
University of Melbourne
Danielle Petherbridge
University of Melbourne
Jeremy Smith
Ballarat University
Jean-Philippe Deranty
Macquarie University
Robert Sinnerbrink
Macquarie University
International Advisory Board
William Connolly Manfred Frank Leela Gandhi
Agnes Heller Dick Howard Martin Jay Richard Kearney
Paul Patton MICHEL Wieviorka
Volume 13
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/sct
This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
New philosophies of labour : work and the social bond / edited by Nicholas H. Smith,
Jean-Philippe Deranty.
p. cm. -- (Social and critical theory ; v. 13)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-20976-3 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Labor--Philosophy. 2. Work--Philosophy.
3. Work--Social aspects. I. Smith, Nicholas H. (Nicholas Hugh), 1962- II. Deranty,
Jean-Philippe.
HD4904.N49 2012
331.01--dc23
2011035782
ISSN 1572-459X
ISBN 978-90-04-20976-3
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
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Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by KoninklijkeBrillNV
provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center,
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Fees are subject to change.
Contents
Volume Foreword vii
Acknowledgements ix
1. Work, Recognition and the Social Bond: Changing
Paradigms1
Nicholas H. Smith and Jean-Philippe Deranty
PART ONE
FROM HEGEL TO INSTITUTIONALISM

2. The Role of Work within the Processes of Recognition
in Hegels Idealism 41
Paul Redding
3. The Legacy of Hegelian Philosophy and the Future of
Critical Theory 63
Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
4. Recognition Theory and Institutional Labour Economics 101
Craig MacMillan
PART TWO
CRITIQUE, NORM AND WORK

5. The Political Invisibility of Work and its Philosophical
Echoes 133
Emmanuel Renault
6.Expression and Cooperation as Norms of Contemporary
Work 151
7. Three Normative Models of Work 181
Nicholas H. Smith
vi
contents
PART THREE
WORK AND SUBJECTIVITY: TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHICAL

ANTHROPOLOGY
8.From the Psychopathology to the Psychodynamics
of Work 209
Christophe Dejours
9. Care as Work: Mutual Vulnerabilities and Discrete
Knowledge 251
Pascale Molinier
PART FOUR
WORK, RECOGNITION AND THE CHANGING

FACE OF CAPITALISM
10.Admiration without Appreciation? The Paradoxes of
Recognition of Doubly Subjectivised Work 273
Stephan Voswinkel
11. Exclusive Focus on Figures. Exclusive Focus on Returns.
Marketisation as a Principle of Organisation and a
Problem of Recognition 301
Gabriele Wagner
12.A Critical Assessment of Orthodox Economic
Conceptions of Work 327
Dale Tweedie
13. Liberalism, Neutrality and Varieties of Capitalism 347
Russell Keat
Notes on Contributors 371
Index 375
Volume foreword
If work is one of the social bonds through which peoples lives can
be made meaningful in the modern world, then the new neo-liberal
environment can disrupt, damage, or destroy these bonds and the
experiences of personal and collective recognition. New Philosophies of
Labour: Work and the Social Bond edited by Nicholas H. Smith and
Jean-Philippe Deranty brings together leading philosophers and social
scientists around the crucial issues of work and recognition in this new
environment of neo-liberalism. One of the areas that The Social and
Critical Theory Book Series has developed over several volumes has
been recognition theory. Smith and Derantys book broadens and
deepens the issue of recognition by opening it up to the experience of
work, its sociality and social bonds and explores the ways in which
recognition is a central part of this experience.
John Rundell, Series Editor
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Acknowledgements
This volume has the shape it has on account of many conversations
between the editors, whose specialization lies within philosophy, and
sociologists, psychologists, economists and other philosophers based
in Australia, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. In addition to
the authors included in the volume, we would particularly like to thank
Geoff Boucher, Keith Breen, Wylie Bradford, Norbert Ebert, Lorraine
Gibson, Axel Honneth, Hermann Kocyba, Michael Pusey, Beate
Roessler, John Rundell, Andrew Sayer, Sean Scalmer, Gillian Vogl
and Shaun Wilson for helping us think through the central issues at
stake. Several of these conversations took place during a conference on
the topic of work and recognition held at Macquarie University in
Sydney in October 2007; others in a series of seminars and workshops
on recognition and the philosophy of work. We thank everyone who
took part so engagingly in these events, particularly the students
at Macquarie University and Goethe-Universitt Frankfurt whose
enthusiasm for the philosophy of labour reassures us of the importance of this barely charted field of inquiry.
A book of this kind, encompassing several disciplines and languages,
requires more than the usual amount of editorial graft. We thank Susie
Turner for her assistance in the first stages of editing and Ruth Cox for
all her help in the final stages. Of course, we take sole responsibility for
any editorial shortcomings. We also thank Lise Andersen and Wilson
Cooper for assistance in preparing the index.
The volume is the culmination of a research project funded by the
Australian Research Council (ARC). The editors, as chief investigators
on the project, would like to thank the ARC for its financial support.
Chapter one
Work, Recognition and the Social Bond:

Changing Paradigms
Introduction: The Post-Hegelian Agenda
One of the chief characteristics of post-Hegelian thought is that it
strives to conceptualise the fundamental features of human life in a
way that connects to the major moral and political challenges of the
times. The post-Hegelian philosophical impulse could even be said to
originate in an apprehension of these challenges and the needtorespond
to them by way of critical reflection. In the Hegelian jargon, postHegelian thought aims at the universalor has its eye on totality
in seeking to provide a framework for understanding not only those
essential features of the human life form in general, but the contemporary condition of this life form in its essential aspects. Without the
latter, the philosophers concern with universality and totality remains
abstract; only with it, does philosophical criticism become concrete. At
its best, philosophy on the post-Hegelian view is not just the perspicuous self-expression of thought, but of its time in thought.
A crucial implication of the post-Hegelian conception of philosophy
is that however we conceive the fundamental features of human life, we
must conceive them as socially and historically indexed. Of course,
many answers have been given to the question of what distinguishes
the human life form from the life form of other animals: consciousness, thought, knowledge, reason, freedom and so forth. Reason, or
perhaps freedom, was Hegels master concept in this regard, though
there is widespread disagreement amongst post-Hegelians about the
precise meaning of these terms. What they do agree on, however, is
that human beings are distinctive on account of the kind of relations
they have with each other, that is, on account of their social relations,
and that these relations provide them with a history that also distinguishes them from other animals. Hegels theory of the sociality of
reason and of reasons unfolding in history is well-knownand not
nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty
without justification taken as central to his philosophy1but the

broader post-Hegelian point is that the human condition is at its core
social and historical irrespective of the detailed specification of the
concept of rationality.
However, for most of the second half of the twentieth century, postHegelian thought in the sense we are introducing it here did favour a
particular approach to rationality, one that emphasised the link
between rationality and language. To the extent that the human being
could properly be characterized as the rational animal, on this view,
itwas in virtue of its self-constitution and self-expression in language.
The classical conception of the human being as the animal in possession of the logos, radicalized by Hegel into the idea of self-determining
consciousness, mutated into a conception of the human being as essentially the being capable of speech and action.2 Under the influence of
the later Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein, post-Hegelian thought
after the Second World War took an unmistakable linguistic turn (and
of course was not alone in this respect).3 From Arendt to Gadamer and
Habermas, from Ricoeur to Derrida and Rorty, the key post-Hegelian
thinkers from the 1950s to the 1980s took it as axiomatic that philosophical self-understanding was to be obtained first and foremost by
reflection on language. Furthermore, some of these thinkers went as
far as to suggest that the fundamental danger of modern times arose
from a kind of reification of the linguistic realm (Arendt, Habermas),
or a forgetfulness of the proper human relation to language and consequently an authentic experience of freedom (Heidegger, Derrida,
Nancy).
To a certain extent, these post-Hegelian trajectories are powered by
their opposition to external, non-Hegelian philosophical paradigms.
See, for example, T. Pinkard, Hegels Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason,

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
2
See, in particular, H. Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1958.
3
Notable discussions (and instantiations) of this trend include H. -G. Gadamer,
Philosophical Hermeneutics, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1976; J. Derrida,
Writing and Difference, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1978; R. Rorty, Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1979; C. Taylor,
Philosophical Papers 1 Human Agency and Language, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1985; J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,
Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1987; P. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, Evanston Illanois,
Northwestern University Press, 1991; G. Markus, Language and Production, Dordrecht,
Reidel, 1986.
1
work, recognition and the social bond3
Most notably, they offer alternative ways out of the Platonic and
Cartesian paradigms, with their ahistorical, asocial, and disembodiedconceptions of the human-making feature (be it mind, reason or
freedom). But these trajectories are also shaped by developments
within the post-Hegelian tradition. That is to say, the linguistic turn in
post-Hegelian thought is a response to another way of carrying out the
post-Hegelian agenda. Specifically, it is a response to a conception of
the human condition and the main challenges facing it that has labour
or productive activity at its core.
The linguistic paradigm of post-Hegelian thought has been so pervasive, and the historical and social transformation of the past sixty
years so extensive, that it is now hard to connect with its predecessor
paradigm at all. However, two developments suggest that it may be a
propitious time for forging such a reconnection.
First, there is the emergence over the past couple of decades of a new
paradigm for post-Hegelian thought organized around the concept of
recognition. Owing largely to the work of Axel Honneth, it has become
plausible to suppose, on the one hand, that the social relations that
mark the human life form are fundamentally relationships between a
recognizing being and a recognized one, and on the other, that the
historical unfolding of social relations is fundamentally shaped by
social struggles for recognition.4 Recognition thereby suggests itself as
the key for understanding what it is that makes us human in socially
and historically conditioned ways. Once this step is made, work as a
locus of recognition, misrecognition, the withdrawal of recognition
and struggles for recognition immediately enters the agenda for philosophically informed criticism in the post-Hegelian vein.5
The second development is a heightened awareness of work as a
defining moral, political and social challenge of the times. Critical
social theorists are becoming increasingly concerned by the ways in
which the organization of work, its availability, its distribution and its
quality, can damage processes of individual identity-formation and the
character of societies as a whole. It is no longer pass, as it was not so
4
See, for example, A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of
Social Conflicts, trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994.
5
See A. Honneth, Work and Instrumental Action: On the Normative Basis of
Critical Theory, in A. Honneth, The Fragmented World of the Social, New York, SUNY
Press, 1995; and A. Honneth, Work and Recognition: A Redefinition, in H. -C.
Schmidt am Busch and C. Zurn eds., The Philosophy of Recognition. Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2010, pp. 223239.
long ago, to characterize the spirit of the times as a spirit of capitalism.6

It is no longer a source of intellectual embarrassment to speak once
again of capitalism as a chief source of psychic and social pathology,
and thus a legitimate object of critical philosophical reflection. On the
contrary, it is now widely acknowledged that it would be remiss of
philosophically informed social criticism not to have something to say
about capitalism and the conflicts around labour that define it.
This new intellectual and historical context makes it incumbent
upon post-Hegelian thought to reconsider the legacy of the production
paradigm and to turn once again to philosophies of labour for tackling
its fundamental problems. It is precisely with this goal in mind that the
collection of essays presented here has been conceived. We will summarize later on in our Introduction how each chapter contributes to
this task. But before doing that, we should say a little more about the
paradigm shifts that have brought post-Hegelian thought to its current
state. As we just indicated, two developments in particular call for brief
consideration: first, the transition from a production paradigm to a
language paradigm; and second, the shift from the language paradigm
to a recognition paradigm. Only once the basic features of the recognition paradigm are in view will we be able to see the opportunity it
presents for renewed reflection on the significance of work. At the
same time, the recognition paradigm itself may need to be modified in
order to make the most of that opportunity.
From Production to Language
Given the characterization of post-Hegelian thought just laid out,
its agenda will be set by mutually reinforcing conceptions of the
human-making feature (the universal) and the historically specific
needs and challenges of the times (the particular). The question we
first want to ask is: how could the post-Hegelian mediation of the
universal and the particular, so to speak, come to be dominated by
the concept of labour? How did the category of productive activity
come to seem suited to this role?7
6
See L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, London, Verso,
2005.
7
We cannot hope to give this question the complex answer it deserves here.
The best account of the matter remains G. Markus, Language and Production.
The centrality of labour from an anthropological point of view,

that is to say its significance in defining the kind of being humans
are, emerged from a confluence of elements in Enlightenment and
Romantic thought. Both sets of elements can be understood as a
reaction to overly transcendent conceptions of the human, in particular those that depicted the distinctively human rational capacities
in the image of a divine, immaterial or supernatural power. If human
beings were to be distinguished on account of their rationality, it had
to be in a form that was recognizable in this world and that proved
itself through its intra-mundane effects. Rather than aiming at the
eternal and the immutable, and revealing the eternal and immutable essence of the being in its possession, reason finds its vocation,
according to the Enlightenment view, in transformations of the
world that make it better accord with human desires and purposes.
As the primordial mode of making activity, of taking control of
its environment and transforming it to meet natural human needs,
labour could be seen in its true anthropological, dignity-conferring
sense. Modern science and technology were but the most advanced
expression of this power of labour, that is to say, of the general capacity
to work on and modify nature for humanly determined ends. While
of course such an instrumental relation to nature was exactly what
the Romantic movement strove to get away from, Romanticism nevertheless embraced the anthropological image of the self-making and
materially embodied being, which itself required a retrieval of the
significance of labour as materially incarnated shaping activity. The
work of art, which in the Romantic view counter-poses science and
technology as the height of human achievement, and represents the
purest form of self-expression of the animal possessing the logos, is
after all a work: it is through authentic productive activity that the individual human being realizes her or his inner humanity in her or his
own unique way.8
The production paradigm thus brought together the Enlightenment
image of the human being as the tool-using animal whose practical
intelligence is bound up with its immersion in nature and purposive
shaping of its environment, and the Romantic image of self-formation
through singular acts of creative making or production. Both
elements feed into the expressivist anthropology of the production
See C. Taylor, Hegel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975.
aradigm. A third feature of this anthropology is a particular formulap

tion of the idea that human beings are social animals. According to it,
human sociality is rooted in the relations of material dependence individuals have with each other, both in the sense that they rely on the
labour of others for the satisfaction of their material needs, and in the
sense that laboring activity itself is a cooperative process, such that
individuals must depend on each other to get a job done well. Human
sociality could thus seem to find paradigmatic expression in the social
provision of labour, or social control over the means of production, on
the one hand, and the social organization of labour along cooperative
lines on the other. Collective control of the labour supply and cooperative relations between individual working subjects could thus appear
as the most basic realization of human sociality.
Of course it would take particular historical circumstances to bring
this insight fully to view. And this is precisely what the upheavals of
industrialization and its aftermath in nineteenth-century Europe
seemed to provide. To pioneers of the production paradigm such as
Adam Smith, Hegel and Marx, these societies were characterized by
enormous increases in the powers of production and of the means for
satisfying material needs on the one hand, and on the other by the
degraded state of labour, not just on account of its alienating effect on
the individual worker, but on account of its corruption as a medium of
social cooperation. The seemingly inexorable immiseration of the producing class, in the midst of rapidly expanding productive powers,
seemed to distil the social contradictions of the age. But if the agent of
production as a whole were to reflect on its powers, and appropriate
them in what would be an absolute moment of practical insight, the
expressive and cooperative dimensions of labour could be restored,
and with them true sociality.9 In this way the idea of praxis as revolutionary activity embedded itself in the production paradigm, alongside a notion of the working class as a subject writ large. Both notions
were underwritten by a philosophy of history which at once diagnosed
the ills of contemporary society in terms of conflict over possession of
the power of production, and grounded the hope of recovery in a
rational, collective re-appropriation of this power.
These notions of a subject writ-large and revolutionary praxis, and
the philosophy of history they inform, certainly look like relics of a
See G. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, London, Merlin, 1971.
bygone age. To many post-Hegelian thinkers in the post-war period,

the association between these notions and the paradigm of production
was so close that only a clean break with this paradigm and a shift to a
completely new one seemed in order. To be sure, these were not the
only reasons for rejecting the paradigm: a growing ambivalence
towards the value of technology in the context of its damaging environmental impact; worries about the apparent hegemony of instrumental reason and its dehumanizing effects; doubts about the capacity
of a highly specialized division of labour to deliver meaningful work
(perhaps even any work) on a mass scale; ambivalence towards the
value of work more generally in the emerging consumer society; the
rise of progressive social movements pressing for emancipation independently of their class position; and other considerations all played
their role. But the change of paradigm was not just about rejecting the
old: it was about embracing something new that could better meet the
demands of the post-Hegelian agenda.
Let us briefly consider how language could serve this purpose. Recall
that the post-Hegelian agenda calls for mutually reinforcing conceptions of the human-making feature and the historically specific needs
and challenges of the times. It is easy to see how language could meet
this demand under its first (anthropological) aspect: the idea that
human beings are distinctive on account of their use of language is as
prima facie compelling as the idea that they are distinctive on account
of their use of tools. But the link between language use and rationality
is even stronger. The idea that powers of linguistic expression are at the
root of rational powers in a strict sense, and that it is these powers that
truly mark off humans from other animals, could also draw on currents of Enlightenment and Romantic thought, and took many different directionseven within the post-Hegelian traditiondepending
on which of these currents was predominant. One influential formulation, drawing more on Enlightenment elements, emphasized the rulegoverned character of language use and the link between linguistic
competence and the ability to apply rules. Possession of this ability
enables us to grasp concepts, to formulate propositions, to get things
right or wrong, that is to say, to show the features characteristic of
the animal possessing the logos, the rational animal. Another
formulation, drawing more on Romanticism, emphasizes the worlddisclosive function of language, in virtue of which different possibilities of being in the world, with more or less emotional depth or
resonance, open up. On this view it is in capacities such as dwelling,
or thinking in a manner that does not instrumentalize or objectify its

subject matter, that human beings best display their distinctive possession of the logos. To mention one other influential formulation, it is
conversation or dialogue that marks off the human life form from that
of other animals, and it is as participants in conversationlistening to
the other, taking the perspective of the other into account and being
open to correctionthat we put our rational capacities to work in the
most basic sense. For all their differences, each of these formulations
projects an image of the human as first and foremost the language
being. Language is the central anthropological idea.
If the classical idea that human beings were distinctive on
account of their rationality could be rehabilitated and modernized
by re-interpreting rational capacities as essentially linguistic capacities,something similar could be said of the classical idea that human
beings were essentially social animals. That is to say, it was first and
foremost in virtue of their linguistic nature that human beings had a
social nature. For many post-Hegelians, language seemed the paradigm form of intersubjectivity. In acquiring a language one becomes
a subject, but language is always shared, and so subjects are constitutively in relation to other subjects. All language users share a minimal
horizon of shared meaning. They are thus dependent on something outside them, on other members of the linguistic community.
Furthermore, the act of uncoerced communication presented itself
as a model of the social relation in its pure, undistorted form. In engaging in linguistic interaction, in expressing opinions, exchanging
views,in sharing a dialogue, one does something together in a deep
and arguably paradigmatic sense. At any rate, just as language seemed
to offer a more plausible model than labour for understanding the
anthropological basis of human rationality, it also seemed a preferable
basis for understanding human sociality. For the post-Hegelians who
took the linguistic turn, the social realm properly understood was the
realm of public, linguistic expression, a shared space of reason-giving,
reason-taking and reason-rejecting in which every human being has a
stake.
This way of presenting the universality of language already points
to how it could be mobilized for understanding the particular needs
and challenges of the times. Time and again, the advanced industrialsocieties have been characterized by post-Hegelian critics as lacking in public spirit, as failing to provide the conditions for genuine
participation in a community and the sense of belonging that flows
from it.10 Instead of citizens discussing and deliberating over the terms
of their collective life, they leave it to a class of bureaucratic and technocratic experts, retreating into a narrow and experientially flattened
private sphere for personal fulfillment. Cultures and traditions which
once lived from open linguistic expression and communication across
generations are abandoned to market forces and degenerate accordingly. The ethos of openness to the truth and learning from the other
embedded in genuine dialogue is replaced by knowingness, closed
horizons, and ethnocentric arrogance. As the scope for effective communicative, dialogical interaction shrinks, communities become more
fragmented, individuals more isolated and spiritually impoverished.
While post-Hegelians of the linguistic turn disagreed over the extent of
this malaise, and its true causes, there was rough agreement that the
particular, broadly speaking spiritual needs of the times were of this
order, and that a linguistic paradigm of critique was best suited to
address them.
From Language to Recognition
The linguistic paradigm continues to hold sway in many areas of contemporary philosophy, particularly those areas that have their roots in
the post-Hegelian tradition. However, a new paradigm has emerged in
this tradition that challenges the primary focus on language and
attempts to fulfill the traditions program in a different way. The work
of Axel Honneth, articulated around the concept of recognition, is at
the heart of this new development.
To understand the motivation behind Honneths dissatisfaction with
the linguistic paradigm, we should first recall that a key aim of the
post-Hegelian program is to tie a theory of the defining features of the
human being, mainly through analyses of human sociality (accounts of
the sociality of the human being and of the social bond), to a critical
diagnosis of the extant historical conditions. This attempt to establish
an internal link between the theory of sociality and the critique of contemporary historical conditions leads to the formulation of a number
of other significant methodological principles.
10
See, for example, Arendt, The Human Condition; R. Sennett, The Fall of Public
Man, London, Penguin, 2002; A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, second edition, London,
Duckworth, 1984; and of course much communitarian criticism of liberalism.
10
The first is a sophisticated, self-reflexive, criterion to ensure methodological consistency. Not only does the anthropological moment
ground the historical diagnosis, more or less directly, by providing the
conceptual and normative resources necessary to characterize and critique the present. Turning things around, as it were, philosophical
reflection must also account for its own historical determinacy, that is,
its place within the historical moment it critically analyses. Philosophy
that defines itself as its own time reflected in thought must be able to
show how it fits in its own time. This is the basis for one of the most
famous post-Hegelian mottoes: the unity of theory and practice. Since
the most fundamental norm is freedom, and philosophical reflection is
driven by a critical impulse, practice denotes the attempt to realize
freedom, in concrete terms, or the search for emancipation in particular social contexts, however the obstacles to freedom are conceived.
This then translates into another famous principle: since philosophical
reflection has to demonstrate a substantive link to the reality that it
critically assesses, the task of critiquing the present cannot be performed by measuring social reality against norms that would be developed independent of that reality, as the Kantian tradition is routinely
accused of doing. Rather, philosophy must be able to show how the
norms underpinning critique can already be found within social reality itself: the movement potentially transcending extant social reality
must be found in the immanence of that reality. On that account, the
philosophy of emancipation is therefore doubly related to social forces
that potentially carry it out: it relies on these social forces to find indications as to the content and historical direction of emancipation; but
it also aims to offer conceptual and normative direction to that real
movement.
It was by judging the linguistic paradigm against this set of principles that Honneth found it wanting. Distortions of communication,
a withering away of the disclosive powers of language, might well be
real, empirical effects of the pathological developments of modern
societies. But to explain social pathologies in terms of distortions of
communication is to mobilise a kind of higher-order analysis that is
situated at a level external to the one at which these distortions are
concretely experienced.11 In other words, the analysis of contemporary
See in particular the following articles by Honneth: Moral Consciousness and
Class Domination, in Honneth, Disrespect. The Normative Foundations of Critical
Theory, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007, pp. 8096; The Social Dynamics of Disrespect:
On the Location of Critical Theory Today, in Disrespect, pp. 6380.
11
athologies as distortions of communication does not seem to use the

p
right conceptual and normative grammar, as Honneth says, to accurately describe the experiences of individuals and groups who would
have an interest in emancipation. Similarly, critical analysis in terms of
distortions of communication and the corruption of language cannot
easily relate back to existing or gestating social and political movements, and for the same reason. What social movements demand is
not prima facie, or at least not principally, the redemption of the powers of language or a reawakening of public spheres. In brief, when it
makes the structures of language the key to its critical diagnosis of the
times, post-Hegelian thought appears to rupture the unity of theory
and practice.
The concept of recognition is introduced by Honneth to remedy
what he thus perceived as a danger of abstraction, and to articulate
anew the theoretical and the experiential. Let us first see how recognition theory reformulates the anthropological and social-theoretical
sides of post-Hegelian philosophy, before clarifying the link back to
critique and the historical situation.
For Honneth, the replacement of social labour by communication as
the core concept around which a critical social philosophy (another
name for the post-Hegelian project) should be articulated, represented
an indisputable theoretical progress. The linguistic paradigm emphasized rightly the dimensions of intersubjective reciprocity and of a
shared meaning horizon arising from it, as the fabric that enables the
different institutions of society to hold together. But instead of accounting for these dimensions through language, Honneth proposed to
interpret them more broadly as developing through a range of practical attitudes taken by social agents toward each other. Recognition is
the generic name for these fundamental practical attitudes. Just like,
for the thinkers of the linguistic turn, language provides the common
element accounting for the way in which individual perspectives are
always somehow attuned to each other, similarly for Honneth, the different kinds of recognitive attitudes, each governed by specific norms,
constitute a general moral basis upon which social life and its complexity can grow without being torn apart.
Underneath this shift to recognition, however, the basic anthropological image has changed markedly. The human being is no longer
conceptualized primordially as the rational or the self-interpreting
animal on account of its unique possession of logos. What demarcates
the human being more primitively is a radical, constitutive dependency
12
towards its own kind, a dependency whose extent is unknown to the

rest of the animal kingdom. Whilst the linguistic paradigm retrieved
elements from Enlightenment theories of rationality and the Romantic
emphasis on expression, the recognition paradigm self-consciously
anchors itself in naturalistic and materialist accounts of the human:
on the philosophical side, by recourse to the materialist strands of
post-Hegelian philosophy, culminating in twentieth-century philosophical anthropology;12 and on the side of contemporary human sciences, by recourse to developmental and comparative psychology.
What unites these diverse approaches is the idea that the symbolic
powers of the human being emerge paradoxically out of the latters
instinctual and organic deficiency. Sociality and culture, including
language, can then be understood as serving a compensatory purpose that allows the weakest of species to define its own mode of
survival and, in time, to take control of its environment, through individual and collective action. As can be seen, in that model language, as
the medium of symbolic capacity, certainly continues to represent a
key anthropological trait, but it is no longer the only or indeed the
primordial human-making feature. Instead, radical social dependency,
and more broadly, radical organic openness to social and material
environments, is the more fundamental anthropological marker, since
it is at the root of the human beings essential reliance on processes of
individualization through socialization. In Honneths recent words:
recognition enjoys both a genetic and a conceptual priority over
cognition.13
The change of social ontology and of its underlying anthropological
assumptions cannot fail to affect the critical diagnosis of the times.
Instead of an attack on the public sphere, the linguistically constituted
lifeworld, or the expressive and disclosive powers of language, pathologies of modern society are now viewed as pathologies of recognition.
Concretely, this designates forms of social interaction, usually materialised in the structures and practices of particular institutions, which
harm one of the fundamental normative expectations of socialized
subjects. These are, for example, denials of full civil responsibility,
Crucial in this respect is Honneths first book, written with Hans Joas: Social
Action and Human Nature, trans. R. Meyer, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1988.
13
Honneth, Reification. A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 2008, p. 40.
12
expressed in denials or restrictions of rights, which prevent individuals

and groups from considering themselves full-blown members of the
community; or negative or indeed invisibilising attitudes towards the
specific achievements of a group, which again, prevent the groups
members from enjoying full inclusion in society. Transformations in
contemporary capitalism can be critically interpreted from the viewpoint of the false promises of recognition made by new modes of management, or the sheer exclusion from necessary social goods resulting
from economic globalization.14
However, since the recognition model argues that the normative
basis of social life is also the condition for the full autonomy of individuals, or, as Honneth says, their self-realisation, the link between
social theory and social experience can be said to be more easily demonstrated than in previous models. Pathologies of recognition can be
shown to be both the products of unjust or unhealthy forms of social
interaction and their corresponding institutional realities, and to
directly affect subjects by obstructing or destroying some of the structural social conditions necessary for the development of their identity.
With this twist, Honneth thinks he has made it possible to reestablish the organic link that is supposed to be maintained within postHegelianism, between theoretical explanation, critique, and social
experience. The claims made by social movements, once the normative
validity of their claims has been extracted, can become the guidelinesof critical philosophy. They indicate what in a given state of society is seen by its members as intrinsically lacking from their own point
of view, and help understand what the basic moral expectations of
social members are. The decisive role of such expectations, and action
shaped by them, has been demonstrated most palpably, in Honneths
view, by historians of the labour movement such as E.P. Thompson.15
Conversely, philosophical reflection enriched by scholarship gathered
from the social sciences can help systematize and clarify the types of
norms appealed to by different struggles for recognition. In Honneths
mind, recognition thus helps to reconstruct the circle of theory and
practice once devised by the labour paradigm, which, for reasons we
have said, had become impractical and antiquated.
See in particular, Honneth, Recognition as Ideology, in eds. B. van den Brink
and D. Owen, Recognition and Power. Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social
Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 323348.
15
See E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, London, Gollancz,
1965.
14
14

From Hegel to Institutionalism
As we have already suggested, it is above all to Hegel that we owe both

the anthropological idea that the human life form as such is marked by
relationships of recognition, and the historical idea that the transition
to modernitythe present epochis marked by a specific differentiation in the relationships of recognition that bind societies together.
This differentiation is both the source of the grandeur of modernity
its freedomand its distinctive forms of misery. There are two places
where Hegel makes explicit the link he sees between recognition and
work: the so-called master-slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of
Spirit and the discussion of civil society in Philosophy of Right. If any
two texts have a claim to canonical status in the emerging recognition
paradigm, it is this pair. It is fitting, then, that following this Introduction
we move directly onto a detailed consideration of the master/slave dialectic in chapter two (by Paul Redding) and Hegels account of civil
society in chapter three (by Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch). Both
Redding and Schmidt am Busch offer new interpretations of Hegels
texts and in their different ways they both demonstrate the continuing
relevance of Hegel for understanding the modern world of work.
In proposing that relationships of recognition are constitutive of the
human life form, Hegel took himself to be expressing in a more precise
form Aristotles idea that human beings are rational animals. A central
concern of Paul Reddings essay is to spell out how Hegel forges this
link between rationality and recognition, and to bring into relief the
contrast between Hegels approach and mainstream naturalistic theories of mind and agency, with their roots in Hobbes and Hume.
According to the latter approach, which finds its way into orthodox
economic as well as much philosophical thought, rationality is the faculty human beings have for ordering ideas, beliefs, and desires, but it is
quite distinct from the faculty of desire itself. On this view, only the
faculty of appetite or desire has true motivational, causally effective
power, implying that the human will itself, insofar as it has such power,
is really of the nature of an appetite. But on the view Hegel develops
out of Aristotle and Kant, willing is not a question of causing an effect
but of giving form or shape to a certain kind of matter: by first identifying the matter of an appetite as mine and as something to be acted
upon, the willing subject gives it shape and the character of a potentially motivating force. In doing so, the subject finds itself not simply
in a causal chain of more or less efficacious appetites and behaviours,
butin a space of reasons or spirit in which the question of the rightness or appropriateness of its self-forming activity can always be asked.
This is also a social space in which subjects come to be themselves in
and through the recognition of others. It is by recognizing each other
as rational animalsanimals whose cognitive and intentional life is
shaped by and answerable to reasonsthat human beings become
rational animals in the full sense.
Redding reminds us that while this philosophical anthropology of
Hegels can fairly be called idealist, it is by no means immaterialist.
Self-defining subjects in Hegels sense are incarnated, material beings,
and recognize each other as such. But then neither is Hegels account
reductively materialist, since what we recognize in each otherasrational
animals is the form of our material embodiment. Redding then considers how Hegels recognitive materialism, as we might call it, at the level
of philosophical anthropology leads to a different kind of political theory than Hobbesian reductive materialism. Whereas in the Hobbesian
account political society emerges from the struggle over the power to
satisfy naturally given appetites, for Hegel politics has its origins in a
struggle over the norms or rules to which acts of will answer. According
to Reddings interpretation, the master/slave dialectic in the Phenom
enology of Spirit is Hegels outline of the first stages of this struggle. The
dialectic begins with all authority residing in the masters will. This
authority is embedded in institutions and social practices which allow,
for example, the master to give orders to the slave. The slave recognizes
the master by acting on these orders, which makes him appear as a
mere will-less instrument of the masters will. And yet in taking on
this role as instrument, the slave has to engage in rational practical
activity. To fulfill the command cook me a fish, the slave must first see
a particular objecta cookable fishand transform it from its raw
state. Redding points out that this forces the slave to engage in a practice of concept application, and thus a kind of inferential activity, that
enables the slave to reach a higher level of self-consciousness than the
master, who is stuck at the more primitive level of relating to objects
in terms of the simple sensuous qualities that make them suitable for
the satisfaction of simple immediately felt desires.
Thus it is by working, by turning the masters imperatives into a concrete reality, that the slave starts to get the edge over the master, at least
as far as the life of the mind is concerned. To be sure the slave still
works for the master, and has to suppress his own desires in the course
of it, but this very suppression or postponement of impulse also serves
16
to raise the slave further out of his merely natural state. The seeds of
self-destruction for the master-slave relation are thus sown. While the
slave recognizes himself in the masters recognition of him as a mere
instrument of will, in fulfilling this role through his labour the slave at
once negates this self-definition. Under the compulsion of work, the
slave learns to see things in conceptually articulated ways, to take distance from immediately given desires, and to recognize his own agency
in those material transformations that satisfy the masters will. Like
Gadamer and other illustrious interpreters of the Phenomenology
before him, Redding notes the crucial point here that the working
activity of the slave is at once a transformation of objects and a transformation of self: an acquiring of skills and dispositions that become
partly definitive of ones character and identity, and so an objective
source of ones sense of self. This triangulation of self, object and other
is thus both a presupposition of the master-slave relation (it is only
through the mediation of objects that the slave serves the masters purposes) and incompatible with it (because it undermines the will-less
status of the slave and the authoritative status of the master). The need
to keep this triangulation in view, both for an adequate philosophical
anthropology and a proper understanding of work, will be a recurrent
theme throughout the chapters of this book.
As Redding points out in the concluding section of his chapter, one
of the central lessons of the master/slave dialectic is the importance of
work in coming to recognize ourselves in something more than objects
of gratification or consumption (the unsustainable standpoint of the
master). Hegel saw that modern capitalist economies endangered this
condition both by removing restrictions on the sphere of consumptionand by organizing the sphere of work in a way that could make
it impossible for rational agents to recognize themselves there. How
ever, it was in the Philosophy of Right, not the Phenomenology, that
Hegel explicitly addressed these concerns about the potentially selfundermining effects of modern civil society. In chapter three, HansChristoph Schmidt am Busch offers an analysis of Hegels approach in
Philosophy of Right and puts it forward as a model for how a critical
theory of capitalism might proceed today.
Schmidt am Buschs interpretation focuses on the role played by the
notions of bourgeois honour, the corporation, and the quest for
profit and luxury in Hegels account of civil society. Bourgeois honour refers to something like the self-respect an individual derives from
being able to support himself and his family by participating in the
social process of production, that is, by contributing to the general

wealth. Bourgeois is perhaps an unfortunate term for this type of
honour, since it is as characteristic of the working class as the middle class (and of course women as well as men). The central point is
that, according to this ethos, an honorable life involves more than just
making a living: it means doing so by applying oneself to some socially
useful skill. There is dishonor, conversely, in merely providing for oneself without at the same time doing something useful for others. But an
honourable life, in this sense, cannot simply be left to individuals in the
labour market to secure. Institutions need to be in place that are
responsible for training people for socially useful work, for maintaining standards in trades and professions, for insuring workers in the
various trades and professions against risks to their livelihood, for protecting their interests relative to other professions, and so forth. Hegel
called such institutions corporations, though as Schmidt am Busch
remarks, this is another unfortunate and potentially misleading term
for the meaning Hegel intended to convey. Corporations, in Hegels
sense, are the socially necessary conditions of individual bourgeois
honour, since it is through them, as Schmidt am Busch puts it, that
individuals mutually secure their livelihoods through their work and
the maintenance of a social insurance system. And it is in the context
of membership of a corporation that not only bourgeois honour must
be understood, but also the quest for profit and luxury that characterizes civil society. On Schmidt am Buschs interpretation, Hegel considered there to be a limited range of variation in personal income and
levels of consumption within a corporate system. But outside it, a
compensatory striving for social recognitionin Schmidt am Buschs
provocative formulationcould give rise to unlimited personal profitseeking and an unbounded love of extravagance. Thus, for Hegel, far
from excessive individual wealth and conspicuous consumption being
the rightful material consequence of an honourable bourgeois life, they
reflect the absence of a material condition of bourgeois honour, namely
corporate membership in the sense given above.
In Hegels account, the opportunity to lead an honourable life
according to the principle of bourgeois honour, and to gain social recognition for this achievement through membership of a corporation,
are crucial to the ethical basis of civil society, and thus the legitimacy
of the modern market economy. Furthermore, the modern market
economy will only function properly, Hegel thought, if its ethical
basis, or condition of legitimacy, is met. Without an ethical basis,
18
civilsociety would fall apart. As Schmidt am Busch remarks, Hegels

commitment to this view puts him at odds with mainstream (neoclassical) economic thought, but not necessarily to his detriment.
Hegels conception of bourgeois honour, for example, resonates with
the significance many people attach to their working lives, which
hardly fits with the orthodox economic conception of work as merely
irksome activity that rational actors seek to minimize. Hegel also provides an intuitively plausible alternative to orthodox economic explanations of the pursuit of ever-higher personal incomes and levels of
consumption. For Hegel, this is not based on some natural desire for
more rather than less money (no matter what one earns), or for higher
rather than lower levels of personal consumption, in principle without
limit. Rather, as Schmidt am Busch explains, it is based on a historically specific set of social circumstances: social recognition of professional activity based on price against a background ethos of bourgeois
honour and only partially effective economic regulation. If, with the
support of empirical analysis, it can be shown that a striving for recognition does stand behind these phenomena, then a recognitiontheoretic approach in the Hegelian mould would not only pose a significant challenge to orthodox economic explanations: it would also
show that the recognition-theoretic turn in critical theory advanced by
Honneth has considerably more relevance for understanding capitalism and diagnosing its ills than critical theorists such as Nancy Fraser
maintain.
Schmidt am Busch notes in passing that whilst Honneths Hegelinspired recognition-theoretic approach to contemporary capitalism
is fundamentally at odds with neo-classical economic theories,
it does have affinities with heterodox, institutionalist economics.
In chapter four, Craig MacMillan examines the relationship between
Honneths theory of recognition and institutionalism in more detail.
As MacMillan shows, institutionalism (at least as conceived by its
founding figure, John R. Commons) and recognition theory (as conceived by Honneth) share basic methodological, epistemic, ontological
and normative commitments. At the methodological level, both are
committed to field research that aims to shed light on the phenomena by way of revealing how they are experienced. This means that,
at the epistemic level, phenomenological description plays a crucial
knowledge-building role. Both these commitments are opposed to
abstract, a priori models of theorizing that predominate in orthodoxeconomics, rational-choice social theory, and to a certain extent,
liberal (Kant-inspired) models of critical theory. At the ontological

level, institutionalism and Honnethian recognition theory are committed to both a certain form of holism (in which institutions and
social practices, and not just individual actors, have explanatory purport) and a certain form of normativism (according to which the norms
embedded in institutions and practices carry explanatory weight).
These commitments are to be contrasted with atomism (according to
which individuals are distinct and exclusive loci of agency), on the one
hand, and anti-normativism (according to which norms are merely
epiphenomenal, without explanatory or motivational purport) on the
other. Institutionalism and recognition theory thus seek to replace
the image of utility-optimising homo economicus with a conception
of the human subject as from the start relational (constituted by relations with others) and concerned by and oriented towards norms.
Furthermore, they share a normative commitment to forms of life that
have the social conditions in place for individual self-realisation in the
widest, most inclusive sense.
Having established the common ground between institutionalism
and recognition theory, MacMillan goes onto suggest areas in which
they might learn more from each other. The institutionalists stand to
gain from the more developed interactionist psychology elaborated by
Honneth, but perhaps more interestingly for our purposes, there are
lessons Honneth is invited to draw from institutionalist solutions to
the labour problem that Hegel and other recognition theorists
(amongst others) have grappled with. As we will consider in a little
more detail in a moment, Honneth now endorses the kind of response
sketched by Hegel and Durkheim to the persistence of unemployment,
poverty amongst workers, massive economic inequality, worker disempowerment, and the lack of availability of meaningful, dignified
work. The crux of the response is to avoid positing some post-capitalist
labour utopia in which work is a source of both enrichment and fulfillment, and to focus instead on the norms that are already in place in the
capitalist system, however inadequately from the point of view of
workers. The central norm Honneth picks up on is that of the fair and
free exchange: if labour is to be divided and distributed according to
market principles, then those engaged in it can legitimately expect to
enjoy mutual benefit from the exchange and to be able to determine for
themselves the terms of the exchange. Hegel and Durkheim realised
that institutions needed to be in place for these conditions to be at least
approximately met in the labour market. But Commons went a step
20
further by making concrete proposals about what these institutions

should look like. In particular, as MacMillan brings out clearly, these
institutions had to ensure equality of bargaining power between
employers and employees. Strong trade unions were thus required to
bargain on the market with big employers, and the act of collective
bargaining itself had to be institutionally endorsed in the law. Only in
such a way could the norms of fair and free exchange be met in the
market for labour. Later institutionalist economists have shown how
worker collectives can also help to secure meaningful, socially recognized work for their members, if also, in a market environment, at the
expense of the work experience of other groups.
Critique, Norm and Work
The question of the philosophical standpoint from which to examine
what Commons called the labour problemroughly speaking, the
limited availability of work and the chronic persistence of underrewarded, insecure, disempowered and spiritually stifling or alienating labouris central to Honneths essay Work and Recognition:
A Redefinition.16 As we just mentioned, Honneth rejects the wellintentioned but ultimately futile standpoint of the utopian critic, with
its appeals to substantive norms of freely associated, self-expressive,
non-alienated labour. Honneth argues that this standpoint has been
made obsolete by the actual historical development of the division of
labour and the market economy more generally. Within the capitalist
organization of labour we currently inhabit, it no longer seems reasonable to expect that work will have the self-directed, expressive, holistic character that, say, the pre-capitalist craftsman might once have
experienced it as having. For this reason, Honneth argues, social struggles over work no longer appeal to such a normative concept of work;
and neither, he suggests, should social critics. Rather than adopting the
external standpoint of the utopian critic, the philosopher/criticshould
engage in immanent critique that draws on internal moral norms
that already constitute rational claims within the social exchange of
services.17 In putting forward this view, Honneth takes himself to be
16
See Honneth, Work and Recognition: a Redefinition, in H. -C. Schmidt am
Busch and C. Zurn eds., op cit.
17
Ibid., p. 227.
correcting the overly ambitious (in the sense of merely utopian) project of grounding critical theory in a normatively substantive critical
conception of work that he had himself advanced in his earlier essay
Work and Instrumental Action.
According to Honneths new position, it is not the act of working
itself, but the exchange of services, that provides the normative surplus for historically effective, immanent critique of the capitalist
organization of work. Honneth takes the conceptual shape of such
criticism to have been laid out by Hegel and Durkheim. Honneth follows them in supposing that the market-mediated system of production and consumption, the exchange of goods and services that makes
up a modern economy, must have an ethical basis that gives it legitimacy in the eyes of the participants. As we have already seen, in undertaking an exchange, the participants at least tacitly commit to an act
that will be mutually beneficial: if they did not reasonably expect each
other to be contributing to each others good, there would be no
exchange. In other words, actual exchanges are premised on a conception of how they ought to be, even in cases where the norm and the
reality come apart. The norm is counterfactually presupposed, one
might say, in the practice, which itself has a normative surplus ready
to be drawn on for critique. Since the norm of reciprocal and mutual
benefit holds for the exchange of services as much as any other
exchange, in exchanging her labour for a wage, the wage labourer is
entitled to presume that she will be bringing some benefit to another
through the exchangeand so, however directly, helping to satisfy the
needs of othersthrough the activity that also allows her to meet her
own needs as an autonomous private citizen. The obligation to meet
ones private needs through the exchange of services comes with a corresponding right to participate in the social system of exchange, that is,
to earn a decent living on the basis of socially useful and recognized
work performed in the labour market. In this way, criticism of the capitalist organization of labour on the basis of it failing to provide either
a minimum wage or the opportunity to contribute in a recognizable
way to the common good, counts as genuinely immanent criticism
since it draws on the very norms that lend the modern labour market
its legitimacy.
Honneths essay raises a number of fundamental issues: What is the
content and the status of the norms that inform the contemporary
world of work (if, indeed, work is properly understood as a normshaped sphere at all)? What normative standpoint (or standpoints)
22
does well-directed criticism of contemporary work practices presuppose? How should the critique of work be understood as relating to
other forms of rationally grounded social criticism? These issues are
taken up in the chapters that follow by Emmanuel Renault, JeanPhilippe Deranty and Nicholas Smith. While Renault, Deranty, and
Smith are sympathetic to the recognition-theoretic approach to work
outlined by Honneth, and see themselves as building on it, they share
a concern that Honneths redefinition of the relation between work and
recognition unduly weakens the resources available for the criticism of
the modern organization of work, that it does so by restricting the content and scope of the norms that are applicable to work, and that it
does this by passing over the normative purport of working activity.
IfRenault, Deranty, and Smith are right, Honneth has been too quick
to abandon the critical conception of work announced in his early
essay Work and Instrumental Action. In their different ways, they
each argue that a retrieval of that conception will help keep the plurality of norms applicable to work in view, and that it will contribute to
the critical task of keeping the morally charged experience of working
people themselves in focus.
An important first step toward reaching this goal is to appreciate the
range of obstacles that lie in the way of it. Renault draws attention to a
number of these, arising on the one hand from developments in the
lifeworld, and on the other from the prevalence of political theories
that are ill-equipped for the task at hand. Regarding the former, Renault
notes the decline of the workers movement (and the corresponding
rise of neo-liberal, anti-regulation ideology) that has tended to mute
the public and political expression of concerns over work, and the persistence of long-term unemployment that has tended to choke the
social articulation of negative aspects of work (as people feel grateful
for having any secure work at all). These, and other factors identified
by Renault, contribute to the invisibility of work from the perspective
of the lifeworld; but this is matched and compounded by theoretical
perspectives that are blind to the political significance of work. Whereas
the critique of alienation, and with that the critique of alienating work,
was once a primary matter for political theory, nowadays democracy
and justice provide its basic, and in many cases exclusive, normative
orientation. With just one or two exceptions, theories of democracy
ignore problems of the organization of work and theories of justice
deal with work merely insofar as it is a matter of individual choice
and contractual obligation. Within this constellation, Renault argues,
the task of making work visible again from a political point of view has
become paramount.
Renault then spells out an agenda for meeting this challenge. The
first thing to be done is to develop a conception of work that is rich
enough to encompass all the different kinds of normative considerations that bear on work. The norms of justice and democracy certainly
have application here (feelings of injustice obviously arise from working activity and the skills of self-rule needed by citizens of a democracy
can hardly be divorced from the work they do), but the norms of
autonomy and health, Renault argues, are just as important. That is, the
moral and political rights and wrongs of work are partly a matter of the
autonomy it allows and its effect on the working persons health. Acritical conception of work, of the kind once proposed by Honneth, must
be encompassing and differentiated enough to show how work can fall
short in all of its measures. Renault is open to the possibility that these
measures could be theoretically unpacked in terms of recognition, at
least for work under the aspect of employment, but he warns against
the danger of normative reductionism this move threatens. One reason why the focus on recognition as proposed by Honneth might lead
to a normatively truncated conception of work, Renault suggests, is
that it deflects attention from the act of working and the norms that
bear on it. While in Renaults view there are norms of recognition that
apply to working activity, they are distinct from those that feature in
Honneths account, and they do not exhaust the normative content of
the act of working, which also has to do with the encounter with the
real. And finally, any adequate account of the political significance of
work must have something to say about the social relations of domination that permeate working activity. For this purpose, Renault suggests
that Christophe Dejours psychodynamic approach to work might
prove more fruitful than Honneths recognition theory.
The relative merits of Honneths and Dejours approaches to work,
and the possibility of bringing them together in a unified framework,
is explored in more detail in Derantys chapter. Like Renault, Deranty
wants to rehabilitate Honneths early critical conception of work, with
its focus on the normative content of working activity, by way of
Dejours psychodynamics of work. And he does so for the same reason
as that indicated by Renault: the normative presuppositions of the
labour market, and the recognition of achievement or social contribution, do not provide a substantial enough basis for the kind of thoroughgoing critique of work that is called for today. Deranty questions
24
the motivation behind Honneths move away from a critical conception of work (a conception that locates the normative content of work
in working activity itself rather than contribution to the division of
labour or participation in the labour market) on two counts. First, it is
based on a faulty assumption that the decline of craftsmanship as a
model of work means that the norms of autonomous expression and
cooperation no longer have application to modern working activity.
The mistake here, Deranty suggests, is to suppose that the norms of
expression and cooperation can only be interpreted maximally, that
is, as an ideal or perfect state of autarchic, communicatively coordinated (rather than market-mediated) production. This maximalist
conception ignores the possibility of a minimalist account that conceives autonomy and cooperation in work as minimal conditions of
healthy psychic functioning. Not only does Dejours provide us with
such a minimalist account, Deranty argues, but Honneth himself has
developed a general theory of norms as the intersubjective conditions
of self-realisation which is minimalist in a similar sense. The second
reason Deranty gives for thinking that Honneths abandonment of his
commitment to a critical conception of work is unwarranted is that it
is based on the unnecessary requirement that the normative content of
work be universalisable. While it is true that individual workers will
want different things from work, will take to some kinds of working
activity more than others, and will be able to cope in more or less satisfactory ways with suffering experienced at work, it is nevertheless
possible to identify thresholds beyond which restrictions of autonomy
and blocks on cooperation just cannot be psychically or physically tolerated. This, at any rate, is what Dejours clinical practice and research
seems to demonstrate.
Smith adds further arguments in his chapter for retaining something like the critical conception of work once advanced by Honneth.
He begins by reflecting on the criteria to be satisfied by a normative
model of work in a historical context marked by distinctive kinds of
social anxiety around work. He then distinguishes three normative
models of work on the basis of the core norms they posit as most apposite for normative criticism with practical or emancipatory intent: an
instrumental model that takes the core normativity of work to consist
in means-ends rationality; an expressive model in which the core
norms of work are conceived as expressions of values or meanings that
are internal to working practices themselves; and a recognition model
for which the norm of mutual recognition is decisive. Each model
admits of internal variation, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The expressive model in particular, Smith argues, has a range of
conceptual resources available to it which adherents of both the instrumentalist and recognition models have not sufficiently appreciated.
Furthermore, it is especially well-equipped to frame normative criticism of work in the context of the contemporary malaise around work,
an important element of which is anxiety concerning the quality of
work and its effect on the subjectivity of the worker.
The Subject at Work
In the third and fourth parts of the book, the question of contemporary work is approached from a psychological perspective, through the
psychodynamics of work; from a sociological perspective, through the
historical and qualitative sociology of work undertaken at the Institute
for Social Research in Frankfurt; and from what might be called a critical economic perspective, targeting some basic assumptions of orthodox economics that also find their way into mainstream liberal political
theory. In each case, the disciplinary focus produces results with broad
theoretical significance, which a contemporary philosophy of labour
must take into consideration and include in its analysis.
In From the Psychopathology to the Psychodynamics Of Work,
Christophe Dejours presents a brief historical reconstruction and synthesis of the main traits characterising the method of clinical intervention in workplaces he has developed over the last thirty years with his
collaborators at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Mtiers in
Paris.18 Dejours primary interest is practical and clinical, the analysis
of individual and organisational issues arising in real workplaces, and
the ways to resolve them in consultation with workers and management. One might wonder how to reconcile this practically oriented
mode of analysing work with the different modes and aims of philosophy and the theoretical social sciences. In fact, the psychodynamics of
work has much to offer for a renewal of philosophical and general
social-scientific reflection on issues of work and labour. It is as though
18
Other texts by Dejours that can be found in English are: Subjectivity, Work, and
Action, in eds. J.-P. Deranty et al. Recognition, Work, Politics: New Directions in French
Critical Theory, Leiden, Brill, 2007, pp. 7187; and The Centrality of Work, Critical
Horizons, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2010, pp. 167180.
26
the psychodynamics of work, which matured thanks to a many-sided

opening of clinical practice onto theoretical disciplines, has developed
such a rich and detailed analysis of work that it is now in a position to
pay back its theoretical indebtedness, as it presents a number of propositions that significantly renew the general reflection on work, its
impact on subjects, its role in modern society and therefore the place it
should have in contemporary politics.19
The psychodynamics of work arose out of dissatisfaction with the
main premises underpinning the psychopathology of work that
developed in France in the 1950s in response to pathologies of Fordist
work.20 Two key orientations of the emerging psychopathology of work
in particular became problematic. Their questioning led to the theoretical reversal out of which grew the new discipline.
The first key question arose as a result of a fundamental discovery
made by ergonomic research: that there is always a gap between the
prescribed aspects of the working activity, the way the engineers and
managers define the task (in terms of procedures and outputs), and the
reality of the activity. Real work, even the apparently most mechanical
or simple kind of work, always involves some creative intervention by
the worker, simply because it is impossible for the organisation of work
to foresee and pre-empt all the obstacles that get in the way of the realisation of the task. The reality of work, as a result, resides in the bridging of this gap. The irreducible kernel of all work, underneath and
indeed before all its other possible dimensions, is working, that is, the
bodily and intelligent (problem-solving) engagement by a human subject in the realisation of a productive task.
A second key challenge derived directly from this discovery. The
insistence on the workers subjective engagement in the task, as the
fundamental condition of any productive work, entails a rejection of
approaches that reduce work to one of its dimensions, notably its
objective dimension (the organisation of work) or its systemic dimension (the social division of labour). Historically, this was the main reason for Dejours departure from a psychopathological approach which
overemphasised the rigidity of Taylorian work and defined its research
programme as the search for the symptoms of work-related mental
19
See J. -P. Deranty, Work and the precarisation of existence, European Journal of
Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2008, pp. 443463.
20
The key reference here is Louis Le Guillant, Quelle psychiatrie pour notre temps?,
Toulouse, Eres, 1984.
illness. More broadly, the focus on subjective experience and workers

practical, creative engagement also meant a rejection of ergonomic
approaches defining the human factor only in negative terms or
organisational theories insisting only on power relations. This hermeneutic approach to work clearly echoes other approaches in other areas
of the social sciences. As Dejours himself notes, the focus on the subjective moment of work strongly evokes the basic methodological
impetus of interpretive sociological theories. In recent years, another
theoretical ally was discovered in Honneths ethics of recognition,
which is also characterised by its commitment to maintaining the
importance of the experiential dimension in the analysis of social
phenomena. These overlaps show the plausibility of, and indicate productive avenues for, sustained reciprocal dialogue between the psychodynamics of work, whose initial object is at first specific (individual
working experience and organisational malfunctions), and other
approaches in philosophy and the social sciences whose objects are
more broadly defined (theories of action, theories of the social, theories of embodied cognition, and so on).
The psychodynamics of work thus developed as an original discipline which aimed to circumvent the abstractions of other social and
human sciences in their study of work. A thick model of the subject,
constructed notably by borrowing and adapting key insights from
Freuds metapsychology, helps to substantiate and articulate the thesis
of an intimate link between subjective identity and working activity.
On the other side, the objective, technical and pragmatic moments
of work are upheld, notably through important borrowings from
ergonomics and the history and theory of techniques. The result is a
highly original and richly delineated model of work, which establishes,
against the general disdain for this object in contemporary research,
the central place of work for subjective identity, in the life of contemporary societies, and consequently in politics. Today the psychodynamics of work provides a unique, indispensable reference to renew
in a sustained way the study of labour, between philosophy and the
social sciences. At a simple level, there is much to be learnt from
the key notions and arguments it has elaborated: the deep roots work
throws into subjective identity, shaping the individuals intelligence
and relationships to others; the deontic underpinnings of cooperation;
the specificity and multidimensionality of recognition in work, and so
on. On a different level, though, the question arises whether the conclusions reached in the study of work do not in fact entail more general
28
lessons: the methodological primacy of experience; the difficulties in

gaining access to the reality of social experience, and the necessity to
define the real negatively, as a challenge to constituted knowledge; the
complexity of the mediations linking individual to social experience;
the affective and bodily roots of rationality; the capacity of well functioning work collectives to present an image of democratic communication and to cultivate democratic capacities; the hidden political
centrality of work; and so on.
Within this now well established paradigm, Pascale Moliniers
research has thrown open a number of important new directions. She
explores the ways in which the psychodynamics of work is to be refined
and extended by integrating the key dimensions of gender identity and
gender relations.21 In the paper published here, Molinier shows how
the conceptualisation of care is transformed once it is approached from
a psychodynamic perspective. Her empirical work with nurses and
assistant nurses challenges many of the assumptions about care, and
makes a number of theoretical propositions with general significance.
By taking as a fundamental starting point the subject facing a
material task, the psychodynamic approach unpacks three interrelatedaspects generally overlooked by other forms of analysis: the way
subjectivity is challenged in its very identity; the material ways to
resolve the task; and the cooperation with others necessary to do so.
All work, the psychodynamics of work argues, involves work upon
oneself, in the world, and with others. As soon as these three interrelated dimensions are unveiled in care work, many assumptions about it
have to be revised.
First, care appears as a form of work in the strict sense of the term.
That is, all the technical, skill-based aspects of the activities involved in
care suddenly appear as primordial elements. In other words, the person providing care must be assumed to mobilise the same kind of
involved intelligence as in other forms of work. As Molinier writes,
care defines jointly certain activities and the intelligence that is mobilised in their accomplishment. This first point, that care is a form of
work, entails, however, significant transformations in the basic understanding of the concept. Most importantly, the redefinition of care as
care work immediately dispels naturalizing definitions that anchor it
21
See Molinier, L nigme de la femme active. Egoisme, sexe et compassion, Paris,
Payot, 2001; Les enjeux psychiques du travail. Introduction la psychodynamique du
travail, Paris, Payot, 2008.
in affective capacities that would be inherent in one of the two sexes.

Observing the work of nurses, one sees all the subjective work, the
technical know-how and the effort of cooperation that must be put in
for proper care to be provided.
Such observation, however, also shows the reasons why care work is
mostly invisible, indeed why care is mostly not considered a form of
work, for which the providers ought to receive symbolic and material
reward. Molinier distinguishes four main reasons inherent in the work
of care that explain its invisibility. Given the importance of issues of
care in contemporary social and political philosophy, this renewed
approach to care is highly significant. Furthermore Moliniers analysis
seems to offer further support for the claim that the psychodynamic
analysis in fact uncovers features of subjectivity and social life that
have significance well beyond its initial, narrow focus.
The first reason for the invisibility of care work, Molinier argues, is
that it becomes apparent only when it is not well performed. One could
object that this is true of most work. In a famous passage in Being and
Time, Heidegger had already drawn attention to the fact that the working tool appears as such only when it no longer functions.22 The same
could also be said of the performance of work. What distinguishes care
work from other work in this respect becomes apparent once we shift
the focus to the engagement of the worker in the work tasks. Care work
involves not just the use of the proper technical know-how but also, on
top of it, the second-order skills, as we might call them, that make the
first-order use of skills inconspicuous or discreet: to perform a task
of care well is not only to perform the task but also to efface the traces
of effort and endeavour that led to that performance. Care that is too
obviously performed as work fails to be received and count as care. It is
in this precise sense that the affective and skill-based dimensions of
care are intimately linked.
As the inconspicuousness of the skills involved in care represent
an inherent obstacle to the full recognition of their technical nature
and difficulty, it also directly impacts on the recognition of the persons
involved in these tasks. The tendency to think of care work in naturalized terms, that is, as professions and tasks reserved for women because
of alleged natural feminine abilities, stems not just from general
cultural (and ideological) representations, but also from a difficulty
Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Oxford, Blackwell, 1962.
22
30
present in the tasks of care themselves. The discreetness demanded by

care does care workers a disservice, we might say. Inconspicuous skills
are not perceived and represented spontaneously in terms of competence but in terms of female qualities.
Another dimension of care work contributing to its invisibility
relates to the very object that care work touches, namely the raw, bodily vulnerability of the other. Care work puts the working subject face
to face with sexuality, the body in all its manifestations, sickness and
death, and this both from an objective perspective (the others body,
sexuality, sickness and death), and a subjective perspective (ones own
body and sexuality). One must therefore speak here of a taboo in the
precise sense of the term, to characterize that aspect of care work that
is difficult, if not impossible, to speak of publicly, let alone have socially
recognized. Care work is inconspicuous also because it touches too
many unsavoury aspects in everyone for it to be fully acknowledged.
The ways in which the nurses deal with this specific difficulty of their
work teach great lessons about the importance of the working collective both for the well-being of each individual worker and the very
effectiveness of work. Through discursive techniques (constant collective narrativisation, humour, self-deprecation, discreet revelation, and
so on), the most difficult aspects of the job can be symbolized and
brought under some degree of control.
By contrast, other defence strategies compound the invisibility of
care work. These are defence strategies articulated around virile values, which can be defined precisely as the rejection and repression of
vulnerability and dependence. Such virile collective defence strategies
have been well identified by Dejours in other difficult professions, such
as the building and chemical industries.23 The defining importance of
vulnerability in these diametrically opposed coping strategies means
that care is not just one type of work amongst others. Care workers, by
facing directly the challenge of bodily vulnerability and twisted
embodiment (human sexuality), deal with an aspect of humanity that
is constitutive, in the precise sense that it is constitutively difficult to
assume. Consequently, the invisibility that their work suffers points to
very general features of individual and social life. It is a universally
observable feature of human societies that the hierarchy established
amongst social functions (from the slaves to the priests and king)
23
See C. Dejours, Travail, usure mentale. Essai de psychopathologie du travail, Paris,
Bayard, 2008 (4th edition).
directly parallels the level of engagement with materiality, where bodily materiality is usually the lowest level. The study of care work reveals
aspects of human agency and work that have broad anthropological
value. In terms of contemporary politics, this means that debates
around hospital reform, the status of nursing professions, the medical
world, are not just issues concerning a few sectors amongst others in
society, but reveal something very general about society as a whole,
namely, as Molinier puts it, about the implicit civilisational underpinning of contemporary social orders. We might say that social orders
can be characterized in terms of the ways in which they organize and
recognize care work, that is, both the necessity of care and the work
involved in it.
Work and the Changing Face of Capitalism
The psychodynamics of work emphasises the importance of the
moment where the individual agent faces the difficulty of realising the
material task. Recognition takes on a specific meaning when it is
attached to the concrete realization of the task, within a culture of work
and a work collective.
Another strand of contemporary research has drawn attention to
another aspect of contemporary work, and the central significance of
demands of recognition in relation to it. Combining a historical perspective, qualitative methods of inquiry and a philosophically informed
model of socialization, sociologists of work at the Frankfurt Institute
for Social Research have investigated transformations in the cultural
and normative representations surrounding work in the wake of the
great shift in economic structures witnessed in the last decades. How
have expectations of recognition by workers, and the corresponding
demands put on them, evolved with the transformation of capitalist
societies in recent decades, and more specifically the rise of postFordist and post-Taylorian models of economic and work organisation? This is the question they have sought to answer in their recent
work, in close connection to Axel Honneths own philosophical
reflections.24
24
See in particular the essays collected in the volume edited by A. Honneth,
Befreiung aus der Mndigkeit, Frankfurt/M., Campus, 2002, which documents the key
directions of this research programme, and in which the essay by Voswinkel translated
here first appeared in German.
32
Part four of the book contains two exemplary cases of this kind of
philosophically informed sociological inquiry, from two of the leading
sociologists in the Frankfurt School mould: Stephan Voswinkel and
Gabriele Wagner.25 In his contribution, Voswinkel brings out the tensions lodged at the heart of the recognition models underpinning the
previous (Fordist) and current (post-Fordist) modes of economic
organisation. The Fordist model, he argues, continued to rely on values
and norms of the old work ethic. Accordingly, ones social recognition
derives from ones work. If we look at it carefully, however, the link
between recognition and work was not as straightforward as it seemed.
It was not the work itself which provided recognition, but rather the
wealth, power or social position attached to it. As a result, those forms
of work that were low on the social scale provided only minimal or no
recognition, even though the individuals engaged in it would have
been doing a lot of work, notably those engaged in dirty work. As a
result, as Voswinkel sums up, in this older regime recognition must be
based on work but only some types of work find recognition. This
explains the shape of many struggles for recognition during the Fordist
era: many struggles for recognition were triggered by dissensions over
the evaluation of particular work activities, to claim higher material
and symbolic value for them.
One key feature of the social logic underpinning recognition, however, provided a powerful avenue for positive valuation for workers
involved in forms of work without prestige, that is, for the majority of
them. As Voswinkel shows, in reference to Mead, the concept of recognition itself is ambivalent: on the one hand, recognition, as a condition
of subjective identity, provides the basis for individual self-realisation,
or what we could call subjective creativity, the possibility to shape ones
own self. On the other hand, this makes subjective identity structurally
reliant upon social expectations and norms. By making subjective creativity possible, recognition also imposes boundaries on it. This tension delivers two interrelated yet separate meanings of recognition:
inasmuch as it is based on the fulfillment of social expectations by the
individual, recognition is in the form of appreciation. Recognition here
arises within social exchange and reciprocity: the self is socially recompensed for engaging in an exchange of service and counter-service to
25
Other key contributors to this research program include Kai Drge, Ursula
Holtgrewe, Hermann Kocyba and Sighard Neckel. It is a matter of much regret that we
have not been able to include work by these authors in this volume as well.
others (Leistung/Gegenleistung). But recognition awarded to the creativity of the subject, that is, his or her ability to stand out in his or her
singularity, is in the form of admiration, and is no longer tied, by definition, to social reciprocity. The self is recompensed precisely for its
ability to stand out, to win the social competition, in one way or
another. By contrast, for the majority of workers in the old Fordist
model, engaged in forms of work that remained Taylorian in their
operation, recognition in the shape of appreciation could offer strong
rewards for the sacrifices demanded by the work ethic. Indeed, a significant part of the rights and institutions set up during that time, both
within firms (different forms of leave and benefits) and in the broader
social-political context (the different institutions of welfare), could be
interpreted as institutionalisations of appreciation.
With the massive upheavals that have shaken the internal organization of firms and the broader social-economic contexts since the crisis
of Fordism in the late 1970s, recognition as appreciation and the institutions and rights that entrenched it, have come under increasing pressure. In the German sociology of work, an important article by Baethge
in 1991, which outlined the most salient features of the new world of
work and labour, offered key indications for much of the subsequent
sociological research in this area.26 Like the previous one, the postFordist work ethic contains its own ambivalence, well captured by the
central motto of the subjectivisation of work. On the one hand, the
subjectivisation of work denotes the rejection of Taylorian alienation,
the demand by workers to be able to realise themselves in work. On the
other hand, though, this normative demand has also become, in new
management methods and work organizations, a prescription to which
workers have to conform: increasingly, the self of the worker is to identify with the work, the firm, the brand; subjective capacities become
the new source of productivity; individuals are to assume increased
responsibility for the economic viability and profitability of their activity within the firm; and so on.
What happens to recognition in this new context? Because the
normative ideal has become that of subjective self-expression and
self-realisation, the old ethic of self-sacrifice, of doing ones job for
the others (the company or society) no longer holds much value.
26
M. Baethge, Arbeit, Vergesellschaftung, Identitt - Zur zunehmenden normativen Subjektivierung der Arbeit, Soziale Welt, Vol. 42, No. 1, 1991, pp. 619.
34
Recognition as appreciation is significantly undermined. This is

reflected in the demise, both material and symbolic, of the institutions
of the welfare state, but also, at the subjective level, in the difficulty of
getting recognition for the everyday, normal jobs one does. Instead
of mere appreciation, recognition as admiration becomes the prevalent
mode, one that inevitably brings its own tensions. Voswinkel highlights a number of these paradoxical traits of the new mode of recognition through work. In particular, since recognition is now owed not
just to service, but outstanding service, success and the measure of
success become paramount features of the new model. This leads to a
culture of constant evaluation and self-presentation, which can develop
obvious pathological traits. The qualitative sociology of work is thus in
a position to point to social and psychological effects of recognition
that far extend the world of work. It also helps to understand new
forms of the struggle for recognition, as recognition has changed its
meaning. Two particularly significant such forms are those of exit
and voice: the retreat outside of the mainstream economic structure;
or the attempt to assert an original interpretation of ones own
activity.
Gabriele Wagners study develops along the same lines as Voswinkels.
Her specific focus concerns the subjective impact of new structures of
work upon workers and the scope for autonomous interpretations of
work norms in the new firm environments. This concern with the subjective dimension within the world of economic organization, however, is maintained for the purpose of sociological inquiry. One of the
key aims of Wagners essay is to make a substantial point of social theory. She seeks to show, through the qualitative analysis of an empirical
case, that it is crucial to include the subjective perspective as one of the
important structural factors explaining social change, in this case,
organizational change. The point is to show that systemic constraints
(notably changes in the structure of markets) do not produce forms of
social integration and frames for the formation of subjective identity in
any direct and straightforward way. Between system integration and
social integration, there comes the whole layer of subjects interpretations of, and attempt at negotiation around, the basic norms, values
and principles underpinning organizational structures. In particular,
reciprocal expectations, their negotiations and interpretations,
between employer and employees regulate the world of the firm. These
expectations can be described in the form of a specific order of recognition. As Wagner writes, recognition relationships are an essential
hinge between system and social integration and are likewise a central
component of the companys social order.
Borrowing from Voswinkel the key distinction between recognition
as appreciation and recognition as admiration, Wagner unveils,
through the example of two middle-management workers in a chemical company, the pitfalls of recognition demands that result from the
demise of the old order and the introduction of new forms of organization. The destabilizing experiences of disqualification and disempowerment made by the two individuals interviewed, both of whom used
to be successful researchers and team leaders, reveal salient features of
the new world of work. Their company has undergone a typical organizational change: significant staff cuts; devolution of financial responsibility to all units in the firm; competition between units; systematic
orientation to financial results as the measure of success; market logic
applied to all activities, including scientific research; full submission to
the client and the shareholder. In this new set up, recognition only goes
to economic performance. This entails that the duties of care and loyalty associated with reciprocal expectations in the old recognitive
regime have gone by the way side.
For the two employees, this mode of operation creates hitherto
unknown difficulties to adapt subjectively to the demands of work. The
marketisation process in the firms internal functioning and the subjectivisation of work create traps of recognition. On the one hand, the
strict orientation to market acceptance as the sole criterion for success,
the use of outsourced services, and the increased demand put on workers to become responsible for more aspects of the work process, disqualifies an older form of recognition as admiration, which was
based on expertise. Reputation established over time and underpinned
by the acknowledgement of competence becomes meaningless when
the only criterion that matters is economic performance. Expertise is
diluted and can be outsourced. Indeed, in this particular example, scientific competence gets in the way of recognition as it tends to make
the economic logic compete and in some instances give way to other
standards. Crucially, the definition of quality work differs greatly
depending on which perspective is favoured, the economic or the
scientific one. One way to deal with the withdrawal of the old style of
recognition is for the workers to appeal to the other form of recognition, appreciation. This is an interesting twist of the new recognition
regime, that workers who previously would have appealed to theirright
for admiration suddenly demand to be recognised for their sacrifice
36
and loyalty, that is, demand appreciation. The first trap of recognition
in the current regime is the difficulty to justify a claim for recognition
as admiration, whilst the basis for recognition as appreciation has
collapsed.
On the other hand, the search for admiration which these two workers cannot abandon contains its own trap. A great imbalance is opened
between on the one hand the lack of control of the workers over the
conditions ensuring market success, and on the other the total responsibility for success that is put on them. In the previous order, when
success was not defined solely in commercial terms, the gap was not so
great. Most importantly, expertise could prove itself in quality work
and by reference to professional standards defined by a specific work
culture. But market success is out of the hands of the competent.
According to Wagner, this great gap between control and responsibility largely explains the absence of a struggle for recognition. The workers keen on recognition as admiration cannot run the risk of questioning
the rules of the game: this would be direct evidence against their
deservedness. A kind of voluntary servitude results in which they
adapt themselves to rules and norms that take control and recognition
away from them.
The chapters by Voswinkel and Wagner provide insight into the
ways in which recent mutations of capitalism have altered the experience of work and the social bonds that develop in and through that
experience. They concern the world of work as it is, illuminated by
contrast to the way it was. They are not, directly at least, concerned
with the justification of the transition from one mode of capitalism to
another, or with how the changing meaning of work could feature in
such justifications. This issue is, however, taken up in the final two
chapters of the book, where the ethical significance of work, understood as its role in constituting a good life, is reasserted as an apt object
of practical, public reasoning in face of the denials of neo-classical economics and liberal political theory.
As Dale Tweedie points out in his chapter, it is hard to make sense of
the idea that the act of working may be a constitutive feature of a flourishing lifethe kind of life people ought to have a chance to leadso
long as work is conceived as sheer disutility or a mere opportunity
cost: that is, as something to be avoided (all things being equal).
Yet this is how work typically is modeled in orthodox economic analysis. Furthermore, the ethically destructive consequences of working
the damage it can do to the life of a worker beyond the brute pain of
exertion or the cost of missed leisure opportunityis also hidden from

view in mainstream economic modeling. Tweedie draws attention to
various motivations behind the thin, ethically neutral conception of
work at play in these models, such as their alleged scientific objectivity
and their indifference to the unknowable world of inner experience
and the value individuals subjectively attach to their work. However,
this phenomenologically and ethically pared down conception is
obtained at a high price: blindness to the ways in which the quality of
work, the satisfactions it brings and the sufferings it causes, feed back
into the sphere of economic analysis. We need substantive conceptionsof work of the kind developed by Dejours and Richard Sennett,
Tweedie argues, to appreciate the economic consequences of the
changing nature of working activity and the ethical validity of the economic policies behind those changes. Furthermore, this is an insight
not completely lost on the orthodox economic tradition. If contemporary neo-classical economists were to go back to one of the founders of
their discipline, Alfred Marshall, they would find the germ of a substantive conception of work whichnot unlike the conceptions
advanced by Dejours and Sennettemphasizes the importance of the
activity of working in the development of human capacities and the
role of such development in a flourishing human life.
The thrust of Tweedies argument, then, is to save orthodox economic theory from itself by retrieving an ethically substantive notion
of work. Russell Keat follows a similar strategy in regard to liberal
political theory. Liberalism is rightly committed to the promotion of
individual liberty by enforcing basic rights, rejecting paternalism and
enabling individuals to pursue their own conception of the good. But
in addition to their commitment to these sound political principles,
liberals typically endorse a principle of state neutrality, which puts a
prohibition on state action guided by any conception of the good. On
this influential view, a legitimate liberal state is neutral in relation to
conceptions of the good and must exclude them from its practical
deliberations. Like many communitarian critics of liberalism, Keat
wants to reject this principle of state neutrality without throwing out
the liberal commitment to individual liberty. In this way he follows a
familiar strategy for saving liberalism from itself. But the reasons he
gives for rejecting the principle of state neutrality are new and bear
directly on our theme: the inescapably ethical character of the sphereof
production and of the nature of the choice between economic policies
that favour one mode of production or work organization over another.
38
Following Peter Hall and David Soskice, Keat begins by distinguishing two models of capitalism that do in fact represent real alternatives
for organizing the world of work and shaping economic policy. These
are the Liberal market economies, with their impatient pattern of
share ownership, top-down mode of internal governance, and competitive inter-firm relationships, in contrast to Coordinated market
economies, with their patient capital, more consensual styles of management, and cooperative relationships between firms. Keat then
draws attention to the ethical differences between these forms of market economy. That is, they make it possible, or easier, for individuals to
realise certain conceptions of the good through their work, and they
make it impossible, or more difficult, for individuals to realise other
conceptions. As examples, Keat mentions the intrinsic satisfaction that
comes from skillful, autonomous working activity. This good, as well
as the goods of developing industry specific skills and engaging in collaborative relations with workers in other firms, are easier for individuals to realise in Coordinated market economies than in Liberal ones.
The Coordinated economies also make it easier for individuals to realise a conception of the good in which they are able to develop trade- or
industry-specific skills and their recognition by ones peers. The Liberal
market economies, by contrast, make it easier for individuals to measure the success of their careers, and the goods they realised through
them, in financial terms. Another telling example is relationships of
trust: the institutional arrangements of the Liberal market economies
make it harder for individuals to realise this good in their work, and
for this reason individuals whose conception of the good includes the
enjoyment of such relationships are institutionally disadvantaged by
them.
Such considerations support Keats thesis that market economies are
by no means neutral with respect to the good: they favour the realisation of some conceptions of the good through working activity and
disfavour others. Since the institutional shape of a market economy is
in part determined by a states laws and policies, the deliberations by
which a state arrives at those laws and policies are not neutral with
respect to the good either. Of course this conclusion does not tell us
which conception of the good a given state should favour. But by dispelling the myth of state neutrality, it invites us to think again about
the ethical significance of work and to develop a conception of working activity that is commensurate with this challenge.
PART ONE
FROM HEGEL TO INSTITUTIONALISM
Chapter two
The Role of Work within the Processes

of Recognition in Hegels Idealism
Paul Redding
Introduction
Prior to Kojves well-known account in his Introduction to the Reading
of Hegel there seems to have been relatively little interest in Hegels
concept of recognition;1 after Kojve, however, a popular view of
Hegels philosophy emerged within which the idea of recognition
played a central role.2 While Kojve directed attention to the importance of Hegels use of the notion of recognition in the famous dialectic
of master and slave in chapter 4 of the Phenomenology of Spirit,3 his
reading, inspired equally by Marx and Heidegger, was nevertheless difficult to reconcile not only with the more systematic features of Hegels
philosophy, but also with what Hegel had to say on the topic of recognition within chapter 4, but especially, elsewhere in the Phenomenology.4
Since the 1970s, another picture of the way in which the notion of
recognition plays a role in Hegels thought has emerged, emanating
1
A. Kojve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. James H. Nichols Jr, Ithaca,
Cornell University Press, 1969. Kojves account was originally given in his lectures on
Hegel in Paris in the 1930s, the subsequent popularity of his account owing much to
the transmission of his views by authors such as Sartre and Lacan.
2
What distinguishes us as self-conscious beings from the rest of nature is that we
are driven by a peculiar type of desire, the desire for recognition leading to struggles
over recognition.
3
G. W. F. Hegel, Phnomenologie des Geistes (Werke in zwanzig Bnden), ed.
E. Moldenhauer and K.M. Michel, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, vol 3, 1969; English translation by A. V. Miller Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford, Oxford University Press,
1977.
4
For early criticisms see G. A. Kelly, Notes on Hegels Lordship and Bondage,
Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 19, no. 4, 1966, pp. 189217; and H.-G. Gadamer, Hegels
Dialectic of Self-Consciousness, in Hegels Dialectic: Five Hermeneutic Studies, trans.
by P. Christopher Smith, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976, p. 62 n7. More
recently, Robert R. Williams has pointed to the distortions of recognition in the postKojvean standard interpretation in Hegels Ethics of Recognition, Berkeley, University
of California Press, 1997, pp. 1013.
42
paul redding
from the work of Jrgen Habermas, and developed more recently by

Axel Honneth.5 Here attention was directed to the earlier Jena manuscripts in which Hegel had reworked the notion of recognition from
Fichtes theory of rights into a complex theory of the intersubjective
conditions for the formation of the human subject. But while Hegels
sketches there had promised a new and genuinely post-metaphysical
way of thinking about human existence, this line of thought, it was
claimed, had been aborted, or at least compromised, by the time of the
Phenomenology of Spirit. In that work, the concept of recognition was
reduced to the single function of its role in the constitution of selfknowledge, and this represented a regress in Hegels thought, away
from a promising intersubjective or dialogical approach to subjectivity
to a more monologic or consciousness-centred and, ultimately, preKantian metaphysical one.6
Finally, since about the late 1980s, yet a third picture of Hegel has
emerged in which recognition plays an important role. Interpreters
advancing this view commonly reject the traditional metaphysical
interpretation of the mature Hegel and regard Hegels generally recognitive approach to spirit as being central to his success in avoiding
such pre-Kantian metaphysics. They thus tend to see greater continuity within Hegels use of the theme of recognition throughout his
work than had proponents of the second approach. Different versions
of this third view of Hegel can be discerned in the writings of Robert
Pippin, Terry Pinkard, H. S. Harris, and Robert Williams.7 Elsewhere,
5
J. Habermas Arbeit und Interaktion. Bemerkungen zu Hegels Jenenser
Philosophie des Geistes, first published in eds. H. Braun and M. Riedel, Natur und
Geschichte. Karl Lwith zum 70. Geburtstag, Stuttgart, 1967 trans. as Labor and
Interaction: Remarks on Hegels Jena Philosophy of Mind, in Theory and Practice,
trans. J. Viertel, Boston, Beacon Press, 1974, pp. 142169; A. Honneth, Kampf um
Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte, Frankfurt/M, Suhrkamp,
1994, trans. by J. Anderson as The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of
Social Conflicts, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1996.
6
Habermas, Labor and Interaction, p. 162. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition,
p. 62. Honneths summation here indicates how much this view incorporates the
Kojvean reading of the Phenomenology (pp. 6263): The Phenomenology of Spirit
allots to the struggle for recognitiononce the moral force that drove the process of
Spirits socialization through each of its stagesthe sole function of the formation
of self-consciousness. Thus reduced to the single meaning represented in the dialectic
of lordship and bondage, the struggle between subjects fighting for recognition then
comes to be linked so closely to the experience of the practical acknowledgement of
ones labour that its own particular logic disappears almost entirely from view.
7
See R. Pippins comprehensive, Hegels Idealism: The Satisfactions of SelfConsciousness, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, and, more specifically,
processes of recognition in hegels idealism43
I too have attempted to sketch a picture of Hegel which has these general features.8 In this chapter I want to revisit some of the classic themes
of the masterslave dialectic in order to bring to the fore aspects of
Hegels recognitive treatment of work that may still be significant for us
today. More generally, however, I will also suggest that Hegels treatment of work enables us to avoid misunderstandings about the nature
of his idealism. From his account of work in the masterslave dialectic
we can see that far from being an immaterialist doctrine, Hegels idealism is premised on a radically embodied conception of the mind and
its capacities.
The Struggle for Recognition
In Chapter 4 of the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel sketches a scenario
in which a simple model of political life between a master and his slave
results from a struggle that is in some sense over recognition. The most
obvious comparison here is perhaps Hobbes equally mythical vision
of the establishment of political society from a state of original struggle
through the institution of the social contract, and here it might be
helpful to view Hegels myth as a type of post-Kantian transformation
of Hobbes one. The Hobbesian side of the story is the move that initiates a central theme of modern political philosophy: it is the claim that
the normative basis of human society is to be found not in the will of a
on the theme of recognition in Hegel, What is the Question for which Hegels Theory
of Recognition is the Answer? European Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 8, no. 2, 2000,
pp. 15572; and T. Pinkards Hegels Phenomenology, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1994 and German Philosophy 17601860: The Legacy of Idealism, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2002. While having many internal differences to the
Hegel of Pippin and Pinkard, I would count Henry S. Harris account of Hegel as sharing these general features. See his Hegels Development: Toward the Sunlight 17701801,
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972; The Concept of Recognition in Hegels Jena
Manuscripts, Hegel-Studien Vol. 20, 1977, pp. 229248; Hegels Development II: Night
Thoughts (Jena 18016), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983; and Hegels Ladder:
The Pilgrimage of Reason, 2 vols, Indianapolis, Hackett, 1997. Robert R. Williams, in
Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, Albany, State University of New York Press,
1992; and Hegels Ethics of Recognition, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997
extends the work of L. Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie:
Untersuchungen zu Hegels Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes, Freiburg, Alber Verlag, 1979
to give a comprehensive ethically focused account linking Hegels early work to his
mature Philosophy of Right. A. Wood, in Hegels Ethical Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1990, also stresses the role of recognition in Hegels ethics, although
disassociates it from Hegels more systematic thought.
8
In Hegels Hermeneutics, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996.
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paul redding
transcendent divine being, but rather in the human will. As Hegel puts
it in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hobbes had sought to
derive the bond which holds the state together, that which gives
the state its power, not from holy scripture or positive law, but from
principles which lie within us, which we recognize as our own.9 The
Kantian side of Hegels model is that this human will cannot be conceived naturalistically, as it is in Hobbes, who famously characterised
the will as the final appetite in a process of practical deliberation.10
While this anti-naturalism is one of the basic features of such idealist
approaches to human society, Hegels refusal to reduce what he calls
spirit to nature has nothing to do with a commitment to any type of
mindbody dualism of the early modern Cartesian approach to the
mind, nor with its remnants in Kants conception of the noumenal self.
Rather than locate Hegels starting point in the modern subjectivist
approach to the mind, we should understand Hegel, I suggest, in relation to Aristotles conception of the human soul as the form of the
human body.11 In contrast to Aristotle, however, Hegel sees bodily
form not as something given but as formed and, indeed, self-forming,
and work is central to the process in which such formation occurs.
But again, the idea of the mind as giving form is central to Kantian
9
G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. III, trans. E. S. Haldane,
Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1995, p. 316. For a view of Hegels politics of
recognition as an alternative to social contract theory see A. Patten, Social Contract
Theory and the Politics of Recognition in Hegels Political Philosophy, in ed. Robert R.
Williams, Beyond Liberalism and Communitarianism: Studies in Hegels Philosophy of
Right, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2001. On the relation of Hegels early
account of the struggle for recognition to Hobbes account of the establishment of the
political community, see L. Siep, Der Kampf um Anerkennung. Zu Hegels
Auseinandersetzung mit Hobbes in den Jenaer Schriften, in Hegel Studien Vol. 9,
1974, pp. 155207.
10
Hobbes effectively identifies the will with an empirical bodily appetite or aversion: In deliberation, the last appetite, or aversion, immediately adhering to the action,
or to the omission thereof, is that we call the WILL; the act, not the faculty, of willing.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, ed.
E. Curley, Indianapolis, Hackett, 1994, ch. vi, 53. In distancing himself from the
faculty of willing, Hobbes was setting himself against the scholastic view going back
to Aristotle of the faculty of the willvoluntasas a type of rational power causing
the action (ibid., ch. xlvi, 28). Instead, Hobbes introduces appetite and aversion as
quasi-mechanically acting on affective states, causally brought about by perceptual
interaction with the world and manifesting themselves in particular actions. This
means that freedom for Hobbes cannot be identified with any notion of a rationally
self-determining will that is presupposed by the Christian Platonist tradition.
11
See, for example, M. Wolff, Das Krper-Seele Problem: Kommentar zu Hegel,
Encyclopdie, Frankfurt, Klostermann, 1992.
idealism, and so Hegels Aristotelianism has a distinctively postKantian flavour.

Willing 1: From Hobbes to Kant
As suggested above, a characteristic feature of the idealist approach has
to do with its resistance to the type of philosophical assumptions about
the will found in the naturalist and empiricist tradition as exemplified
by Hobbes or, somewhat later, Hume. Hobbes thought of the will as
having a contentdesirewhich is given to the reasoning faculty from
without. Desire itself is arational, and reasons task is effectively the
instrumental one of working out how to act so as to best satisfy such
desire.12 In contrast to this naturalistic account, Hegel follows Kant in
as much as for him, the will has to be treated in terms of what Henry
Allison has called the incorporation thesis.13 For Kant, rather than
being conceived as some merely natural phenomenon, the will that is
expressed in a voluntary act must be conceived as having been already
given some type of conceptual formthe form in which that content
could be endorsed by the acting subject as its own. As some contemporary philosophers have suggested, there seems a clear distinction
between genuine desires and wants, and mere urges or impulses. Being
suddenly struck by the urge, say, to stand naked in downtown Sydney
at peak hour and recite the poems of Henry Lawson, may be more
likely to lead to my seeking therapy than actually doing it. Such an urge
is unlikely to be one that I endorse as mine. However, Hobbes raw
naturalism about desires seems to construe all desires as alien impulses
12
The givenness of desire is usually taken to be the mark of instrumentalism.
As Christoph Fehige expresses it, desiresin the sense explained, in which desire
captures what it is for something to matter to somebodyhave the last word. Every
such desire, and nothing but such a desire, counts. These desires are given, not just in
the sense that their existence or non-existence need not always be in our power, but
also in the sense that, if such a desire is really there, no rational critique can set its
normative force to zero. C. Fehige, Instrumentalism, in ed. Elijah Millgram, Varieties
of Practical Reasoning, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2001, p. 66. Millgram makes a
similar point: Instrumentalism is the view that all practical reasoning is meansend
reasoning. It says that there are various things you want, and the point of practical
reasoning is to figure out how to get themInstrumentalists think that practical reasoning proceeds from desires that are not themselves revisable by reasoning. These are
desires that you just happen to have, and we can say that they are arbitrary. In Practical
Induction, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 2.
13
H. Allison, Kants Theory of Freedom, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1990, pp. 4041.
46
paul redding
or something like this. Moreover, once we raise any urge to the level of
an endorseable or dis-endorseable conceptualized content, the resulting desire seems to be the sort of thing for which we can ask for an
intelligible reason. Kant had tried to capture that by describing our
actions as flowing not from impulses but from rules or maxims that
guide our practical lives. If I characteristically do action a in context f,
it is because I operate on the basis of the implicit rule do a-type actions
in f-type contexts.
In Kants version, then, the will, rather than being an element of raw
nature is already conceptualized and rationalized. But from Hegels
perspective, Kants attempt to rationalize the will was incomplete.
While he insisted on the conceptual form of the will, Kant nevertheless
still conceived this in terms of the endorsement or dis-endorsement of
an otherwise naturally given content, or inclination. However, Kant
had not thought of the type of rationality implicit in instrumental reasoning as the only or even the essential form of the will, and had
pointed to another form of practical reasoningthe type of moral reasoning that he treated in terms of the categorical imperative, in which
the will is not reliant on any externally given content. Kant thus distinguished between the will as Willkr and as Wille, the latter being the
autonomous will able to prescribe to itself its content; the moral law.14
We might think of Hegel as attempting to integrate these two aspects
of willingthe object-directed will of rationalized inclination, and the
other-directed will of Kantian moralityinto a unified picture in as
much as our willing relations to worldly things are to be contextualised
within conceptually mediated relations to each other. These latter relations Hegel conceived as recognitive relationsrelations within which
we recognize or acknowledge each other as beings with rational wills.
It is an idea similar to Kants moral idea of treating others not as means
to ones ends but as ends themselves, but freed of the formalism of
Kants conception of the categorical imperative. Moreover, for Hegel,
in contrast to Kant, these relations of recognition were constitutive:
not only do they constitute the form of the social life within which
we livethat is, constitute what Hegel called objective spiritthey
also constitute conditions for our capacity to have the type of cognitiveor intentional life that allow us to function within objective spirit.
14
I. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. M. Gregor, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 1314.
It is only in as much as we participate in such recognitive relations in

which we are recognized as intentional agents that we become intentional agents, rather than merely natural beings, and so, for example,
become the kinds of agents for whom there can be reasons for and
not just causes of action. Thus, we can say that our belonging to objective spirit is a prerequisite for our being subjective spirits.
Willing 2: From Kant to Aristotle
It was this rationalization of the will that allowed Hegel to re-
appropriate Aristotles conception of the soul as the form of the body.
Aristotle had endorsed Platos idea of the primacy of the forms but had
denied that they were separable (christon) from the things they were
meant to be the forms of.15 Thus the mind, as the form of the body, was,
for Aristotle, fundamentally incarnated in the body. But this was not to
assign the study of mind simply to the natural scientist, the physikos.
Astate of mind like that of anger, say, might have its material basis in a
state of the bodyfor Aristotle, a boiling of the blood, or a heat
around the heartbut it also should be understood as having a specifically cognitive content, as when we understand anger, for example,
as a desire for retribution. But to say that it has a cognitive content is
to give it the form of concepts or ideas, and this makes it equally an
object of study for the logician, or dialektikos.16
15
For example, in Aristotle, Metaphysics Books IIX, trans. H. Tredennick,
Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1996, Bk. 1, ch 9. See, G. Fine,
Separation, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 2, 1984, pp. 3187, and On
Ideas: Aristotles Criticism of Platos Theory of Forms, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993.
16
A. de Laurentiis, Hegels Interpretation of Aristotles psyche: A Qualified
Defence in K. Deligiorgi, Hegel: New Directions, Chesham, Acumen, 2006. But
Aristotles essentially embodied account of the finite human soul in De Anima was
caught in a long-recognized problem concerning the relation of the individual soul
to divine disembodied nous or intelligence coursing through the world (Aristotle:
On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, On Breath, trans. W. S. Hett. Cambridge, Mass., Loeb
Classical Library, 2000.) In De Anima (413b249), Aristotle seems to introduce a
dualism in the mind-body relation with the notion of nous. See, for example,
K. V. Wilkes Final embarrassed Postscript to her resolutely non-dualist reading
of Aristotles psuch in Psuch versus the Mind in eds. M. C. Nussbaum and
A. Oksenberg Rorty, Essays on Aristotles De Anima, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992.
To the extent that humans were capable of nous, they thus seemed to be capable of a
type of disembodied thought that was out of step with the more corporeal approach of
De Anima. At its most general level, we might say that Hegels proffered solution to
this problem was to similarly embody the processes of divine nous or spirit in
the corporeal world as well, by making its processes immanent, in the first instance,
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paul redding
As a follower of Plato, Aristotle was a realist about forms or ideas,

including the soul as the form of the body. As a follower of Kant, however, Hegel was an idealist about such logical form. To put this in
another way, we should not think of the logically structured ideational
contents of the soul as quasi-entities that exist anyway, independently
of their being ascribed to the soul, both by the being whose soul is in
question, and by other beings who relate to that being. The former we
have already seen in Kants difference between a natural inclination
and a recognized and endorsed desirecontent does not become
soul or mind-like until it is recognized by that soul or mind as its own.
Hegel, however, now made this condition of recognition more general.
For him, with respect to the cognitive states of souls, the question of
their being in a certain state cannot be separated from the question of
their being recognized by others as being in that state. If we now return
to the Hobbesian story of the constitution of political society we can
see how it will be transformed in distinct ways within Hegels approach,
ways that bring to bear both Kantian and Aristotelian considerations.
Master and Slave
For Hegel, as I have suggested, the will expressed in the primordial
struggle from which political society is established has to be conceived
in terms other than Hobbes naturalistic ones. For Hobbes, the struggles found in the state of nature are essentially struggles over the power
to satisfy naturally given appetites. In contrast, conceived in Hegelian
terms, the struggle will have to be conceived as over the authoritative
maxims, rules or norms to which each particular act of the will answers.
It will be seen as a struggle, as it were, over the power of legislating the
rules of the interaction or game to be played. This, of course, is all very
abstract, and in the following I will try to flesh out some of these ideas
in terms of the very simple social arrangement with which Hegels
not in individuals but in historically evolving communities of interacting and communicating individuals, that is, individuals linked by relations of recognition. Embodying
nous or spirit (Geist) in this way can sound utterly mysterious until we remind ourselves that the contents of the divine mind were the platonic ideas which Kant had
interpreted as rules rather than transcendent immaterial prototypesrules to be followed, in the practices of theoretical or practical reason. It was these rules then to
which Hegel gave concrete existence by giving them a material basis in the normative
processes constituting the life of actual societies.
story of the struggle for recognition concludesthe simple, dyadic

relation between master and slave which provides in Hegels account
the first shape of mutual recognition.17
The struggle for recognition, for the recognition of having ones will
regarded as authoritative, will have been resolved when one of the
antagonists has accepted the role of being an effectively will-less instrument of the others will. From Hegels perspective, there is already a
contradiction at the heart of this arrangement. The slave has accepted
the role of will-less instrument of another, but paradoxically, this can
only be seen as an act of will, as the slave has made a choice (one might
think, an eminently rational one), trading freedom for being absolved
from the immediate threat of death. Hence to be a slave is to continually will the state of will-lessness. We will later see something of the
mechanisms by which this contradiction is manifested and resolved.
With this simple pattern of social life established, we may ask after
some of the minimum requirements for the masterslave relation to
function. At the very least, it might be said, this institution requires the
capacity for the master to convey his will to his slavethis community
will have to be a linguistically mediated one. There may be hierarchical
patterns of social life in non-language-using animals, but there could
not be, we might say, ones with the institution of slavery with its conventionally defined social roles. Looking at the roles from a linguistic
point of view, we might think of the respective roles of master and slave
here as differentiated by the type of speech act that each can employ.
More simply put; only the master can utter imperatives. Only the master can say to the other, something like Cook me a fish! Of course this
does not mean that only the master can produce that set of sounds or
string of words, since anyone who knows the language can string such
sentences together. The point is, rather, that only the master can perform the act whose normative consequence is that the one to whom it
is directed thereby acts in a certain way, the way specified by the content
expressed in the sentence.
It is the normativity of the patterns of a life so conceived by Hegel
that makes the facts of social life irreducible to those of the natural
world, and here Hegel departed from Aristotle. Aristotle had thought
17
Compare H. S. Harris, Hegels Ladder, Vol. 1, p. 377n 25. I will use the terms
master and slave rather than the more general lord and bondsman, which are
more appropriate to the condition of selfdom, in order to retain the more classical
connotations.
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of slaves as made slaves by their nature,18 but from an Hegelian perspective the characteristics of master and slave cannot be reduced to
natural properties but rather require the existence of something more
like normatively defined social statusessomething like differential
sets of rights and duties specified by the rules of the institution. In
Anscombes terminology, the facts making up this form of life will be
institutional onesfacts that hold only in virtue of their being recognized to holdnot brute facts about the natural world, facts that
hold anyway, independently of their being so recognized.19 Moreover,
the concepts that articulate such factsin our simple model, concepts
such as master and slavehave that peculiar normative thickness
that Charles Taylor and others have appealed to in the domain of practical reasoning. To recognize another as ones master is to adopt a certain action-guiding orientation to them, the attitude appropriate to
their slave, just as the inverse holds for the case as recognizing another
as ones slave. It is because practical consequences flow from the application of concepts in these interactions that Hegel refers to them as
logical patterns of inferencesyllogisms. But for Hegel important
consequences follow from the fact that these forms of institutional life
are instantiated in otherwise natural beings about whom there are relevant brute or natural facts.
With the basic parts of this simple model in place, let us reflect on
some of the minimal non-linguistic capacities that would be needed for
a slave to act appropriately within this type of institutionfor example, to be able to act on the order Cook me a fish! First, as is obvious,
the slave would have to have a certain set of capacities or skills, most
obviously the ones making up the technique of cooking, but beyond
those, techniques for catching fish, and so ontechniques that are
linked instrumentally in terms of the relation for the sake of. And
it is difficult to see how such skills could be successfully deployed
without the capacity to make certain types of perceptual judgements,
like the perceptual judgement that some particular fish was, in fact,
cooked. Put simply, the slave would have to be able to differentiate
cooked from raw, that is cookable fish. What can we now say about the
interrelation of these skills?
18
Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge, Mass, Loeb Classical Library,
1998, pp. 1254 b 1520.
19
G. E. M Anscombe, On Brute Facts, Ethics, Religion and Politics: Collected
Philosophical Papers, Vol. III, Oxford, Blackwell, 1981.
First of all, it is now common for philosophers to think of different

types of intentional attitudes, such as theoretical and practical ones, as
able to have common cognitive contents, contents that can be understood as conceptual. From this point of view, we might say that the
order Cook me a fish! and the assertion The fish is cooked have a
common content and that the difference between the two utterances is
to be captured in terms of the different attitudes that can be maintained
to such a content, the attitudes of willing, on the one hand, and perceiving or knowing, on the other. Thus Elizabeth Anscombe, for example, differentiates the attitudes of taking true and making true, the
attitudes that would be consequent to receiving an assertion or an
imperative respectively.20 That is, normally the hearer of the assertion
The fish is cooked would take a certain content to be true, that is,
believe it, while normally the hearer of the command Cook me a fish!
would bring about the circumstances in which this same content had
become true. I think that there is clear evidence in Hegel that he considers the contents of thought as separable from the various intentional
attitudes to those contents in this type of way, and this, I believe, is
central to his idealism.21
A further consequence of being able to conceive of a separable ideational content in this way is that it allows the representation of those
for the sake of instrumental relations between actions alluded to
above. Working requires the type of practical reason that can allow
me to reason from an end, say that of cooking a fish, to a means, say,
20
Harris uses the same terminology in relation to Hegel. See Hegels Ladder, vol 1,
p. 366.
21
A comparison to Freges treatment of negation is useful here. Frege claimed that
negation must be an operation that applies to complete propositions so in order to
understand a proposition in non-assertive contexts such as interrogatives and hypotheticals we must understand the content independently of the question of its actual
truth or falsity. See G. Frege, Negation, in M. Beaney, The Frege Reader, Oxford,
Blackwell, 1997, pp. 3478. In his comments on the law of the excluded middle, which
in Aristotle is expressed as of one thing we must either assert or deny one thing,
Hegel argues for the existence of a third that is indifferent to the opposition he
describes as A and not A, which we are presumably meant to read as the supposedly
exclusive assertion or denial of a predicate of some thing. This third is A itself without
the + or that, in Hegels notation, mark the affirmation or denial of A. (Hegel,
Science of Logic, p. 438439.) Hegel describes this third as the unity of reflection into
which the opposition withdraws as into ground, a unity which looks analogous to the
Fregean idea of a propositional content that must be able to be understood in abstraction from its being judged to be actually true or false. I treat this in more detail in
Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2007, ch. 7.
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catching it. The slave has learnt to hold his behaviour to the content of
imperatives, and we might think of reasoning practically as involving a
type of inference from one imperative (Cook me a fish!) to another
(Catch me a fish!). Hegel, I believe, had developed a particularly
powerful logic for capturing this type of complex reasoning implicit in
practical activity, and for it he needed to combine elements of
Aristotelian term logic with the quite different patterns of propositional logic.22
The Negating Structures of Perception and Work
In line with his appropriation of Aristotelian logic, Hegel adopts an
essentially Aristotelian approach to the categorical structure of objects
of perception. In perception we grasp an object as an instance of a
kind, which in turn is relevant to the sorts of predicates that can be said
of it (but not, of course, at the same time).23 Thus, in a judgement such
as This fish is cooked, the kind of term involved (that it is a fish, and
not, say, a rock) is relevant to the fact that the predicate cooked and
its contrary raw can be said of it. Moreover, for Aristotle, the terms
that can be predicated of such kinds typically come in groups of contrariesideally, pairs of contraries. We have of course seen this phenomenon before, in the pair of predicates master and slave itself.
Each term is the negation of the other, in the sense that the application of one term excludes its contrary. Moreover, we see this account of
the structure of the perceptual object recur in the context of the masterslave dialectic as the structure of the object worked upon. So, just as
a perceptual object will have the structure exemplified by say, this fish
which I see to be cooked and not raw, the object worked upon will have
just the same structure, but here, raw and cooked are the end points
between which the work effects a transition. To put it another way, to
See my Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought.
In the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel had developed this account of the perceptual object in the context of Chapter 2, Perception. Hegels primary task there had not
been to give a type of phenomenological account of the nature of perception, but
rather to examine a certain conception of the nature of what is. What he there calls
Perception concerns a certain normative standard for what is to count as real, and he
shows that this conception is self-undermining, and is in turn replaced by another
standard, that he calls the understanding. However, it seems legitimate to extract
from that chapter a general conception of Hegels phenomenology of the perceptual
object.
22
23
perceive an object as an instance of a kind is to conceive of it as suitable

to a certain type of treatment, and to perceive it as instantiating one of
an array of contrary properties is to conceive of it in terms of an array
of possible states into which it may be transformed.
In thinking of these logical issues we might be guided by the first
three chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit where Hegel distinguishes what are effectively three different conceptions of objecthood: sense-certainty; perception; and the understanding. In the
attitude of sense-certainty, the world is conceived as made up of simple givens of sensory experience with no internal complexity. Unlike
the objects of perception, they have no internal logical form, and so
can only function within reasoning in a very limited wayperhaps as
simple candidates for being endorsed or disendorsed. It is clear from
the way Hegel later treats the orientation of desire or appetite
(Begierde), that he thinks of the world of the desiringconsuming subject, which in this context is the master, in much the same way. That is,
while the slave needs to have a conception of the objects on which he
labours as having the internal logical articulation mentioned above, for
the master, the world can be considered to be made up of objects
defined in terms of the simple sensuous qualities that make them
suitable for the satisfaction of simple immediately felt desires.24 This
difference will turn out to be crucial for the eventual outcome of this
form of life.
Again, we might understand these distinctions against the background of Aristotles approach. Aristotle distinguished human practices from mere animal movements. The movement of an animal will
be explained in terms something like those of Hobbes or contemporary beliefdesire forms of analysis. As he puts it in On the Movement
of Animals: I want to drink, says appetite; this is drink says sense or
imagination or thought: straightaway I drink. In this way living creatures are impelled to move and to act, and desire is the last cause of
movement.25 Humans, of course, share in this animal soul, and hence
Compare Harris, The self-certainty of simple desire tells us (and the other animals) that consumption and enjoyment is the truth of the Sachen of Sense-Certainty,
Hegels Ladder, vol 1, p. 366.
25
Aristotle, On the Movement of Animals, trans. A. S. L. Farquharson, The Complete
Works of Aristotle, rev. Oxford translation, ed. J. Barnes, Princeton, N.J., Princeton
University Press, 1984, p. 701 a 3235. See also, De Anima, Book III, chs 911. Even
here, however, the good that the animal seeks is regarded as objective, and the animals
action is regarded as expressing an intention or purpose. This is behind Aristotles
criticism of Democritus account of animal movement in De Anima, Book I.
24
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realize these types of movements, but what marks them differently

from non-human animals is their possession of the rational soul that
allows them to engage in two further types of acting, poisis or makinga type of action with an external goaland praxis, a type of
action the intrinsic worth of which makes the doing of the action itself
as the goal.26 For Aristotle, there is a clear hierarchy between these two
forms of action: human life, he says in Politics, consists in doing things,
not making things,27 a relative valuation that one might expect in a
slave-holding society like that of ancient Athens.
As we have noted, Aristotle thinks of slaves as slaves by their nature,
and the poietic activity of slaves is likewise thought of as close to the
processes of nature. Thus the slave is considered to be motivated by the
mechanisms similar to those operative in animals, having his behaviour directed by appetite and perceptual imagery rather than reason.28
Next, the transformative processes of poisis are regarded as themselves akin to the teleological processes of nature. Thus, as Geoffrey
Lloyd has pointed out in his study of Aristotles use of the term pepsis
or concoction, this is clear in Aristotles conception of the activity of
cooking, as it is seen as a type of extension of natural peptic processes
such as chewing and digesting, all of which are directed to bringing the
flesh of an animal to its most perfect state, that is, most perfect state
vis--vis its role in the life of a human being.29 For Aristotle, it is the
situation of being freed from the need to undertake this nature-bound
type of work which is what allows the flowering of the mind to take
place among the free citizens: the masters.
In Hegels account of the masterslave interaction, the slaves poietic
activity will be afforded a much more significant role. While Aristotle
had tended to denigrate the status of productive work and think that it
was the liberation from it that allowed the life of the mind, in Hegels
26
Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, trans. and intro. C. Rowe, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 2002, p. 1140 a 123.
27
Aristotle, Politics, p. 1254 a 79, to which Aristotle adds, hence the slave is an
assistant in the class of instruments of action.
28
Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy,
New York, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 1095 b 19ff. The closest one finds to a
modern beliefdesire account of explanation of action in Aristotle is actually that
applied to non-human animals. For a helpful discussion of the relation of human
and animal desiring in these chapters see H. S. Richardson, Desire and the good in
De Anima, in eds. Nussbaum and Rorty, Essays on Aristotles De Anima.
29
G. E. R. Lloyd, The Master Cook, in Aristotelian Explorations, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
story, this will in its essential respects be reversed: it is just the masters
freedom, purchased by the un-freedom of others that will subvert any
capacity for a free and rational life of the mind. The master is a nonlabouring consumer, whose desire is closer to that of the non-human
animalone immediately expressed in the negation, that is the consumption, of the objects of the world. The slave, of course, cannot act
on his impulsive desires, as he has to negate or suppress his own natural desires and replace them with the actions required to serve the
masters conceptually conveyed will.30 This adds a layer of complexity to
the forms of recognition and, importantly, self-recognition that can
occur in this society. And not only does it reflect systematic differences
marking off Hegels approach as a distinctly modern one, it also
points to the degree that Hegels idealism accommodates the idea of
processes working below the level of the overt conceptualisations
articulating the manifest view of the world, and the extent to which
Hegel is able to maintain a distinction between the capacities of the
bearing of a conceptualized social role and the rules constituting
that role.
As we have seen, the masterslave relation is at its basis an institutionally defined recognitive relation. In behaving towards his master as
a master, the slave is continually acknowledging the rightness of the
masters bearing of this status, and the same can be said of the behaviour of the master towards the slave. But each can then recognize himself in the others recognition, and thereby achieve a type of selfconsciousnessthe master understanding himself as a master, and the
slave as a slave. But identity cannot be as simple as the apparently
dyadic relation between the concepts master and slave suggests,
since all relations for Hegel are mediated or triangulated. Thus the
slaves relation to the master is mediated by the objects that the slave
labours upon, as labouring for the master is just what defines the relationship of master and slave.31 This mediation means that while the
slave is addressed by the master as a slave, and so recognizes himself in
that address as a slave, there are other relations that can contribute to
30
Now, by working for another, the Slave too surmounts his instincts, andby
thereby raising himself to thought, to science, to technique, by transforming nature in
relation to an ideahe too succeeds in dominating Nature and his Nature Kojve,
Introduction, p. 49.
31
Similarly, the relation between the slave and the object worked on is mediated by
the slaves relation to the master, because the slave acts on the expressed will of the
master, not on his own desire.
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paul redding
the form of self-consciousness of which the slave is capable, relations

that can allow the slave to recognize himself in ways that come into
contradiction with his self-identity as a slave.
Importantly, what is available to him is that of being the agent who
does the transforming of the object. Thus, in the course of being a slave,
and acting like a slave, the slave gains a conception of himself in virtue
of the world-transforming work that is carried out, such as when one
gets a sense of oneself in the perceivable products of ones activities, for
example, when one grasps oneself as a skilled cook. Here it must be
remembered that the perceived object has a particular logical structure in which the inhering sensible qualities are regarded as excluding
or negating their contraries. Hence there is something concrete within
which the slave can recognize the purport of his own agency.
Importantly, the self-recognition here is in no sense an empty formality, as work is not merely an activity of the transformation of objects, it
is also an activity of self-transformation, an acquiring of skills and dispositions that become partly definitive of ones character and identity,
and so an objective source of ones sense of self. In transforming objects
for the master, the slave transforms himself, and since, from the
Aristotelian point of view, the soul is the form of the body, the slave
transforms his spiritual capacities, his soul. And, of course, the
dimension of personhood that is coming into focus here is the converse of that constituted at the institutional level. Rather than what is
captured by the concepts of servitude and dependence, it is the dimension of mastery that is central here. And a type of ownership is coming
into focus, the inalienable property relationship existing between the
slave and his own capacities which will contradict the very idea that
one individual can own another. The overtly dyadic form of the masterslave relation, therefore, conceals a deeper and contradictory
reality.32
32
Considerations such as these indicate how seriously Hegel takes the idea that
spirit is ultimately embodied in the flesh and bones of the individuals who make up
the social world. (In fact we might conjecture that the Aristotelian unilateral privileging of praxis over poisis is connected with the anomaly of his treatment of divine nous
in contrast with the more embodied treatment of the human psuch in De Anima.) It
is said that in traditional societies such as those of the ancient Greeks, individuals tend
to conceive of themselves entirely in terms of their social roles, and this, in some sense,
is even expressed in the formal structure of Aristotles logic, as individual things are
always reasoned about in terms of their instantiating some kind. But Hegel is aware
that there are processes at work that result in individuals being such that they do not
What I want to point to here is more the underlying dynamics of

Hegels idealist analysis and how he appeals to the immanent dynamics
of the institution itself to find the norms for its critique. It should be
clear that Hegels criticism of the institution of slavery is in no way a
formal one that simply condemns it as being incompatible with the
essential freedom of human beings. Slavery is a self-contradictory
state in a more substantial sense, in that it is a necessarily self-
undermining state. It is a form of interaction which comes with a justification concerning the natural superiority of the master that is
in contradiction with the reality that develops within its constraints.
That is why the common interpretation of Hegels idealist slogan that
the rational is the real and the real is the rational, the interpretation
that equates real with the prevailing status quo, is so misleading. The
nature of the real is not to be found in the superficial representations
that social life produces in order to justify itself. Discovering the real
requires the type of analytic unpacking of the categorical structure of
these justifications to discover the pragmatic conditions within which
they can have any meaning at all, and typically, as in the case we have
seen, this pragmatic ground of the normativity of our claims can be
seen to contradict the claims themselves. Kant thought that the contradictions that emerged when reason was pushed beyond an application
to empirical reality indicated the limits of the role that reason could
play. Hegel thought that the contradictions reflected the contradictory
state of that reality itself.
simply instantiate the normatively defined characteristics. If we think of the slave

merely as an instantiation of a generic concept we are cognizing the slave within the
structures of perception, but if we understand the slave as an element within a dynamic
system of interacting elements we will be cognizing him with the resources of the
understanding. But this is still not to appeal to anything outside the scope of conceptuality in the way that Hobbes so appeals to forces given from the world to instrumental reason. It is not as if there is some determinate but non-conceptualized individual
reality to which the concept slave fails to correspond. It is rather that a concept like
slave has to be considered in relation to its various structural determinations, one of
which is as designating the slave in its singularity rather than as an instance of a universal. While to some extent the proper expression of what is peculiar to the individual
itself needs an appropriately shaped conceptual role, one that, Hegel thinks, is only
generated after the collapse of the classical polisfirst at an abstract or formal level,
with the legal notion of individual rights in Rome and the universal scope of the
Christian religion, and next, with the liberation of the labouring process from the fixed
social statuses of the ancient institution of slavery.
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The Relevance of Hegels Analysis for Today
Hegel himself said that philosophy was its own time comprehended
in thoughts,33 and his time was effectively the turn and first decades of
the nineteenth century. Much has occurred in the world, and especially the world of work, since then. It would be unrealistic, I think, to
assume that we could find applicable solutions in Hegels writings to
problems that could hardly have even been foreseen two hundred years
ago. But conceiving of a problem in the right way is at least the first step
on the way to finding a solution, and in Hegel we find many percipient
clues for how to conceive of problems that seem endemic to the twentyfirst century. Lets consider, for example, the problems that are seen as
following on from the instrumental relation to nature that seems dominant in modernity.
Consider, for example, the criticisms of the scenario of human
emancipation through work that are found in Hannah Arendt, a thinker
whose neo-Aristotelian proclivities show in her attempt to re-establish
the priority of praxis over poisis.34 In short, Arendt had made a
tripartite distinction between labour, work and praxis that was in
some ways akin to Aristotles between animal movement, poisis and
praxis, and in some ways different. Effectively, Aristotelian poisis is
split between the practices designated as work that leave a structure
within which public life will be shaped, such as building a city; and
those that only leave something for consumptionlabouractivities
such as cooking a fish for consumption. The Greeks were correct,
she thinks, in associating the latter with animal existence, and this is at
the heart of a somewhat damning critique of modernity. What the
modern capitalist economy has done is to have geared production to
generalized human consumption, and so the world of work had been
colonized by the world of labour. But even when work is distinguished from labour as not reducible to the realm of nature and necessity, it is still to be regarded as subordinate to praxis because of its
instrumental nature. As in Aristotles analysis, in work the ends are
given to an activity from without, while in praxis, the activity is undertaken for its own sake. In work there is a type of universality that goes
33
G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. W. Wood, trans.
H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 21.
34
H. Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958.
along with the externality of the objective that levels the individuality
of the worker.35
Arendts critique of the project of collective human liberation
through work was partly directed against Marx, and we might think
that it applies equally to Hegel as well, but this, I think, would be a
mistake. Especially following Kojves Marx-influenced reading of
Hegel, there has been a tendency to over-generalize the lessons of the
masterslave section of Chapter 4 in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and
to see the human subordination of nature through work as the framing
narrative of the development of free and rational spirit. But the categories articulating the world of the master and slave are themselves not
adequate to the reality that is developing within its boundaries.
Consider Henry Harris comments on Kojves reading, for example,
where he points out that the masterslave dialectic is framed within
the limited form of cognition that is the analogue (for self-consciousness) of perception, and so this dialectic cannot be generalised to the
shape of the movement of the Phenomenology as a whole.36 The very
dyadic distinction between independence and dependence or subjectivity and objectivity that is modelled in the masterslave relation will
be undermined, as the contradiction at the heart of this relationship
becomes manifest. Hence, the masterslave relation should not be seen
as a distinction that ends up being reproduced at the level of the relation of human to non-human nature. Kojves reading of Hegel essentially belongs to the genre of anthropological readings of Hegel
which, following the left-Hegelian lead of Feuerbach and others, had
put the focus on the expression of a human essence predicated on a
generalized liberation from nature. However, I suggest, this does not
reflect Hegels own account.37 And yet this does not imply that the
35
We might think of her implicit approach to Hegel as a manifestation in the realm
of the analysis of work of the type of criticism that accuses him of a logocentric subsumption of the individual by the universality of the concept, a concept conceived
along Platonic lines as the prototype of some artefact to be fabricated.
36
H. S. Harris, Hegels Ladder, Vol. 1, p. 379n. 33.
37
We might here consider the comparison between the respective analyses of Hegel
and the most famous social theorist to emerge from the left-Hegelian camp, Karl
Marx. Marx might be regarded as having attempted to naturalize Hegels analysis by
transforming an explicitly idealist form of philosophy into a somewhat naturalisticallyconceived scientific theory. Marx correctly perceived that Hegel thought of philosophy as operating at the same level as religion, and extended a type of reductive
analysis of religion to that of philosophy as well. In Hegelian terms this is to collapse
the type of reasoning that properly belonged to Reason or Vernunft, back into the
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opposing right theistic reading of Hegel was correct, after all, since
the mutually excluding determinations of theism and atheism are yet
again instantiations of that same dichotomous structure of which
Hegel is attempting to show the limits.
There are too many dimensions to this nexus between the more
romantically orientated critiques of instrumental reason to which
Arendt belongs and Hegels already complex views to be expanded
upon here, but a few points might be usefully made. Importantly, Hegel
was one of the first philosophers to acknowledge the modern emergence of civil society as a distinct public realm centred on a type of
production that was geared to the satisfaction of basic needswhat he
called the system of need. Moreover, it is clear that he grasped the profound changes that this was to have for the nature of work. Given the
role of work in the transformation of the body and the conception of
the soul as the form of the human body, it is clear that he thought of the
changes brought about by the modern economy in the nature of work
as having implications for changes in the human soul. Indeed, we
might see some of these changes as signalled by Hegels understanding
of the logic of work and activity more generally that is already implicit
in the masterslave dialectic.
I earlier alluded to the modern conception of activity as a type of
making true, and it is this that allows actions to be grasped as chained
in relations of ends and means. For example, if the objective is to make
it true that r, and if we know that if q then r, and also that if p then q,
then we have a prima facie reason to do p. Here we might talk of execution conditions for commands that are analogous to assertability
conditions for assertions, and think of actions as linked in relations of
practical inference analogous to the way we inferentially chain beliefs.
framework of the understanding, or Verstand and that transformation radically
changes the understanding of the historical narrative involved. Marx understood
historical materialism as an explanatory theory somewhat akin to Darwinian evolutionary theory, but Hegels narrative was not meant to be explanatory in that sense.
Rather, it was meant as something more akin to a retrospective genealogy in which the
consideration that is to the fore is that of grasping where the norms that we take as
authoritative came from and grasping the sorts of transformations they have gone
through on the way to being our norms. An explanatory account would explain those
norms away because they are not grasped as the norms of the subjects, us, doing the
explaining. It is this claim to the irreducibility of the normative structure of spirit to
any non-normatively material nature which opposes an idealist like Hegel to materialists like Hobbes or Marx. But, as I have tried to suggest, this does not imply an account
of the logos that can be isolated from the material basis of the lives of the individuals in
which it is embodied.
But the possibility for this type of mediation had been implicit in the
very relation between master and slave. Once the gap is opened up
between impulse and action, which is consequent upon the masters
commanding the slave, this gap can be progressively mediated by intervening steps.
It is this ever-widening gap, of course, that is complained of by the
more romantic critics of instrumental reason. As the division of labour
increases, the output of each persons work will in general be likely to
be directed towards the production of the execution conditions of
someone elses activity. That is, the output of labour is no longer the
perceptible object as it is in the type of work we think of as craftan
object that manifests the very transformations involved in its very production. This is the world where the value of work is measured in very
abstract ways such as in relation to the satisfaction of key performance
indicators or in terms of symbolic status conferred by its monetary
equivalent. It is not the sort of value that can be simply recognized in
the transformations of an object, such as that perceived in the products
of craft activity. The modern capitalist economy is in some sense a
realm in which everybody is theoretically equally the master and slave
to each other, and Hegel is well aware of the contradictions that exist at
the heart of it. Thus while acknowledging the modern markets ability
to meet human needs in ways that are historically unprecedented,
Hegel also recognized the degrading effects of the modern economy,
and the corrosive effects this system has had on the human soul. One
source of this comes from the production of extremes of wealth and
poverty generated by the form of life itself.38 As with his rejection of
Aristotles claim that slaves were slaves by nature, Hegel is crystal clear
that in modernity, the disparity of wealth and power are not the result
of the natures of the rich and the poor. However, aside from the question of poverty, Hegel is aware of the malady that is now spoken of as
affluenza.39 While the type of craft work involved in the production
of an object of recognizable value is essential to the workers grasp of
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, p. 195 and pp. 244245.
See, for example, C. Hamilton and R. Denniss, Affluenza: When Too Much is
Never Enough, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2005; and O. James, Affluenza: How
to be Successful and Stay Sane, London, Vermilion, 2007. We might think of these
diagnoses of the problems of the modern psyche as standing in the tradition originating from J.-J. Rousseaus percipient reflections on the pathologies of the emerging
modern subject in works like A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, in The Social
Contract and Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole, London, Dent, 1973.
38
39
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paul redding
themselves as individual agents, this is endangered when the worker

becomes just a cog in a wheel within a larger complex mechanism.
Without meaningful work, we have nothing in which to see ourselves
other than the objects of our desire. Affluenza, after all, is just another
term for the existential problems besetting the situation of the original
master.
Hegel had attempted to remedy these problems, by projecting into
the infinitely mediated realm of civil society with its needs-based individualising tendencies, the opposed recognitive structures that were to
be found in the more immediate realm of the modern bourgeois
family. These may indeed be thought to be no longer appropriate for
the world of work at the start of the twenty-first century. Nevertheless,
I want to suggest that the basic conceptual tools he provided for the
diagnosis of the depth structure of modern life and its problems are
still as relevant as ever. At least within much contemporary philosophy
the conception of practical activity and practical reason, despite the
technical sophistication with which it is pursued, is still fundamentally
based on a Hobbesian conception of the individual will. Hegels counter-conception, and its elaboration in his recognitive approach to
human thought and action, still stands as an under-explored and powerful alternative.40
40
I would like to thank Jean-Philippe Deranty, Axel Honneth, Simon Lumsden,
Emmanuel Renault and Nicholas H. Smith for very helpful comments on an earlier
version of this chapter.
Chapter three
The Legacy of Hegelian Philosophy and

the Future of Critical Theory1
Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
I
In the words of Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Critical Theory aims
to develop a critical theory of capitalism that integrates and is based
upon research in the fields of moral philosophy, social theory, and
political analysis.2 By defining the aim of their theoretical enterprises
in these terms, Fraser and Honneth refer back to the origins of Critical
Theory. This school of thoughtwhose best-known representatives
include thinkers like Theodor W. Adorno and Jrgen Habermaswas
established by Max Horkheimer in the early 1930s at the Institute for
Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. What Horkheimer intended to
set up was a research program designed to analyze what he believed
were pathologies caused by the capitalist economies of his time, and to
examine the possibilities of economic and social arrangements that
would not have such negative effects.3 Like Fraser and Honneth,
1
I have presented different parts of the material in this chapter at the Departments
of Philosophy of the University of North Florida, Queens College, City University of
New York, University of Cologne, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong, as well
as at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. I have greatly benefited from the
discussion of my presentations on each of these occasions and would like to thank the
participants for their comments and suggestions. Special thanks are due to Daniel
Brudney and Michael Quante, who have made some very helpful comments on earlier
versions of this manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank Julia Ng for her translation
from the German.
2
N. Fraser and A. Honneth, Introduction: Redistribution or Recognition?, in
N. Fraser and A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical
Exchange, trans. Joel Golb, James Ingram, and Christine Wilke, London, New York,
Verso, 2003, p.10.
3
Compare M. Horkheimer, Die gegenwrtige Lage der Sozialphilosophie und
die Aufgaben eines Instituts fr Sozialforschung, in M. Horkheimer, Gesammelte
Schriften, Vol. 3, Frankfurt (Main), Fischer, 1931, pp. 2035 and M. Horkheimer,
Vorwort (Vol. 2, no. 2, Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung), in M. Horkheimer, Gesammelte
Schriften, Vol. 3, Frankfurt (Main), Fischer, 1933, p. 110. On this topic see also
64
hans-christoph schmidt am busch
Horkheimer wished to provide both an analysis and a critique of capitalism that is informed by moral philosophy.
Although Horkheimer believed that such an enterprise required
empirical studies and could only be carried out on the basis of philosophical, sociological and psychological research,4 his own studies suffered from an unquestioned reliance on Marxs social theory5 as well as
his idea of an unalienated, rational society.6 By contrast, some contemporary philosophers try to achieve the aims of Critical Theory with
a recognition-theoretical framework inspired by Hegelian thought.
Axel Honneth initiated and continues to be the most important representative of the recognition-theoretical turn in Critical Theory. In
fact, Honneth takes recognition theory to be a particularly well-suited
basis for an analysis and a critique of contemporary capitalism that is
informed by moral philosophy. He also draws on Hegelian thought in
an effort to substantiate this claim.7
What are the main arguments behind the kind of Critical Theory
defended by Honneth? Is it successful? In what follows, I shall examine
these questions. First, I will lay out the main features of Honneths
theory (II) and then consider the criticism that both his analysis and
critique of capitalism have received (III). With resources provided by a
new interpretation of several elements in Hegels Philosophy of Right,
D. C. Hoy and T. McCarthy, Critical Theory, Cambridge (USA), Blackwell, 1994;
R. Wiggershaus, Max Horkheimer zur Einfhrung, Hamburg, Junius, 1998, and
R. Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter Schule. Geschichte - Theoretische Entwicklung Politische Bedeutung, Munich, Vienna, Hanser, 2001; and A. Honneth, Eine soziale
Pathologie der Vernunft. Zur intellektuellen Erbschaft der Kritischen Theorie, in eds.
C. Halbig, M. Quante, Axel Honneth: Sozialphilosophie zwischen Kritik und
Anerkennung, Mnster, Lit, 2004, pp. 931.
4
Compare Horkheimer, Die gegenwrtige Lage der Sozialphilosophie und die
Aufgaben eines Instituts fr Sozialforschung.
5
Compare for example M. Horkheimer, Bemerkungen ber Wissenschaft und
Krise, in M. Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, Frankfurt (Main), Fischer,
1932, p. 44; M. Horkheimer, Materialismus und Metaphysik, in M. Horkheimer,
Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, Frankfurt (Main), Fischer, 1933, p. 81; M. Horkheimer,
Materialismus und Moral, in Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, Frankfurt
(Main), Fischer, 1933, p. 128; and M. Horkheimer, Vorbemerkung [zu Kurt
Mandelbaums und Gerhard Meyers Zur Theorie der Planwirtschaft], in M. Horkheimer,
Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, Frankfurt (Main): Fischer, 1934, pp. 221224.
6
Compare for example Horkheimer, Materialismus und Metaphysik, pp.117
and 137.
7
Compare for example A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral
Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson, Cambridge, Mass., Polity Press,
1995 and A. Honneth, Suffering from Indeterminacy: An Attempt at a Reactualization
of Hegels Philosophy of Right, Assen, Van Gorcum, 2000.
hegelian philosophy and critical theory65

Iwill then explain why Hegelian thought can help answer such criticisms and achieve the aims of Critical Theory in the domains of social
theory and social critique (IV, V, and VI). As I hope to show, Hegels
social and political philosophy can therefore be a major source of
inspiration for contemporary Critical Theory (VII).
II
The main features of Axel Honneths Critical Theory can be described
as follows.8
From the perspective of social theory, the fundamental assumption
is that human relations that are anchored in different principles of
reciprocal recognition9 constitute the basis of every society. Honneth
believes that such a social reality can only be analyzed with a normative social theory whose basic concepts are tailored to precisely these
principles.10 Because of this, the category of recognition functions as a
socio-ontological key concept11 for Honneth.
According to Honneths view, three kinds of recognition are constitutive of bourgeois-capitalist society:12 love, respect, and social
esteem. In very broad strokes, these can be understood in the following terms: individuals in a love relationship affirm one another as
needy beings;13 individuals who respect one another treat each other
as subjects to whom the same autonomy as well as equal rights and
duties are accorded; and individuals who esteem one another take
each other to possess skills and talents [] that are of value for society.14 If this is to be consistent with Honneths socio-ontological position sketched above, one would need to show that the core areas of
capitalist societieswhich Honneth believes are the private sphere,
Sections II and III incorporatein a modified formmaterial taken from
H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, Can the Goals of the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a
Theory of Recognition?, in eds. H.-C. Schmidt am Busch and C. F. Zurn, The
Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Lanham, Boulder,
New York, Toronto, Plymouth, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009, pp. 257283.
9
A. Honneth, Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser, in
N. Fraser and A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical
Exchange, p. 146.
10
Compare ibid. pp.132133.
11
Fraser and Honneth, Introduction: Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 1.
12
Honneth, Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser, p. 138.
13
ibid., p. 139.
14
ibid., p. 142.
8
66
the constitutional state, and the world of workcan be understood as

institutionalizations of love, respect, and social esteem. And indeed, it
is evident that Honneth claims to have proof of this when he explicitly
links his social-theoretical analysis to the core institutions of the capitalist form of society.15 In his view, modern family relationships are
characterized by loving care for the others well-being in light of his or
her individual needs.16 Moreover, both the constitutional and the welfare state are governed by the principle of legal respect. Finally, the idea
of individual achievement,17 which Honneth believes is the leading
cultural idea18 in the modern working world, can be explained in
terms of social esteem.19 For these reasons, he believes it is possible to
interpret bourgeois-capitalist society as an institutionalized recognition order.20
From the perspective of moral psychology, Honneths fundamental
assumption is that people can only form a positive, evaluative self-relation if they participate in social relations that require an attitude of
reciprocal recognition.21 However, this thesis is formal in the sense
that it contains no information relating to the content of such social
relations. In fact, while Honneth regards participation in social relations of recognition as a necessary condition22 for the formation of
the kind of self-relation mentioned above, he considers the content of
these relations subject to historical change. Qualitatively different constellations of recognition that have been formed in the course of human
history are, in Honneths opinion, equally suited to the formation of
positive individual self-relations.
From the perspective of social critique, the aim of Honneths theory
lies in developing a critique of contemporary neoliberalism.23 In this
context, the distinction between two types of capitalismthe socialdemocratic and the neoliberal typesis important.24 Whereas
social-democratic kinds of capitalism are characterized by regulated
ibid., p. 139.
ibid.
17
ibid., p. 140.
18
ibid.
19
Compare ibid., pp. 140141.
20
ibid., p. 138.
21
ibid., p. 143.
22
ibid., p. 176.
23
M. Hartmann and A. Honneth, Paradoxes of Capitalism, Constellations, Vol. 13,
no. 1, 2006, p. 44.
24
Compare ibid., pp. 4146.
15
16

markets, significant levels of state spending, and considerable welfarestate arrangements, neoliberal orders have the following features:
largely deregulated markets, rather low levels of state spending, a comparatively low level of welfare-state arrangements, and an entrepreneurial culture favoring owners of capital.25 Honneth believes that, at
least in the history of North America and Western Europe, models of
social-democratic capitalism were dominant between roughly 1945
and 1980, after which a neoliberal revolution26 took place. While he
seems to hold that social-democratic capitalism is not problematic
from the perspective of recognition theory,27 Honneth clearly believes
that the neoliberal revolution has had very negative effects on the recognition orders institutionalized in bourgeois-capitalist societies.28
From the methodological perspective, Honneth claims to present a
critique of neoliberalism that is internal29 insofar as its standards of
evaluation lie in relations of recognition that are constitutive of capitalist societies. Honneth illustrates this model of critique by referring to
conflicts over distribution. According to him, such social conflicts are
essentially struggles for recognition that areor may becarried out
by reference to the principles of legal respect and/or of social esteem.
In such cases, demands for the redistribution of economic goods may
meet with societys approval if they are based on proof that redistribution will remedy an infringement of claims that is identified as being
based on such principles. In this context, the task of the Critical
Theorist consists in furnishing this proof and making the connections
explicit. By relying on principles that are constitutive of capitalist society, the Critical Theorist can be said to engage in an internal critique in
the sense mentioned above.
Compare ibid.
ibid., p. 44.
27
Compare ibid. On this topic see also E. Renault, Taking on the Inheritance of
Critical Theory: Saving Marx by Recognition?, in eds. Schmidt am Busch and Zurn,
The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 241256.
28
Compare A. Honneth, Organisierte Selbstverwirklichung. Paradoxien der
Individualisierung, in ed. A. Honneth, Befreiung aus der Mndigkeit, Frankfurt
(Main), Campus, pp. 141158 and A. Honneth, Work and Recognition:
A Redefinition, in eds. Schmidt am Busch and Zurn, The Philosophy of Recognition:
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 223240 as well as Hartmann and
Honneth, Paradoxes of Capitalism.
29
A. Honneth, Nachwort: Der Grund der Anerkennung. Eine Erwiderung auf
kritische Rckfragen, in A. Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung, 2nd edition, Frankfurt
(Main), Suhrkamp, 2003, pp. 303341.
25
26
68

III
The attempt to analyze capitalist markets and worlds of work in terms

of a theory of recognition has been strongly criticized. A number of
Critical Theorists have expressed fears that holding Honneths socialontological thesisthe claim that bourgeois-capitalist societies are
institutionalized orders of recognitionwould make it impossible to
explain the behavior of capitalist markets.30 As a consequence, such
critics maintain that the goal of an analysis of such societies along the
lines of a theory of recognition is doomed to failure. Moreover, if recognition theory fails to provide an adequate analysis of contemporary
capitalism, it is also ill-suited to ground a social critique that is internal in the sense of the word specified above. Should this be true, recognition theory would fail to achieve the aims of Critical Theory in the
domains of social theory and social critique.
What are the arguments of the critique in question? Is it justified?
Since Nancy Fraser has provided the most detailedand influential
critique of Honneths recognition theory, I will investigate these questions by turning to the exchange between these two authors.
In Frasers view, Honneth has not provided an adequate answer to
the question of how critical theorists should understand the social
structure of present-day capitalism.31 Fraser characterizes Honneths
analysis of the modern working world in the following terms: In the
sphere of labor, [] recognition should be regulated by the principle
of achievement, which determines the level of ones wages according to
the value of ones social contribution. From Honneths perspective,
therefore, struggles over distribution are really struggles over recognition, aimed at changing the cultural interpretation of achievement.32
Ifthis holds true, however, it follows that there is nothing distinctive
30
Compare for example N. Fraser, Distorted Beyond All Recognition: A Rejoinder
to Axel Honneth, in Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange, pp. 198236; E. Renault, Lexprience de linjustice, Paris, La
dcouverte, 2004; and C. Zurn, Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy:
Dilemmas of Honneths Critical Social Theory, in European Journal of Philosophy,
Vol. 13, no. 1, 2005, pp. 89126. See also the critical discussion of these positions in
J.-P. Deranty, Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory:
A Defense of Honneths Theory of Recognition, in eds. Schmidt am Busch and Zurn,
The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 285318.
31
Fraser, Distorted Beyond All Recognition: A Rejoinder to Axel Honneth,
p. 211.
32
ibid., p. 213 (my emphasis).

about market-mediated social interactions, which are regulated, like
all interactions, by cultural schemas of evaluation. Thus, there is neither
any point in, nor any possibility of, conceptualizing specifically economic mechanisms in capitalist society.33
Fraser elaborates as follows:
These considerations apply in spades to the labor markets of capitalist
societies. In those arenas, work compensation is not determined by the
principle of achievement. [] Also important are political-economic factors such as the supply of and demand for different types of labor; the
balance of power between labor and capital; the stringency of social regulations including the minimum wage; the availability and cost of productivity enhancing technologies; the ease with which firms can shift
their operations to locations where wage rates are lower; the cost of
credit; the terms of trade; and international currency exchange rates. In
the broad mix of relevant considerations, ideologies of achievement are
by no means paramount. Rather, their effects are mediated by the operations of impersonal system mechanisms, which prioritize maximization
of corporate profits.34
In conclusion, Fraser maintains that Honneths theory of recognition is

congenitally blind to such system mechanisms, which cannot be
reduced to cultural schemas of evaluation.35 In her view, Honneth
claims that the behavior [of marketsSaB] is wholly governed by the
dynamics of recognition.36 Therefore, his theory is to be classified as
merely truncated culturalism.37
Frasers argument may be summed up as follows: Honneth claims
that capitalist worlds of work are institutionalizations of the principle
of recognition as it relates to individual achievements; if this thesis is
correct, then the level of earned income is a function of cultural
assumptions concerning the value of the remunerated occupations;
however, this conclusion is false. In Frasers opinion, it is impossible to
explain specific levels of earned income by referring onlyor
mainly38to cultural schemas of evaluation concerning the social
ibid. (my emphasis).
ibid., pp. 214215 (my emphasis).
35
ibid., p. 215.
36
ibid., p. 216.
37
ibid., p. 217 (my emphasis).
38
Fraser is thus not committed to the view that culture does not matter at all when
it comes to economics. Such a position has been taken up by Jrgen Habermas, who
takes the modern economy to be a social sphere that is free from norms (J. Habermas,
The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston, Beacon Press,
33
34
70
value of different professional activities. What needs to be taken into

account here, she believes, are political-economic factors [] which
cannot be reduced to cultural schemas of evaluation.
In considering this, Fraser claims to show why capitalist worlds of
work cannot be analyzed in terms of recognition theory. As a result,
her critique is directed not only at Honneths theory, but also at recognition theory in general. This is evident from her belief that, on the
rigorous grounds provided by her argument, capitalist markets can
only be analyzed systems-theoretically.39
If this holds true, recognition theory is also an ill-suited candidate
for grounding a critique of contemporary capitalism that is consistent
with the methodological requirements of Critical Theory. Indeed,
should it be the case that the distribution of goods and income depends
largely on political-economic factors that are themselves independent from patterns of recognition, economic injustices would have to be
explained by reference to these factors and remedied by measures
affecting them. Criticizing such injustices on the basis of recognition
theory would therefore fail to meet the requirements of an internal40
critique. For this reason, it would be theoretically misleading and
politically counterproductive.41
Is this critique justified? There are two things to consider here.
On the one hand, it should be noted that within economics there is
a growing consciousness of how norms are relevant for the behavior of
economic actors (when these actors are human beings). This is a connection of fundamental importance for advocates of the so-called new
institutional economics. In their view, it is necessary to take into
account norms, mores, traditions and customs42 in order to appropriately describe and reliably predict the behavior of economic actors.
Now if, as Honneth believes, norms of recognition are constitutive of
bourgeois-capitalist societies, then the theory of recognition would be
an indispensableand centralelement for the analysis of economic
19841987). By contrast, Fraser believes that markets are culturally embedded (see
ibid., p. 212), but that market prices are governed primarily by political-economic
factors that have to be analyzed systems-theoretically.
39
See ibid., pp. 216222.
40
Honneth, Nachwort: Der Grund der Anerkennung. Eine Erwiderung auf
kritische Rckfragen, p. 334.
41
Compare for example Zurn, Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy:
Dilemmas of Honneths Critical Social Theory.
42
S. Voigt, Institutionenkonomik (Munich, Fink, 2002), p. 19.

behavior from the point of view of institutional economics. Thus, there
are considerations within contemporary economics that speak in favor
of taking Honneths theory seriously with regard to social theory.
On the other hand, Honneth fails to sufficiently elucidate the
conceptual relations between legal respect, social esteem, individual
achievements, and economic processes. To substantiate his socialtheoretical claims, he would have to explain why the core institutions
of capitalist society can be understood as institutionalizations of specific forms of recognition. In particular he would have to show that
neoliberal markets can be understood in terms of recognition theory.
Moreover, given the socio-political aims of his theory, Honneth would
have to explain how neoliberal capitalism can be criticized on the
basis of forms of recognition that belong to the normative fabric of
bourgeois-capitalist societies. As I have shown elsewhere, however,
Honneths understanding of legal respect and social esteem is too
vague to meet these requirements.43 It is therefore unsurprising that his
recognition theory has received severe criticism.
In my view, Hegels social and political philosophy can help clarify the conceptual relations between patterns of recognition and
economic processes, and it can help us understand why recognition
theory matters when it comes to analyzing capitalist markets. Moreover,
Hegels philosophy opens up the possibility of criticizing forms of
capitalism that can be qualified as neoliberal by referring to patterns
of recognition that are part and parcel of the normative fabric of bourgeois-capitalist societies. Hegels social and political philosophy can
thus significantly contribute to achieving the aims of contemporary
Critical Theory in the domains of social theory and social critique.
In the Philosophy of Right Hegel sets out to analyze the normative
fabric of the modern world. On my reading the conclusion to this analysis is that members of a well-ordered modern society recognize one
another in three different respects: as persons, as bourgeois citizens,
and as members of a political community. From the standpoint of contemporary Critical Theory, Hegels notions of recognition as a person
and as a bourgeois are of greatest importance. In what follows, Iwill
43
Compare H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, Personal Respect, Private Property, and
Market Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel, in Ethical Theory and
Moral Practice, Vol. 11, 2008, pp. 573586 and Schmidt am Busch, Can the Goals of
the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a Theory of Recognition?, pp. 257283.
72
focus on the latter kind of recognition.44 With resources provided by a

new interpretation of what Hegel terms bourgeois honor45 (IV), the
corporation46 (V), and also the quest for profit [Sucht des Gewinns]47
and luxury48 (VI), I will substantiate my above claim that Hegelian
philosophy can help achieve the aims of contemporary Critical Theory
in the domains of social theory and social critique.
IV
In Hegels view, participation in the work world is an integral part of an
honorable life in modern times and grounds a specific form of social
esteem. Hegel develops this thought as follows: in a modern civil society [brgerliche Gesellschaft], [t]he ethical disposition49 of the people
can be characterized by reference to the notion of bourgeois honor
[Ehre],50 according to which
each individual, by his own determination, makes himself a member of
one of the moments of civil society through his activity, diligence, and
skill, and supports himself in this capacity; and only through this mediation with the universal does he provide for himself and in this way gain
recognition in his own eyes [Vorstellung] and in the eyes of others.51
It should first be noted that Hegel uses the term honor in this context
to emphasize the importance of what it denotes. Indeed, he regards
44
I have discussed Hegels conception of recognition as a person elsewhere.
Compare Schmidt am Busch, Personal Respect, Private Property, and Market
Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel. See also M. Quante, Hegels
Concept of Action, trans. Dean Moyar, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004,
pp. 1355.
45
Hegel, G.W.F., Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. W. Wood, trans.
H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 244. I use H. B. Nisbets
translation of Hegels Philosophy of Right, which I have occasionally altered for the
sake of clarity and consistency. Changes to Nisbets translation are not noted. I quote
Hegels 1821/22 commentary to the Philosophy of Right with my own translations
(see G. W. F. Hegel, Die Philosophie des Rechts. Vorlesung von 1821/22, ed. H. Hoppe,
Frankfurt (Main), Suhrkamp, 2005).
46
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 250256.
47
ibid., 306.
48
ibid., 253, Remark.
49
ibid., 207.
50
ibid., 244.
51
ibid., 207.

the conception of honor described above as a principle52 of modern
civil society.53 By employing the term honor, Hegel gestures towards
the fact that this concept is as important for bourgeois society as the
conception of knightly honor was for feudal societies. Thus, even if the
term honor seems to be antiquated, it is possible that what it denotes
is relevant for our discussion.54
What exactly does Hegel mean by an honorable bourgeois life? This
question may be answered step by step with a closer examination of the
quote above. I will examine the quotes most salient features.
(i) by his own determination:55 As people who respect one another as
persons, the members of a modern society regard themselves as authorized to decide for themselves which ends they would like to pursue. In
Hegels view, this claim is related to decisions concerning the social
production and distribution of goods.56 Consequently, the members of
a modern society regard each other as authorized to take up a career
path by [their] own determination. Such a determination is one
aspect of what is held to be an honorable life.
(ii) makes himself a member of one of the moments of civil society
through his activity, diligence, and skill, and supports himself in this
capacity: With the expression the moments of civil society, Hegel is
referring to the socio-economic spheres of agriculture and the urban
production of goods and public administration.57 Thus, one aspect of
ibid., 245.
ibid., 245.
54
It is interesting that Rawlsian liberalism has been criticized with arguments that
are very similar to the ones developed in what follows. Compare G. Doppelt, Rawls
System of Justice: A Critique from the Left, Nous, Vol. 15, no. 3, 1981, pp. 259309 and
G. Doppelt, The Place of Self-Respect in a Theory of Justice, Inquiry, Vol. 52, no. 2,
2008, pp. 127154.
55
In Hegels view, the male members of civil society are primarily responsible for
external acquisitions and for caring for the familys [economic; SaB] needs (Hegel,
Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 171). Accordingly, Hegel only speaks of these citizens when discussing his notion of bourgeois honor. In order not to further complicate
the following presentation, I have decided not to refer explicitly to the female members
of civil society when analyzing and discussing Hegels conception of bourgeois honor.
I should like to note, though, that Hegel does not advance any systematic argument in
favor of excluding female citizens from the work world and the realm of bourgeois
honor.
56
See on this topic my discussion in Schmidt am Busch, Personal Respect, Private
Property, and Market Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel.
57
Compare Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 203205.
52
53
74
an honorable bourgeois life is becoming and remaining a member of

one of these moments of civil society through ones acquisition and
application of skills relevant to ones careerand not, for instance,
on the basis of personal connections or ones social origins.58
(iii) only through this mediation with the universal does he provide for
himself : Whoever wishes to lead an honorable life must satisfy his
own demand for goods through his process of mediation with the
universal. Such a bourgeois would therefore not provide for himself
without making himself a member of one of the moments of civil
society and contributing in this capacity to the production of goods
that are useful for other members of society or the public.
According to this requirement, it is not honorable for man to provide
for himself merely through means that have not been acquired
through his own occupational work, or merely through social aid. Of
course, a bourgeois could conceivably earn his living partly through
occupational work and partly through social aid. But, would it be possible for this person to lead an honorable life?59 Hegel does not seem to
discuss the relation between providing for oneself and the process of
mediation with the universal from a quantitative point of view. The
passage quoted above suggests that there has to be such mediation, but
not necessarily mediation to the extent that the value of the goods one
produces for others has to be at least as high as the value of the goods
58
It is interesting to consider whether Hegels political and social philosophy could
ground something like a right to work. According to some commentators of the
Philosophy of Right, this question can be answered in the affirmative. M. Hardimon, for
instance, claims that Hegel maintains, more specifically, that individuals, as members
of civil society, have a positive right to the basic prerequisites of full social participation: work and livelihood. (M. O. Hardimon, Hegels Social Philosophy. The Project of
Reconciliation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 197). A similar argument can be found in W. Kersting, Polizei und Korporation in Hegels Darstellung der
brgerlichen Gesellschaft, in Hegel-Jahrbuch, 1986, p. 376. In light of the factors
named in (i) and (ii) above (by ones own determination, activity, diligence, and
skill), I do not find it possible to ground, on the basis of the Philosophy of Right, such
a thing as an unconditional individual right to participate in the social process of production that can be obtained through legal action. Participation in the social process
of production that is not mediated by the above factors would not, in Hegels view,
correspond to what the members of modern societies would regard as an honorable
life. On the topic of the right to work, see also my systematic considerations in Schmidt
am Busch Gibt es ein Recht auf Arbeit?, in Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie, Vol.
51, no. 6, 2003, pp. 949968.
59
In view of the large number of persons whose earned income in the private sector
is supplemented by public funds, the importance of this question extends beyond an
interpretation of Hegel.

one receives from them. As a result, it is possible that Hegel would
answer our question in the affirmative. I shall return to this point.60
For the present discussion, it should be noted that the time span
between the acquisition and the consumption of goods is insignificant.
When a bourgeois acquires a certain amount of goods in the process of
mediation with the universal, he remains at liberty, according to the
modern worlds conception of honor, to consume these goods at a later
point in time. Consequently, a bourgeois need not remain in continuous employment to be able to lead an honorable life. If at time t1 he is
not pursuing any work and earns his living with goods acquired
through work at an earlier point in time t0, he still leads an honorable
life at t1.
Since Hegel holds that the division of labor in a modern society
has advanced to the point where a bourgeois cannot earn a living as
a self-sufficient person,61 he does not ask whether it is possible for a
bourgeois who performs no work (in the social sense of the term) to
lead an honorable life if he refrains from the consumption of socially
produced goods. We can also disregard this question for the present
discussion.
(iv) and in this way gain recognition in his own eyes and in the eyes
of others: In light of the factors given in (i), (ii) and (iii) (in this way),
another aspect of an honorable life is to be recognized in ones own
eyes as well as in the eyes of the other bourgeois.62 This should be
understood in the following way:
As we have seen, for a bourgeois it is important
(i) to decide for himself to which moment of bourgeois society
he would like to belong;
(ii) to cultivate specific skills whose application in the work world
is of use to society; and
(iii) to earn his living by applying such skills within the work world.
For the bourgeois, these three requirements are aspects of the life
he wishes to lead. They thus form integral parts of the expectation that
See section V below.
Compare Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 183.
62
To be precise, Hegel speaks here not of the other bourgeois, but merely of other
bourgeois. However, since he thematizes the process of mediating [] with the universal here, he clearly means the view of all the bourgeois belonging to the universal
or society when he writes the eyes of others.
60
61
76
he has for a good life of his own. Against such a backdrop, he is only
recognized [] in [his] own eyes if he does indeed lead a life that
fulfills these three requirements.
In this case, since the conception of honor that the bourgeois holds
is shared by the other members of society, he is also recognized in their
eyes as someone
(i) who has made himself belong to one of the moments of bourgeois society through his own decision;
(ii) who has, by his own effort, earned skills and qualifications
whose application in the work world is of use to society; and
(iii) who does not receives goods from society without producing
goods for society.
As an amendment to what Hegel has said, one should point out that it
is also important for a bourgeois
(iv) to be recognized by the other members of society with regard to
the above points (i), (ii) and (iii).
Thus, it is not only important for such a person to lead a life that fulfills
requirements (i), (ii) and (iii); it is also important for him to be recognized by society on these counts. To take up Hegels formulation above,
it could be said that regarding oneself as being recognized in the eyes
of others is another aspect of an honorable life.
According to Hegels conception of bourgeois honor, then, it is in
the interest of the members of a modern society to earn their living
or satisfy their demand for goodsin a particular way: namely by participating in social processes of production. People who wish to lead
honorable lives in this sense wish not merely to fend for themselves,
but to do so in a way that also fends for others (their fellow bourgeois
and/or the public). Although many economists regard work as merely
something arduous and privative that people endeavor to minimize,63
according to Hegels conception of bourgeois honor, work (in the social
sense of the term) is an integral part of a good life in the modern world.
Hegels idea that this form of honor is a good of great importanceforthe members of modern societies develops out of a socialpsychological analysis of the living conditions of the unemployed and
See, for instance, K. Hillebrand, Elementare Makrokonomie, Munich, Vienna,
Oldenbourg, 1996.
63

impoverished.64 As he himself remarks, he has studied these phenomena primarily in the example of England.65 On the basis of such
studies, Hegel surmises that what he terms bourgeois honor is
a principle of civil society66 that must be considered in its sociopolitical ramifications:
If the direct burden [of support] were to fall on the wealthier class, or if
direct means were available in other public institutions (such as wealthy
hospitals, foundations, or monasteries) to maintain the increasingly
impoverished mass at its normal standard of living, the livelihood of the
needy would be ensured without the mediation of work; this would be
contrary to the principle of civil society and the feeling of self-sufficiency
and honor among its individual members.67
V
According to the Philosophy of Right, three types of institutions are
decisive for ensuring that the greatest number of bourgeois can lead
an honorable life: (1.) abstract right,68 (2.) the police69 and (3.) the
corporations.70 Abstract right is correlated to aspect (i) of an honorable life: it protects the private autonomy71 of an individual bourgeois to
decide as an individual72 which career he would like to take up. As
Ihave shown elsewhere, abstract right may be understood as an institutionalization of the mutual recognition of bourgeois as persons
It should be noted, though, that this analysis is part of a speculative philosophical investigation. What Hegel understands by such an approach is a question I have
discussed elsewhere. Compare H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, Religise Hingabe oder soziale
Freiheit. Die saint-simonistische Theorie und die Hegelsche Sozialphilosophie, Hamburg,
Felix Meiner, 2007, pp. 93102.
65
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 245, Remark.
66
ibid.
67
ibid. F. Neuhouser is therefore correct in emphasizing the spiritual satisfactionself-esteem and the recognition of othersthat comes from fulfilling ones
material needs through ones own labor and effort. In F. Neuhouser, Foundations of
Hegels Social Theory. Actualizing Freedom, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press,
2000, p. 173.
68
69
ibid., 231249.
70
ibid., 250256.
71
I use this phrase in the juridical sense. See, for instance, T. Korenke, Brgerliches
Recht, Munich, Vienna, Oldenbourg Korenke, 2006.
72
64
78
(inHegels understanding of the term).73 Abstract right includes, but is

not exhausted by, proprietary rights that form the legal framework of
markets. In Hegels view, however, if as many bourgeois as possible are
to realize (and be recognized under) aspects (ii) and (iii) of an honorable life, then it is necessary to both regulate the markets institutionalized with abstract right and also to structure the sphere of production
in a specific way. Market regulations belong to the domain of an economic police74 authorized in cases of market failure to, among other
things, take measures aimed at stabilizing the economy.75 Corporations,
by contrast, are essentially responsible for structuring the sphere of
production. Since I have dealt with Hegels theory of the police elsewhere,76 I shall focus on his theory of corporations in what follows.
In order to avoid misunderstandings, I shall first make some remarks
about terminology. When using the expression corporation, Hegel
does not refer to a particular historical phenomenon. Thus his theory
of corporations cannot be read as a plea for the social rehabilitation
of corporations that were called into question during the course of
the French Revolution and the nascent Industrial Revolution in
Europe. Rather, Hegels use of the term corporation denotes a form of
organization that only exhibits unspecific historical traits and contains
rather general institutional directives.77 For this reason Hegel
employsseemingly arbitrarilya multitude of terms to denote the
form of organization in question (e.g. corporation [Korporation],
73
Compare Schmidt am Busch, Personal Respect, Private Property, and Market
Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel.
74
It may not be amiss to signal that Hegels theory of the police is inspired by cameralistic economics. On the philosophical foundations of this school of thought, see
my discussion in Schmidt am Busch, Cameralism as Political Metaphysics: Human
Nature, the State, and Natural Law in the Thought of Johann Heinrich Gottlob von
Justi, in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 16, no. 3,
pp. 409430.
75
Compare Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 236. On Hegels theory of
the police see, for instance, Hardimon, Hegels Social Philosophy. The Project of
Reconciliation, pp. 195197, and P. Franco, Hegels Philosophy of Freedom, New Haven,
London, Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 265277.
76
Compare Schmidt am Busch, Religise Hingabe oder soziale Freiheit. Die saintsimonistische Theorie und die Hegelsche Sozialphilosophie, pp. 156163.
77
S. Gallagher has emphasized this point. Compare S. Gallagher, Interdependence
and Freedom in Hegels Economics, in ed. W. Maker, Hegel on Economics and Freedom,
Macon, Mercer University Press, 1987, p. 174. A. Honneth, by contrast, takes a different view on this point when he accuses Hegel of equating spheres of recognition
and institutional complexes. Compare Honneth, Redistribution as Recognition:
A Response to Nancy Fraser, pp.172173.

cooperative [Genossenschaft], guild [Zunft], and estate [Stand]78),
asserting that corporations can be guilds, and this can be a municipality [Stadtgemeinde] and a city in itself; the state, however, is the
whole, the unity of many such cooperatives [Genossenschaften] and
municipalities.79
Hegel uses the expression estates [Stnde] on the one hand as an
equivalent to corporations, and on the other hand as a term for the
particular systems80 into which he takes modern society to be
divided: the agricultural estate, the business estate and the estate of
civil servants.81 Hegel views each of these estates as a specific social
sphere, namely, as a particular system of needs, with their corresponding means, varieties of work, modes of satisfaction, and theoretical and
practical education.82 Now, the differentiating characteristics Hegel
names herespecial forms of consumption, work, and educationare
also features by way of which different corporations distinguish themselves from one another. (This will be shown in what follows). The
common feature of these three estates and of corporations may explain
why Hegel occasionally describes both as estates.
Corporations are sites of production for the goods required by society. Regarding the legal situation of corporations, Hegel writes:
By this definition [Bestimmung], the corporation has the right, under the
supervision of the public authority [Macht], to look after its own interests within its enclosed sphere, to admit members in accordance with
their objective qualification of skill and rectitude and in numbers determined by the universal context, to protect its members against particular
contingencies, and to educate others so as to make them eligible for
membership. In short, it has the right to assume the role of a second family for its members, a role which must remain more indeterminate in the
case of civil society in general, which is more remote from individuals
and their particular requirements.83
Corporations are subject to the legal requirements that are in force,

which include the police regulation mentioned aboveit is in this
See, for instance, Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 207 and 253.
Hegel, Die Philosophie des Rechts. Vorlesung von 1821/22, 256.
80
81
ibid., 203205.
82
ibid., 201. It should be noted that Hegel does not use the term system in a
systems-theoretical sense.
83
ibid., 252.
78
79
80
sense that they are under the supervision of the public authority.
As for the rights of corporations, Hegel says the following:
1. Corporations have the right to determine for themselves
whom they would like to take on as members. However, corporations may not engage in hiring practices that would be discriminatory by todays lights. Rather, they are legally bound to
recruit their members according to the following criteria: (i)
the skill[s] or qualifications of the candidate; (ii) the rectitude or willingness of the candidate to observe the regulationsand demands of the law; (iii) societys universal context
or the social need of the goods produced by the corporation. For
Hegel, candidates skill[s] and rectitude are to be determined
objectively. Therefore, in a corporations hiring practices, there
needs to be a general and transparent way of determining which
qualifications are expected as well as what counts as proof
thereof.
2. Corporations have the right to establish insurance systems that
secure the livelihoods of their members should these members
prove unable to work due to illness, accident or old age, and they
are authorized to require their members to contribute to the
maintenance of these systems.84 In this way, they provide their
members with legal claims to financial support in case of an
inability to work. Within a corporation, the protection against
particular contingencies thus takes the form of rights: Insofar
as corporations protect their members, the members have a
right to the corporations help, and thus it is not alms that they
receive, but rather a right.85 Because this is so, in the corporation rectitude [] receives the true recognition and honor
which are due to it.86
3. Corporations have the right to introduce measures by which
their members may gain skills, qualifications or further training,
and they are authorized to require their members to take part in
such measures.
84
In this context, Hegel is thinking of contributions that are proportionate to ones
income. Compare ibid., 253, Remark.
85
ibid., 253.
86
ibid., 253, Remark.

According to Hegel, in exercising the rights named under headings 2
and 3 above, the corporation serves as a functional equivalent to the
traditional family. For in pre-modern societies,
the family is the substantive whole whose task it is to provide for this
particular aspect of the individual, both by giving him the means and
skills he requires in order to earn his living from the universal resources,
and by supplying his livelihood and maintenance in the event of his incapacity to look after himself. But civil society tears the individual
[Individuum] away from family ties, alienates the members of the family
from one another, and recognizes them as self-subsistent persons.
Furthermore, it substitutes its own soil for the external inorganic nature
and paternal soil from which the individual [der Einzelne] gained his
livelihood, and subjects the existence [Bestehen] of the whole family
itself to dependence on civil society and to contingency.87
Because it protects its members against the contingencies of being

unable to work due to illness, accident or old age, as well as of the loss
of market-related professional qualifications, the corporation
assume[s] the role of a second family.88 However, it should be noted
that this protection takes on a different form than it does in the family.
While members of a family protect one another out of love and affection,89 relations between a corporations members are regulated by law.
(As we have seen, Hegel himself makes this point.) Although the corporation thus fulfills two functions that were allotted to the family in
pre-modern society, it does so in a different way.
How does the corporation help its members lead an honorable life?
This question is taken up in 253 of the Philosophy of Right:
In the corporation, the family90 not only has its firm basis in that its livelihood is guaranteedi.e. it has secure resourceson condition of its
[possessing a certain] capability, but the two [i.e. livelihood and capability] are also recognized, so that the member of a corporation has no need
to demonstrate his competence and his regular income and means of
supporti.e. the fact that he is somebodyby any further external evidence. In this way, it is also recognized that he belongs to a whole which
is itself a part of society in general, and that he has an interest in, and
ibid., 238.
ibid., 252.
89
Compare ibid., 162165. See also A. Honneth, Suffering from Indeterminacy.
90
Hegel refers here to his claim that the corporation is like a second family (ibid.,
252) for its members. See above. We can leave this point aside here.
87
88
82

endeavours to promote, the less selfish end of this whole. Thus, he has his
honor in his estate.91
According to this passage, the member of a corporation leads an honorable lifefor he has, as Hegel says, his honor in his estate. We thus
need to address two questions: What does it mean to have ones honor
in ones estate? And how does the corporation contribute to leading an
honorable life?
As we have seen, to lead an honorable life one must
(i) decide for oneself which moment of bourgeois society one
would like to belong to;
(ii) cultivate specific skills and qualifications whose application in
the work world is of use to society;
(iii) earn ones living by applying such skills and qualifications
within the work world; and
(iv) be recognized by society with regard to points (i), (ii) and (iii).
If we assume that abstract right provides sufficient protection for
aspect (i) of an honorable life, as well as the social recognition of this
aspect, then we have to ask: How does the corporation contribute to
the fulfillment of the other three aspects laid out above?
Regarding point (ii): The members of a (properly functioning) corporation possess qualifications whose application in the work world
benefits society. As we have seen, possessing an objective qualification
of skill is a condition of their membership in the corporation, and by
participating in measures for gaining qualifications or further training,
they make sure that they remain in possession of capabilities that are
relevant for production. As members of corporations, bourgeois can
thus earn socially relevant qualifications.
Regarding point (iii): The members of a corporation mutually secure
their livelihood through work and through the operations of an internal insurance system that protects them financially should they be
unable to work due to illness, accident or old age. As a result, the corporate assurance of livelihood is constituted by the mutual work of
these bourgeois: by making a part of their income available for the
support of those colleagues who are not productive at that time, the
working members of the corporation secure not only their own subsistence, but also that of their colleagues.
ibid., 253.
91

The structure of this corporate assurance of livelihood has effects on
the type of honor that is accorded to the members of such an institution. Since they do not earn their living as individuals, they cannot lead
an honorable life as individuals. Rather, they are only honorable as
members of a corporation in which they mutually secure their livelihoods through their work and the maintenance of a social insurance
system. It is in this sense that the members of a corporation have their
honor in the corporation or, as Hegel writes, in [their] estate.
It is now possible to return to a question that was posed above.92
There we asked: According to Hegels notion of bourgeois honor, can a
person only lead an honorable life if the value of the goods she produces for others is at least as high as the value of the goods she receives
from them. We concluded that Hegel does not explicitly deal with this
question.
Now, if bourgeois honor takes the form of corporate honor or
honor of ones estate [Standesehre],93 then the condition named
abovedoes not have to be met. For it is possible to have corporate or
estate based honor even if the value of ones own contributions to an
insurance system is less than the value of the insurance benefits one
claims. However, in order to attain this sort of honor, one must contribute to the corporate production of goods. Only those who have
worked as a member of a corporation can have their honor in [their]
estate.
Regarding point (iv): The members of a corporation are socially recognized with regard to points (ii) and (iii). Hegel states this explicitly
in the passage from the Philosophy of Right quoted above (253). In a
commentary on this paragraph he elaborates:
Honor is being recognized as what one is, such that ones subjectivity is
regarded as such by the other; the competence etc. of the member of a
corporation is recognized by the fact that he is a member, and then this
recognition [Anerkanntsein] is also documented in that he is a member,
a master, and has this title. His title is the external sign for everyone that
he is recognized as such. Thus it [his being recognized; SaB] is also placed
externally. This title expresses the publicity of his recognition by his fellow members, who are in the position to judge his competence; with this
recognition it is also recognized that his livelihood is secure.94
See section IV, point (iii) above.

ibid., 207.
94
ibid., 253.
92
93
84
The social recognition of the professional capability and competence of a corporation member can be analyzed as a two-step process.
The first step concerns an individuals recognition by his colleagues
(step 1) and then his recognition by society (step 2).
Within the corporation, a members recognition as a professionally
qualified and competent individual is based on the ability of other
members of the corporation to judge the relevant qualities of their colleague. Clearly Hegel is of the opinion that the members of a corporation are more capable than most other members of society to make
such judgments. This is not implausible if there exists a professionally
specialized society based on the division of labor. Colleagues sharing a
professional field know which qualifications and efforts are needed in
their work sphere, and they have the competence to judge the qualifications and efforts displayed by their colleagues. On the other hand, in
a highly specialized work world individuals normally lack the knowledge to judge professional performance in other social sectors appropriately. For these reasons, it is plausible to maintain that in a modern
society colleagues are especially qualified to judge their competence.
The recognition that the professionally qualified individual experiences within society (step 2) is based on the recognition that his colleagues accord him (step 1). Following Hegel, the former kind of
recognition takes place when ones recognition by ones colleagues is
rendered public in a specific way. Titles act as the vehicles of this
communication insofar as they distinguish their bearers as members
of a corporation. They are the external sign for everyone that he is
recognized as such, or the publicity of his recognition by his fellow
members, who are in the position to judge his competence.
In regard to the general recognition of the individual as professionally qualified, non-members of a given corporation simply follow the
judgment internally carried out within that corporationjudgment
that is rendered public in a socially determined manner. While nonmembers normally have neither the opportunity nor the professional
competence to judge the capability and competence of a corporation
member, they rely on the judgment of those who, as bearers of titles,
are publicly recognized as competent judges in a particular section of
the work world.95 If such judges esteem someone in the socially
95
On this topic of being recognized as a recognizer see H. Ikheimo, On the Genus
and Species of Recognition, Inquiry, Vol. 45, 2002, pp. 447462, H. Ikheimo &
A. Laitinen, Analyzing Recognition: Identification, Acknowledgement and Recognitive

required manner for his professional qualifications, skills and efforts,
then, following Hegel, the esteemed individual will also be recognized
in this regard by the other members of society. If no esteem is accorded
to him by his colleagues, he will not count as professionally qualified or
competent in the eyes of the others either.
Hegel argues in a similar manner when it comes to the social recognition of the corporation member in the manner specified under point
(iii): the titles express the publicity of his recognition by his fellow
members, who are in the position to judge his competence; in this recognition it is also recognized that his livelihood is secure. According
to this, persons distinguished as members of a corporation are
esteemed by society as bourgeois who secure their livelihood or regular income and subsistence through the production of socially needed
goods. In view of what has been established under point (iii) above,
this kind of esteem cannot be accorded to persons as individuals, but
only as members of a corporation. Because of their titles other members of society take them to be persons who mutually secure their own
demand for goods by means of a socially useful activity. It is in this
sense that they are regarded as having their honor in their corporation
or estate.96
For the purposes of this chapter, the following should be emphasized: In the form of recognition described above, professionally relevant competencies can be classified as being of higher or lower value
only to a very small degree. It is certainly conceivable that there are
different titles within a single profession (or corporation) that distinguish their bearers as being more or less competent; however, many
persons who pursue different professions cannot be classified comparatively on the basis of their titles. This can be explained by the content
Attitudes towards Persons, in eds. B. v. d. Brink and D. Owen, Recognition and Power,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 3356, and A. Laitinen, On the
Scope of Recognition: The Adequate Regard and Mutuality, in eds. Schmidt am
Busch and Zurn, The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives, pp. 319342.
96
As noted above, Hegel believes that any corporation is publicly recognized as an
institution that serves to produce socially useful goods. (Compare Hegel, Elements of
the Philosophy of Right, 253 and 253, Remark.) It is possible, however, that some
corporations be regarded by some members of society as production sites of (i) socially
useless or even (ii) socially harmful goods. Obviously, such circumstances would be
relevant from the perspective of recognition theory. While the issues related to the
above cases are too complex to receive full treatment here, they have to be taken into
account by any effort to make Hegels conception of bourgeois honor fruitful for contemporary debates.
86
of the professional activities in question. Members of the same profession (or corporation) perform work that is similar enough to be compared on the basis of its content. (For this reason, colleagues are
particularly able to judge one anothers professional capability and
competence). By contrast, many professional activities in a highly specialized work world cannot be compared by reference to their content.
Indeed, what should one select as the measure for a comparison
between, say, scientific, pedagogical, craftsmans and artistic work?
To summarize: in Hegels view, societies characterized by abstract
right, police regulation of markets and sites of corporate production
form a set of institutions that enable people to lead an honorable life,
that is to say
(i) to decide for themselves which moment of bourgeois society
they would like to belong to;
(ii) to cultivate specific skills and qualifications whose application
in the work world is of use to society;
(iii) to earn their living by applying such skills and qualifications
within the work world; and
(iv) to be recognized by society with regard to points (i), (ii)
and (iii).
VI
In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel implicitly upholds the following two
theses:
1. As a member of a functioning corporation a bourgeois is not
interested in attaining an ever-increasing level of (personal)
consumption.
income.
Within the framework of the present study it is simply not possible to
explain why Hegel subscribes to these two theses. However, it is also
not necessary. I will thus limit myself to remarking that Hegel believed
that members of a well-ordered society can fulfill their need for recognition (as persons, bourgeois and members of a political community)
without having either of the interests referenced under headings 1
and 2. Furthermore, such members have no other needs that would

motivate them to constantly pursue a higher level of personal income
or consumption.
Here one could object that Hegel himself analyzes patterns of behaviordenoted by the phrases quest for profit [Gewinn]97 and love of
extravagance or luxury98that derive from the pursuit of the interests named in theses 1 and 2. Further, Hegel also indicates that these
behaviors are specifically modern phenomena that arise in civil societies. And finally, Hegel convincingly argues that a society whose members pursue interests 1 and 2 is in danger of destroying its own order of
recognition.99
All of this is certainly true. However, this does not mean that our
above observations are incorrect. In order to reconstruct Hegels theory of the quest for profit and luxury (and to establish its implications for current Critical Theory), one must turn to 253 of the
Philosophy of Right, where his theory is outlined.
As we have already seen, Hegel states in the main text of the paragraph: In the corporation, the family not only has its firm basis in that
its livelihood is guaranteedi.e. it has secure resourceson condition
of its [possessing a certain] capability, but the two [i.e. livelihood and
capability] are also recognized, so that the member of a corporation has
no need to demonstrate his competence and his regular income and
means of supporti.e. the fact that he is somebodyby any further
external evidence.
Hegels remark to this paragraph reads as follows:
When complaints are made about that luxury and love of extravagance
of the professional [gewerbetreibenden] classes which is associated with
the creation of a rabble, we must not overlook, in addition to the other
causes [of this phenomenon] (e.g. the increasingly mechanical nature of
work), its ethical basis as implied in what has been said above. If the individual [der Einzelne] is not a member of a legally recognized [berechtigten] corporation (and it is only through legal recognition that a
community becomes a corporation), his is without the honor of belonging to an estate, his isolation reduces him to the selfish aspect of his trade,
and his livelihood and satisfaction lack stability. He will accordingly try
to gain recognition through the external manifestations of success in his
trade, and these are without limit [unbegrenzt], because it is impossible
ibid., 306.
ibid., 253, Remark.
99
See, for instance, G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophie des Geistes (1805/06), in Gesammelte
Werke, Vol. 8, ed. R.-P. Horstmann, Hamburg, Meiner, 1976, pp, 242245.
97
98
88

for him to live in a way appropriate to his estate if his estate does not
exist; for a community can exist in civil society only if it is legally constituted and recognized. Hence no way of life of a more general kind appropriate to such an estate can be devised.100
To understand the following reflections it is helpful to consider the

thrust of Hegels argument. Hegel tries to show that striving for everincreasing levels of income and consumption is a compensatory striving for social recognition that only appears under specific social
conditions. In doing so he contests the existence of something like an
original need or tendency belonging to human nature to increase ones
own income or level of consumption without limit. Hegel tries to
substantiate the two theses above by showing that a modern society
that includes an economic police and corporations does not fulfill the
conditions that, in his view, must obtain before striving for an everincreasing level of income or consumption emerges as a phenomenon
at a level relevant for society.
In what follows, I will investigate (i) what the abovementioned striving for social recognition consists of; (ii) the conditions under which it
emerges, in Hegels view; and (iii) the extent to which it can be understood as a compensatory phenomenon.
Regarding point (i): The type of striving for social recognition in
question consists in try[ing] to gain recognition through the external
manifestations of success in his trade, [which] are without limit.
As Hegels reference to the luxury and love of extravagance of the professional classes makes clear, the phrase external manifestations
denotes consumptive expenditures. Persons who strive for recognition
in this way therefore try to be recognized by society as professionally
successful bourgeois, and they believe that they can attain this goal by
documenting their economic success in the form of consumptive
expenditures.
More precisely, this striving for recognition is based on the assumption that a bourgeois is regarded as all the more professionally successful the greater his economic success in his trade in comparison with
that of others. So long as he belongs to such a context of recognition,
he will thus be motivated to attain an ever-increasing income, and
to document his economic success with the highest possible consumptive expenditures. For this reason, persons who wish to be recognized
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 253, Remark.
100

in this manner can be said to have a quest for profit as well as a tendency towards luxury and love of extravagance.
These considerations make it clear that bourgeois who strive for the
type of recognition described here differ from corporation members in
the manners laid out above in theses 1 and 2: they try to attain an everincreasing level of income and consumption for themselves.
Regarding points (ii) and (iii): Under what conditions does the phenomenon of striving for recognition analyzed in point (i) emerge? The
passages cited above from 253 of the Philosophy of Right as well as
Hegels Remark to this paragraph give us five factors to consider:
(F-1) Persons who strive for the type of recognition analyzed in
(i) can only secure their livelihood by means of their own income (and
by means of wealth accumulated from it). In contrast to
the members of a corporation, they are isolated individuals in the
sense that they do not belong to any collective social insurance system.101 For this reason, their livelihood lacks, as Hegel puts it,
stability.102
(F-2) Persons who wish to be recognized in the manner laid out in (i)
do not participate in any way of life of a more general kind that might
shape and stabilize their consumptive demands or the manner in
which they are satisfied. Due to their isolation from any such way of
life, their consumptive demands and the manner in which they are
satisfied lack stability.103
(F-3) Persons who strive for recognition of the type analyzed in (i) do
not belong to a professional field in which the individual has an interest not only in his own well-being, but also that of his colleagues. They
are therefore isolated individuals in the sense that they are reduced
to the selfish aspect of [their] trade.
(F-4) Persons who wish to be recognized in the manner laid out in (i)
are without the honor of belonging to an estate. Therefore they
101
As we have seen, Hegel places social insurance systems on the same level as corporations (and not on the level of the society as a whole).
102
Here I leave aside the possibility of securing ones livelihood through
inheritance.
103
Here one could object that the stabilization in question might also be produced
by membership in other social contexts, for instance religious communities. It is therefore problematic to hold that non-membership in a corporation necessarily goes along
with unstable consumptive behaviors. Hegel, however, appears to do precisely this, as
his Remark to 235 of the Philosophy of Right shows.
90
cannot be socially esteemed as bourgeois who secure their livelihood

through their work on the basis of their membership in a corporation.104
Instead, they are isolated individuals in the sense that they must
themselves show to the other members of society that they earn their
living with success.
(F-5) Persons striving for recognition in the manner analyzed in (i) do
not belong to any production site of social goods in which they would
experience esteem on the basis of their professional capability and
competence.105 They are isolated individuals in the sense that they
do not have a professional field in which their accomplishments might
be positively evaluated by other competent persons on the basis indicated above. As a result, they cannot receive any social esteem as professionally qualified and competent individuals.
To sum up: persons wishing to be recognized in the manner analyzed
in section (i) have the following properties: they can only secure their
livelihood by means of their own income and by means of wealth accumulated from their own income; they have no stable consumptive
preferences; they have no colleagues in whose well-being they might
have an interest; they are not socially esteemed on the basis of their
membership in a corporation as individuals who earn their own living
by means of their work; and they are not esteemed as professionally
qualified and competent individuals.
Which of these five factors are relevant with respect to the emergence of the type of striving for recognition analyzed in section
(i) above? Obviously, this striving satisfies or compensates for some
human need. But which one? Since Hegel offers no discussion of this
question, it makes sense to distinguish between three possibilities:
(a) the need to secure ones own livelihood (N-1); (b) the need to be
esteemed as a bourgeois who secures his own livelihood with success
(N-2); and (c) the need to be socially esteemed as a professionally
qualified and competent individual (N-3). In investigating these
104
As we have noted, Hegel occasionally employs the expression estate [Stand] as
a synonym for corporation. See section V above. This is also the case here, as indicated by the passage cited above (If the individual is not a member of a legally recognized corporation (and it is only through legal recognition that a community becomes
a corporation), his is without the honor of belonging to an estate []).
105
Hegel, Die Philosophie des Rechts. Vorlesung von 1821/22, 253.

possibilities, we will be able to clarify the relevance of the above five
factors with respect to the emergence of the type of striving for recognition analyzed in section (i).
(a) Let us assume that the behavior discussed in (i) serves to satisfy
the need N-1. Under this interpretation, such behavior is independent
from whether the needy individual is socially esteemed as a professionally qualified member of the work world, or as a bourgeois who
successfully secures his livelihood. But if needs N-2 and N-3 are irrelevant for the present discussion, so are factors F-4 and F-5. Therefore,
if we assume that the behavior analyzed in (i) serves to satisfy the need
N-1, we need to investigate whether its emergence can be explained by
this need, as well as by factors F-1, F-2 and F-3.
Is this possible? According to Hegels 1821/22 commentary to the
Philosophy of Right, one aspect of the striving for recognition analyzed
in (i) can be explained by the need N-1 as well as factors F-1, F-2 and
F-3. This can be seen in the following passages:
Because man is rational, he must make provisions for the future. I earn
my living [Subsistenz], but I want the universality of my subsistence, i.e.
for the span of my life and for my family [].106
Let us assume, Hegel continues, that

each [member of society; SaB] is only assured that he has the permission
to secure his subsistence for himself. Then there is no security of subsistence and no honor. Only the possibility of his subsistence is allowed. The
individual who lacks a corporation in this way is dependent upon the
earnings of the day, and finds himself in the situation of the gambler. He
has to try to win in this instant, and is induced to make demands in the
most impudent manner; because he is dependent on chance, he is
dependent on all contingencies, and the impudence of making demands
belongs to them.107
According to these passages, Hegels argument is as follows: humans

are beings that provide for the future; they are interested in producing
conditions under which their livelihoods (and that of those belonging
to them) can normally be secured for the long-term. If the individual
depends solely on his work for his livelihoodand does not p
articipate
in any collective insurance systemit is in his interest to achieve the
ibid., 251.
ibid., 253.
106
107
92
highest possible income because of his concern for the future. This is
so because he can only protect himself against the particular contingencies108 of human existence through savings. This explains why he
strives to maximize his income in his trade and why in doingsohehas
no qualms about making demands in the most impudent manner.
Following Hegels line of argumentation here, one could say that our
theory (a) is well-suited to account for one aspect of the striving for
recognition analyzed in section (i): the interest in always attaining a
higher income for oneself. To explain this, it would indeed be sufficient
to consider the need to secure ones own livelihood (N-1), and to
assume that human actors are selfish and that their livelihood and
satisfaction lack stability (F-1, F-2 and F-3). By contrast, it would not
be necessary to consider the needs to be socially esteemed as a professionally competent individual and as a bourgeois who successfully
earns his living (N-2 and N-3), or the question of whether these needs
are satisfied or not (F-4 and F-5).
With regard to this argument, two critical remarks are in order:
1. In my view, it is questionable whether every effort to increase
ones income can be explained conclusively by the attempt to
secure ones own livelihood for the long-term. The (continuous)
effort to make a fortune that is already very large even larger can
hardly be traced back to such a motive.109 (This striving could
perhaps be understood as a habitualized striving for high income
that originally served to secure ones livelihood for the longterm. However, we can leave this aside due to the following
point.)
2. Attempts to attain a high level of consumption cannot be
explained by the factors named in (a). If striving for an everincreasing income originates in the motivation to secure ones
livelihood for the long-term, it will be accompanied by the effort
to accumulate savings and thus to limit consumptive expenditures. Therefore, costly consumptive manifestations of ones
own success in [ones] trade cannot be explained by what is
stated in (a). For this reason, we require a different theory.

L. Boltanski and . Chiapello seem to advance a similar argument. Compare
L. Boltanski and .Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott,
London, Verso, 2005.
108
109

(b) Let us add to the elements laid out in (a) the need to be socially
esteemed as a bourgeois who successfully secures his livelihood (N-2),
as well as factor F-4. We can now not only explain why at least those
people who do not possess very large fortunes attempt to maximize
their income, but also why consumptive expenditures are carried out
for reasons related to recognition. According to the present explanation (b), the individual must himself show that he earns his living with
successas we have seen, this function is not fulfilled by membership
in one of the moments of civil society. Furthermore, since he is a selfish actor, consumptive manifestations are an appropriate means with
which he can show his fellowbourgeois that he receives an income that
is sufficient for his livelihood.110
However, there are two problems with such a reading:
1. The elements belonging to (b) cannot explain why consumptive
manifestations take place without limit. (As we have seen, this
is what Hegels claims). In order to document ones success in
earning a living, it can be appropriate to engage in certain consumptive practices; however, it remains unclear why particularly
high levels of consumptive expenditures should be required.
Even if one supposes that subsistence level[s] are cultural phenomena,111 and that among the members of a society there is
some uncertainty about which kinds of income should be
regarded as necessary for securing ones livelihood, it is not possible to account for unlimited consumptive manifestations or
luxury and love of extravagance on the basis of the elements
composing (b). For luxury articles include precisely those goods
that are regarded as unnecessary or superfluous with regard to
earning ones livelihood.112
2. Like (a) above, approach (b) cannot explain why persons who
possess large fortunes strive to make them even larger, and as
large as possible. Since limited consumptive manifestations are
110
Here I leave aside the possibility that consumptive expenditures may also be
financed by inherited wealth.
111
The fact that Hegel shares this assumption is given in 234 and 244 of the
Philosophy of Right.
112
See on this topic W. Sombart, Liebe, Luxus und Kapitalismus. ber die Entstehung
der modernen Welt aus dem Geist der Verschwendung, Berlin, Wagenbach, 1996,
pp. 8589.
94

sufficient for the documentation of success in earning ones living, that striving cannot be inferred from the desire to furnish
such manifestations without limit. Therefore, the above striving,
which is one aspect of the behavior analyzed in (i), cannot be
explained on the basis of approach (b).
(c)The situation improves if we add to the elements included in

(b) both the need to be esteemed as a professionally qualified
and competent individual (N-3) and factor F-5 (according to which
the individual lacks esteem in precisely this regard). This statement
may be surprising. Given F-5, N-3 cannot be fulfilled. Why, then, are
these two elements of interest for the present discussion?
In my opinion, the behavior analyzed in (i) can be understood as compensation for the lack of esteem as a professionally qualified and competent individual. Under this reading, one kind of professional esteem
would be replaced by another kind of professional esteem. What are
the relevant characteristics of these two kinds of esteem?
As we have seen, esteem as a professionally qualified and competent
individual is based upon a positive evaluation of such features that
comes from other competent people (colleagues from the profession or
corporation). On the basis of such an evaluationwhich is socially
expressed by way of titles, according to Hegelan individual is
esteemed as a professional not only by his colleagues, but also by the
other members of society. As explained above, this kind of esteem only
makes it possible to classify professional performances as more or less
valuable to a very limited degree.
The kind of esteem that serves to compensate for the lack of recognition as a professionally qualified and competent individual is based on
the prices paid for professional activities. Accordingly, someone is
regarded as more or less professionally successful the higher or lower
his income is in comparison with that of the other members of society.
Therefore, his social esteem depends on monetary evaluations of
the products (goods or services) that he, and the others, offer. Under
market conditions, all members of societyand not just other competent peopleare, in principle, in a position to carry out such evaluations. It should be noted that this kind of social esteem makes it
possible to classify any work as more or less useful and thus any working person as more or less successful. This is so because it provides a
universalnamely, monetarystandard for the evaluation of these
activities and persons.

If people try to be socially esteemed in this manner, they have a reason to always strive for a higher level of income and consumption. This
thesis can be substantiated on the basis of our reflections thus far.
Under the above assumption, the levels ofand, more precisely, the
differences inincome form the basis of peoples comparative social
esteem as professionals. Thus, from the perspective of social esteem, a
human individual is better positioned when his income rises and/or
when the incomes of other people sink. As a result, an individual participating in a social practice of this kind of esteem has an esteembased reason to strive for an improvement of his income and to
contribute to the reduction of other persons incomes. And since no
maximum in the difference in income can be established, such an individual has an esteem-based reason to always strive anew for an
improvement in his income and for a reduction in the incomes of other
people. If, in addition, we assume that human beings in such circumstances are selfish, lack stable consumptive preferences, and must document their professional success themselves (F-2, F-3 and F-4), it is
understandable why they try to attain the highest possible level of consumption. They regard manifestations of this sort as an appropriate
means to display the level of their income and the extent of their professional success to other members of society. For these reasons, we are
justified in maintaining that the behavior analyzed in (i) can be understood as compensation for the lack of esteem as a professionally qualified and competent individual.113
One might ask whether all five factors have to be given before the
striving for recognition analyzed in (i) can emerge. In my view, this is
not the case. If striving for recognition compensates for the lack of
esteem as a professionally qualified and competent individual, then it
serves to satisfy a need that is independent of the need to secure ones
own living (N-1). Accordingly, the type of striving for recognition analyzed in (i) is independent of the presence or absence of factor F-1.
Even persons whose livelihoods would be secured through social
insurance systems can therefore strive for recognition in this manner.
113
By making this case, I do not say, of course, that the behavior analyzed in section
(i) is the only possible way to compensate for the lack of esteem as a professionally qualified and competent individual. Striving for esteem based on political
power may also be understood in this way. This possibility is discussed by M. Weber.
Compare M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, Munich,
C. H. Beck, 2006, pp. 6869.
96
If the above compensation thesis is correct, even persons who are

esteemed as successfully earning their living can strive for recognition
as laid out in (i). The reason is that this striving for recognition serves
to satisfy another need as N-2.114 It may therefore occur even when N-2
is fulfilled.
To summarize: The emergence of the kind of recognition analyzed
in (i) can be adequately explained on the basis of the elements presented in (c) above. These elements help explain why people seek to
always attain a higher level of income and consumption. Therefore,
when it comes to explaining these phenomena, the theory described in
(c) has greater potential than the theories laid out in (a) or (b).
These considerations allow us to substantiate two theses Hegels theory of the corporation includes. As noted above, these theses read:
consumption.
income.
In Hegels account, the interests described in 1 and 2 only emerge under
specific social conditions; they therefore do not constitute components
of an unchanging human nature. Furthermore, Hegel believes that
production sites of social goods framed by an economic police and by
corporations do not fulfill the conditions that he takes to be necessary
if people are to develop an interest in attaining an ever-increasing level
of income or consumption. For these reasons, he (implicitly) upholds
the two theses above.
This line of reasoning can be understood as a critique of the unlimited validity of what economists describe as the non-satiation requirement. Under this assumption, people are insatiable in the sense that
there is no bundle of goods that can completely satisfy their consumptive demands; rather, for every bundle X there is a bundle Y that they
would prefer over X.115 If Hegel is correct, then the members of
modern societies are insatiable not in general, but only under certain
(social) circumstances.
See section VI, (b), point 1 above.
Compare W. Rei, Mikrokonomische Theorie, Munich, Vienna, Oldenbourg,
1998, pp. 224227.
114
115

Furthermore, the behavior of those who are insatiable is explained
differently by Hegel than it is within (the dominant trend of) contemporary economics. The latter operates on the assumption that these
people strive for an ever-increasing level of income in order to satisfy
as many of their consumptive needs as possible. Hegel, by contrast,
sees them as constantly trying to reach a higher level of consumption
in order to socially document the level of their income and the extent
of their professional success. On this view, their consumption therefore fulfills a representational function that does not come under
proper consideration in contemporary economic theory.116
VII
As we have seen, the question of how critical theory should understand the social structure of present-day capitalism117 is the subject of
much controversial debate. In accordance with the socio-ontological
premise of his theory, Axel Honneth seeks to interpret bourgeoiscapitalist society as an institutionalized recognition order.118 By contrast, Nancy Fraser and others argue that such an interpretation would
make it impossible to understand the behavior of capitalist markets
in their eyes, it is theoretically unfounded and politically nave. Like
other Critical Theorists, Fraser is of the opinion that capitalist markets
have to be analyzed in terms of systems-theory. Should this be true,
recognition theory would also be ill-suited to ground an internal critique of contemporary capitalism that meets the requirements specified in section II above. In this case, it would fail to achieve the aims of
Critical Theory in the domains of both social theory and social
critique.
116
T. Veblen is also of the opinion that consumptive behavior performs a social
representational function. In contrast to Hegel, however, he believes that what is represented in this manner is ones independence from incomes gained through occupational employment. (Compare T. Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption, New York,
Penguin, 2006, p. 21). By way of consumptive expenditures, the members of modern
societies thus wish to show that [their] time had not been spent in industrial employment (ibid., p. 23). According to Veblens theory, then, social esteem does not refer to
what Hegel calls bourgeois honor.
117
Fraser, Distorted Beyond All Recognition: A Rejoinder to Axel Honneth,
p. 211.
118
Honneth, Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser, p. 138.
98
In my view, Hegels social and political philosophy can help clarify

the conceptual relations between patterns of recognition and economic
processes, and it can help us understand why recognition theory matters when it comes to analyzing and criticizing capitalist markets. For
these reasons, Hegelian thought can be a major source of inspiration
for current Critical Theory in the domains of social theory and social
critique.
With respect to the social-theoretical goal of Critical Theory, the
following should be emphasized: On the reading of the Philosophy of
Right offered in the previous sections, Hegel believes that the quest for
profit and luxury are key elements of a specific practice of social
esteem, in which people recognize one another as more or less professionally successful citizens. If these considerations are correct, then it
is possible to use recognition theory to analyze some of those dispositions and behaviors that many social scientists regard as central to the
new spirit of capitalism:119 striving for professional success as well as
for the personal qualities necessary in this respect; striving for an everincreasing income; and displaying professional success (for example
through a specific pattern of consumptive behavior). Obviously, such
an analysis would greatly enhance the possibility of understand[ing]
the social structure of present-day capitalism in terms of recognition
theory. This can be shown with respect to the very phenomena Nancy
Fraser cites: prioritiz[ing] maximization of corporate profits can be
understood as a key element of the above practice of social esteem, and
such a practice would undoubtedly have considerable influence on
political-economic factors such as the supply of and demand for different types of labor; the balance of power between labor and capital;
the stringency of social regulations including the minimum wage; the
ease with which firms can shift their operations to locations where
wage rates are lower; the cost of credit; [and] the terms of trade. As a
result, it is not appropriate to rule out the possibility of a recognitiontheoretical analysis of capitalist markets from the (obvious) relevance
of these factors for contemporary economic processes.120 As my
119
I borrow this phrase from L. Boltanski and . Chiapello. Compare Boltanski &
Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism.
120
For this reason, it is inappropriate to maintain that a social theory of recognition
is congenitally blind to economic processes which cannot be reduced to cultural
schemas of evaluation (Fraser, Distorted Beyond All Recognition: A Rejoinder to
Axel Honneth, p. 215).

considerations show, the social structure of present-day capitalism
need not be the other of recognition.121
In addition, Hegels social and political philosophy provides
resources that can help achieve the goals of Critical Theory in the
domain of social critique. Indeed, his notion of bourgeois honor opens
up the possibility of criticizing contemporary capitalism on the basis of
patterns of recognition that are part and parcel of the normative fabric
of bourgeois-capitalist societies. In the remainder of my chapter, I
shall briefly outline the thrust of such a critique.122
Sociologists have convincingly shown that participation in the
working world is a major source of social esteem and profoundly influences peoples sense of their own worth.123 What is more, work seems
to be important for most people becauseor, insofar asit allows
them (1) to acquire and employ specific skills or qualifications and to
be socially recognized as having them, and (2) to make their living by
being useful to other members of society and to be socially recognized
in this respect.124 If this is true, we are justified in believing that what
Hegel termed bourgeois honor might actually belong to the normative fabric of modern societies.
Now, the notion of bourgeois honor is able to ground a critique of
some institutional elements that are central to contemporary capitalism. For example, highly flexible business organizationsa characteristic feature of many enterprises125can be shown to be problematic
because an environment in which teams are rapidly changing and
people are easily moved from one task to another makes it difficult
for workers to acquire professional skills and be recognized by coworkers as having them. Similarly, deregulated labor markets that
promote poorly paid temporary labor, short-term employments, and
121
Whether or not the phenomena mentioned above are actually to be analyzed in
terms of social esteem can only be investigated empirically. This question therefore lies
outside the scope of the present study.
122
I discuss this issue at greater length in H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, Anerkennung
als Prinzip der Kritischen Theorie (Berlin, New York, de Gruyter, 2011).
123
Compare for example P, Bourdieu, The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in
Contemporary Society, trans. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Oxford, Polity, 1999; and
R. Castel, From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Transformation of the Social Ques
tion, trans. and ed. Richard Boyd, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers, 2003.
124
Compare R. Sennett, Respect in a World of Inequality, New York, W. W. Norton,
2003, pp. 6364.
125
Compare R. Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, New York, W. W. Norton, 1998;
and R. Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism, New Haven, Yale University Press,
2006.
100
informal service work can be questioned on the grounds that they

jeopardize the abilities of workers to consider themselves, and be
recognized as, useful members of society. As these examples show,
bourgeois honor thus makes it possible to criticize institutional
arrangements that are central to contemporary capitalism in terms of
recognition theory.
Moreover, Hegels social and political philosophy opens up the possibility of using recognition-theoretical terms to criticize some of the
elements of the spirit of contemporary capitalism mentioned above:
striving for professional success as well as for the personal qualities
necessary for such success; striving for an always higher income; and
displaying professional success (for example through a specific pattern
of consumptive behavior). As we have seen above, Hegel believes that
these elements are components of a compensatory striving for esteem
that only emerge under specific social conditions. On his account,
these conditions are morally deficient in that they make it impossible
for many humans to satisfy some of their basic social needs, which
Hegel cashes out in terms of bourgeois honor. Obviously, much more
conceptual, normative and social-scientific work would have to be
done if one wanted to make Hegels arguments fruitful for contemporary Critical Theory. As I hope to have shown, however, there is reason
to believe that such an effort can yield important results.
Chapter four
Recognition Theory and Institutional

Labour Economics
Craig MacMillan
It is so with our industrial system. Let men compete in the full assurance of equal opportunity, and their competition will not be directed
mainly to crush the weak, but will develop the highest forms of voluntary
cooperation. Voluntary cooperation is the natural outcome of fair
and open competition. Under these progressive conditions competition will continue, but the survival of the fittest will not be that of the
unscrupulous and the cunning, but of the morally fit.
John R. Commons1
1.Introduction
In Work and Recognition: A Redefinition Axel Honneth seeks to
reorient the critical debate about the organisation of work under capitalism.2 He enjoins us to replace what he calls external criticism,
which is made from a perspective outside the capitalist system and
assumes the availability of forms of work that are unaffected by the
modern division of labour and task specialisation, with immanent
criticism grounded in the normative conditions of the capitalist labour
market. In order to articulate these normative conditions, Honneth
draws on the writings of both Hegel and Durkheim.3 He argues that
the key to uncovering these normative conditions is to view the
primary function of work as fostering social integration rather than
economic efficiency. But as both Hegel and Durkheim saw, the reality
of the division of labour and task specialisation under capitalism
J. Commons, Progressive Individualism, The American Magazine of Civics,
Vol. 6, no. 6, 1895, pp. 562574, pp. 5734.
2
A. Honneth, Work and Recognition: A Redefinition, in eds. H. -C. Schmidt am
Busch and C. Zurn, The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2010, pp. 223240.
3
G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, Newburyport, MA, Focus, 2002 and
E. Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, New York, Free Press, 1997.
1
102
craig macmillan
makes it difficult for work to perform this function. This raises the
question: under what conditions is the capitalist organisation of work
able to foster solidarity and thereby social integration? For Hegel,
Durkheim and Honneth, the answer lies in the socially integrative
achievements of institutions that support (but are not identical with)
the capitalist labour market.
Traditionally, orthodox or neoclassical economics has not assigned
a constructive place to institutions beyond those necessary for the
maintenance of civil order and the enforcement of contracts. Apart
from these core institutions, others, such as professional associations
and trade unions, are viewed at best as providing a veil for market
forces or at worst as obstacles to the achievement of economic efficiency. By contrast a heterodox school of thought in economics, institutionalism, argues that institutions are crucial to the operation of the
economy in general and to the labour market in particular.4 A further
point of contrast concerns the proper function ascribed to markets.
Orthodox economics proposes that the principal normative goal of the
economy is the achievement of economic efficiency, which in turn
ensures that firms maximize profits and consumers maximize utility.
From this perspective the organisation of work should be structured in
such a way that labour is efficiently allocated. The issue of social integration is not explicitly discussed in this framework, but is assumed to
more or less spontaneously emerge as a by-product of the efficient
functioning of the economy. By contrast, institutional economics recognizes the worth of human labour and the dignity of the worker and
proposes that the achievement of economic efficiency is not the sole or
even primary function of the labour market.5 On the institutionalist
view, work should be organised in a way that ensures the workplace is
not a source of injustice and offers the possibility of personal development and self-actualisation.6
4
Within Economics there are different traditions in institutionalism. Typically a
distinction is made between old and new institutionalism and this is discussed in
a later section. The argument developed in this chapter concerns links between old
institutionalism and recognition theory. A useful introduction to the old institutionalist approach to labour is eds. D. Champlin and J. Knoedler The Institutionalist
Tradition in Labor Economics, New York, M. E. Sharpe, 2004.
5
D. Champlin and J. Knoedler, Prospects for the Future of Institutionalist Labour
Economics, in eds. Champlin and Knoedler, The Institutionalist Tradition in Labor
Economics.
6
B. Kaufman, John R. Commons and the Wisconsin School on Industrial
RelationsStrategy and Policy, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 57, no. 1,
2003, pp. 346.
recognition theory and institutional labour economics103

These opening remarks suggest that Honneths proposed
recognition-theoretic reframing of the criticism of work under capitalism resonates with the old institutionalist critique of neo-classical
economics. In the rest of this chapter I shall explore the relation
between Honneths theory of recognition and institutionalist economics in more detail. In section two I will examine the arguments made
by Honneth regarding the relationship between recognition and the
organisation of work under capitalism, paying particular attention to
his rejection of external criticism and his counter-model of immanent
critique. I will also expand on the institutionalist solutions to the problem of social integration Honneth extracts from Hegel and Durkheim.
After briefly examining the relationship between orthodox economics
and institutional economics in section three, in section four I move on
to the main concern of the chapter: the links between institutionalist
labour economics (especially as developed by John Commons) and
Honneths perspective on the organisation of work under capitalism.
Section five summarises the relation between recognition theory and
institutionalism as I have presented it in this chapter.
2. Honneths Theory of Recognition and Work under Capitalism
Honneths redefinition of the relation between recognition and work
hinges on the distinction between external and immanent critique of
the capitalist organisation of work. External critique focuses on the
degradation of work under capitalism compared to an idealised precapitalist model of work that nevertheless was still present in the early
phases of capitalist development. This critique could be described as
the craftsman critique and is based on the early writings of Marx.
According to the craftsman model of work, the worker has a high
degree of control over the work process and is able to ply his skills in a
creatively autonomous fashion such that the final result of his labour,
the finished product, is a direct embodiment and representation of his
skill. The craftsman model of work had considerable empirical validity
under pre-capitalist modes of production. By contrast, the capitalist
organisation of work is based on the division of labour and the associated process of task specialisation which splinters the craftsmans unified and singular act of production into an increasing number of stages,
each of which is completed separately. In so doing, the worker is
deskilled, and is simply required to perform the same specialised task
over and over again, as exemplified in assembly line production.
104
craig macmillan
Consequently, a worker never produces the finished product, indeed

he or she is alienated from the final fruit of his or her labour, and has
virtually non-existent control over the pace of work. In other words,
the worker is no longer a craftsman.
Honneth classifies the craftsman critique as external criticism
because under capitalism the driving force behind the organisation of
work is the division of labour which is incompatible with craft work.
Although craft work continues to exist under capitalism it is not the
dominant or defining mode of work. Consequently, it is a criticism
from outside the capitalist system, lacking both conceptual relevance
and empirical validity. For this reason it cannot form the basis of a
forceful critique of work under capitalism. The rejection of external
criticism based on the craftsman model marks a significant but not
wholly unexpected shift in Honneths thinking on work.7 In his initial
theorising in Work and Instrumental Action, Honneth argued that a
critical conception of work, grounded in what is referred to here as the
craftsman model, has enduring conceptual value despite not being
consistent with the dominant mode of organising work under capitalism.8 Specifically, Honneth cited the work of Bernoux who empirically
established that workers in the industrial plant he investigated were
constantly developing strategies to appropriate some degree of control
over the work process.9 Honneth interpreted this finding as providing
empirical validation of the normative value of the craftsman model of
work.
It is important to note that Honneth made particular mention of
the research methods employed by Bernoux that included participant observation, standardised questionnaires and open interviews.
In The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth also argued that the moral
order of society could be established using the tools of anthropo
logical fieldwork: participant observation and interviews.10 Finally,
7
The focus in this chapter is on Honneths most recent redefinition of the relationship between work and recognition. For an excellent critical assessment of Honneths
thinking on this topic up until this recent work see N. H. Smith Work and the Struggle
for Recognition, European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 8, no. 1, 2009, pp. 4660.
8
A. Honneth, Work and Instrumental Action: On the Normative Basis of Critical
Theory, in A. Honneth The Fragmented World of the Social, Albany, NY, SUNY, 1995,
pp. 1549. Original German version published in 1980.
9
See ibid., pp. 4748.
10
A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts.
Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1995. These techniques are obviously of greatest relevance when the society under investigation is contemporary. In situations where the

in his debate with Fraser, Honneth has remarked that in order to
establish a conception of the moral order of society, the starting-point
tends to be a phenomenological analysis of moral injury.11 These comments, and many others, reflect Honneths fundamental methodological commitment to the investigation of the conscious experiences of
injustice and disrespect suffered by people in different social contexts,
including the workplace, for the purpose of establishing the normative
presuppositions of a society. Yet the approach taken to the organisation
of work under capitalism in Work and Recognition: A Redefinition
seems to break with this basic methodological premise. I will return to
this point, and its significance for understanding the relation between
recognition theory and institutionalism, a little later. Having cast aside
external criticism, Honneth then sets himself the more ambitious but
potentially more fruitful task of establishing the basis of an immanent
critique of the capitalist organisation of work. He does this by appealing to moral norms that already constitute rational claims within
the social exchange of services.12 In addition, immanent critique must
take its departure from work as it is actually practised within the division of labour, which is in turn considered not just from the point of
view of its economic efficiency, but in terms of its role in generating
social solidarity. It is with a view to showing how the capitalist labour
market should function if it is to generate social integration that
Honneth next turns to Hegel and then Durkheim.
For Hegel, markets can only perform their primary integrative
function if each person is able to work and develop their skills in a
way that contributes to the stock of permanent capital. When the right
to work is understood as an obligation to work, there is, furthermore,
a reciprocal obligation that requires workers to be paid a minimum
wage, one which is adequate to ensure their economic independence.
Under these labour market conditions it is possible for subjects to
mutually recognise each other as private autonomous beings which
is the basis of self-respect. Honneth points out that for Hegel capitalist development could undermine its own normative recognitional
conditions because the concentration of profits in too few hands,
society being studied existed in the past Honneth advocated the use of historiographical techniques pioneered by E. P. Thompson and Barrington Moore.
11
A. Honneth, Recognition or Redistribution?: Changing Perspectives on the
Moral Order of Society, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 18, no. 23, 2001, pp. 4355,
p. 48.
12
Honneth, Work and Recognition, p. 7.
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craig macmillan
thedecline in wages and increasing task specialisation, could lead to a

lack of satisfaction from work. In order to avoid these developments
Hegel argued for what could be called an institutional solution. The
operation of the market economy would be supported by two organisations, the police and the corporations or trade associations. The
former would monitor the quality of goods, provide the basic infrastructure necessary for economic activity, and through colonisation
find markets in which increasing production can be sold. The latter
would ensure that their members maintain their skills and abilities and
earn an amount consistent with a decent livelihood. Honneth sums up
Hegels position in the following way:
The structures of the capitalist labour market could only develop under
the highly demanding ethical precondition that all classes are able to
entertain the expectation both of receiving a wage that secures their livelihood and of having work that is worthy of recognition. Hegel sought to
prove that the new market system can only lay claim to normative
approval on two conditions: first, it must provide a minimum wage; second, it must give all work activities a shape that reveals them to be a
contribution to the common good.13
After considering Hegel, Honneth turns his attention to Durkheim.

Durkheims core proposal is that the division of labour succeeds in the
crucial task of fostering social solidarity because as the tasks of workers become more specialised, the workers themselves become more
acutely aware of their dependence on the activities of fellow members
of society for the satisfaction of their needs. At the same time,
Durkheim acknowledged that this experience of healthy mutual
dependency among members of society would only result if certain
normative conditions are already met in the economy. From Honneths
point of view, this meant that Durkheim too was approaching this
issue from an immanent rather than an external perspective. As
Honneth interprets them, both Durkheim and Hegel argue that the
capitalist system requires each person to make a contribution to the
common good through work. In this sense people have a right to work,
but a simultaneous duty to work also. Moreover, in return for labour
they should receive a living wage which is great enough to maintain
their skills, or what economists now call their human capital. But
whereas for Hegel the receipt of a living wage that was sufficient to
ibid., p. 16.
13

ensure economic independence provided the experiential basis of
self-respect, Durkheim emphasised the importance of the perceptionthat the division of labour is fair and transparent, as a condition
for free consent to labour contracts. This would in turn only occur if
workers enjoyed equal access to the acquisition of qualifications. It was
also crucial for Durkheim that all social contributions must be remunerated in accordance with their real value for the community.14 These
conditions that Honneth draws from Durkheim can be thought of as
ensuring that the terms of the employment contract are reasonable
and fair. However, Honneth also points out that Durkheim went
beyond this to argue that despite the deleterious effects of the division
of labour on the quality of work, the activity of working should itself be
meaningful, at least to the extent of being reasonably complex and
cooperative.
Overall, Honneth distils from Hegel and Durkheim a set of normative conditions that must exist if the division of labour is to generate
both social integration and moral legitimacy. If these conditions are
met workers will have the experience of contributing to the common
good. The normative conditions relate to both the terms and conditions of work and the nature of the work itself. Specifically, the conditions are that: workers should be free to enter into a labour contract;
workers should be adequately rewarded for their work, that is, paid a
living wage; workers should have equal access to the acquisition of
qualifications, and; workers should experience their work as intrinsically meaningful, which requires work to be at least moderately complex and performed in a collective context. Therefore, from the point
of view of the theory of recognition, if these normative conditions are
met, work will be a source of socially recognised experiences that in
turn will generate a sense of self-esteem.
It is important to note that both Hegel and Durkheim considered it
highly unlikely that these normative conditions would be realized
through the unimpeded workings of the capitalist system. Consequently,
they both proposed that the capitalist labour market be supported by
other institutions that will facilitate the realisation of these conditions.
As discussed above, Honneth briefly outlines Hegels institutional solution based on two organisations: the police and the corporation.
However, Durkheim also has an institutional remedy that Honneth
ibid., p. 20.
14
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craig macmillan
does not mention. Durkheim believed that because economic life had
become and was becoming more specialised, the state on its own was
not able to regulate economic activity sufficiently to avoid the abuses of
power that undermine the sense of social solidarity that would otherwise spontaneously emanate from the division of labour. According to
Durkheim, there needed to be organisations that could operate in the
social space between the individual and the state, in specialised spheres
of economic activity such as a particular industry. Ideally, the sole
group that meets these conditions is that constituted by all those working in the same industry, assembled together and organised in a single
body. This is what is termed a corporation, or professional group.15
At the time of writing Durkheim reported that unions of either
employers or employees were the social groups that most closely
resembled what he had in mind. However, he noted that whilst it was
both legitimate and necessary that these unions be separate organisations there was little regular contact between them. What was
required was a common organisation to draw them together without
causing them to lose their individuality, one within which they might
work out a common set of rules and which, fixing their relationship to
each other, would bear down with equal authority upon both.16 The
absence of such a common organisation led otherwise to the group
with the most power setting the terms and conditions of work. In other
words, the contract that emerged from bargaining between the two
groups would be a reflection of the power advantage one group had
over another. Such an outcome would more than likely violate a number of the normative conditions outlined by Durkheim. For example,
the group with the most power would be able to coerce the weaker
group into accepting contractual terms that were inferior to those that
would have been negotiated had bargaining resources been equal.
It is difficult to know exactly what type of institution Durkheim had
in mind when he talked about a common organisation appropriate
for modern societies. Indeed, Durkheim argued in the Preface to the
second edition of the Division of Labour that it is not the sociologists
job to set out in detail what this common organisation should look
like. Rather he argues that the sociologists task is to identify on the
basis of detailed analysis the general principles that should be followed
Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, p. xxxv.
Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, p. xxxvi.
15
16

in designing the organisational framework. One of the principles identified by Durkheim is that the dimensions of the professional group be
closely linked to the dimensions of the market. If the market is national
then it is necessary for the professional group to be organised along
national lines. It is also important that professional groups have an
appropriate regulatory relationship to the state, in which the state is
not overly controlling, because this had been the cause of the decline of
corporations under the Roman Empire. In addition, it is essential that
professional groups do not simply promote the economic interests of
members but also support members in other ways by providing assistance in difficult times, educational and artistic activities, and the
opportunity for political engagement. A final principle articulated by
Durkheim is that the form corporations or professional groups take is
conditioned by the circumstances in which they emerge and accordingly any particular form is temporary. He demonstrates the temporal
aspect of institutions by discussing at length the emergence, function
and decline of professional groups under the Roman Empire and during the Middle Ages.
3. Orthodox Economics and Institutional Economics
Orthodox or mainstream economics, more formally known as neoclassical economics, proposes that the goal of economic activity is the
efficient use of resources to produce goods and services. The division
of labour enables workers to focus on a narrow set of tasks that they
learn to perform very well through repetition. Thus the main function
of the division of labour from the point of view of mainstream economics is to increase economic efficiency. Social order emerges spontaneously as a by product of this process. Orthodox economics assigns
a preeminent position to the market in the functioning of the economy.
The market is conceived in naturalistic termsthat is, in terms continuous with the natural sciencesand is regarded as analytically prior
to other institutions. Beyond the market, orthodox economics sees little role for institutions apart from those that are necessary for the
enforcement of contracts and the protection of property rights: the
judicial system, the police and the military. Other institutions such as
trade unions, professional associations, employer associations and regulatory bodies are regarded at best as ineffectivebecause they are
nothing but a veil through which market forces operate regardlessor
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craig macmillan
at worst as a source of inefficiency. Orthodox economics conception

of the market mechanism as a natural one, constituted beyond
the socio-cultural realm, typically leads it to construe institutions as
causing economic outcomes that diverge from their natural values.17
Given this conception, it follows that if the relations between capital
and labour are so conflicted that they produce poor economic outcomes and social dysfunction, the source is likely to be the excessive
influence of institutions: for example, excessive union power or onerous state regulation of the employment relationship. Consequently,
from the point of view of mainstream economics, the solution involves
the minimisation of institutional influences.
By contrast institutional economics contends that the economy,
including the market, is institutionally constituted. Before examining
this idea more closely, a few elementary background remarks about
institutionalism might be in order. Institutional economics emerged in
the United States in the late nineteenth century as a reaction against
neoclassical economics and flourished in the early twentieth century.
Indeed, institutional labour economics was the dominant approach
to the study of labour in the United States until world war two. While
it has been rightfully argued that institutionalism was primarily an
American phenomenon, there have been many prominent institutional economists on the other side of the Atlantic, including the Nobel
laureate Gunnar Myrdal and K. Wlliam Kapp. Institutionalism has
not developed a unified body of theory, and the work of the leading
institutional economists does not lend itself to easy synthesising.
Nevertheless it is possible to identify some key characteristic elements
of the institutional approach. Clarence Ayres, a prominent early institutionalist, argued that the core issue separating institutionalism and
orthodox economics was the
conception of the market as the guiding mechanism of the economy, or,
more broadly, the conception of the economy as organised and guided
by the market. It is simply not true that scarce resources are allocated
among alternative uses by the market. The real determination of whatever allocation occurs in any society is the organisational structure of
that societyin short, its institutions. At most the market only gives
effect to prevailing instituting.18
17
Y. Ramstad, John R. Commonss Reasonable Value and the Problem of Just
Price, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. xxxv, no. 2, 2001, pp. 253277.
18
C. Ayres, Institutional Economics: Discussion, American Economic Review,
Papers and Proceedings, Vol. 47, 1957, pp. 2627. Cited in W. Samuels, The Present

For institutionalism, then, the market was no longer conceived of as a
naturally occurring phenomenon, but as another institution functioning according to its own set of working rules. Moreover, these working rules are established by the interplay of the market and other
institutions such as the state, the courts, employer associations and
unions.
Another key component of institutionalism is that institutions play
a decisive role in structuring and regulating economic activity. While
there is controversy within institutionalism concerning the correct
definition of an institution, Geoffrey Hodgson, a leading contemporary institutionalist, has developed a useful broad definition of institutions as systems of established and embedded social rules that
structure social interactions.19 Institutions are generated by the interplay of socio-cultural, legal, political and economic forces and play a
fundamental role in forming individuals, particularly their tastes and
preferences. From a methodological point of view institutionalism is
multidisciplinary, making use of ideas from a range of human sciences,
such as psychology and sociology, rather than colonising these other
disciplineswhich is effectively how orthodox economics has
approached them.20 In terms of research methods, institutionalism
makes extensive use of both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. The prominent role played by qualitative research techniques,
such as fieldwork, participant observation and interviews, is due to the
interest institutionalism has in understanding the consciously articulated experience of participants in the economy. In this respect the
institutionalist perspective differs strikingly from the orthodox
approach, which tends to dismiss as unscientific research based on
the reported conscious experience of people and qualitative techniques
more generally. Finally, there is a strong tendency among institutionalists to construct models that are based on realistic assumptions that are
solidly grounded in empirical observation. This is also at odds with
orthodox economics which tends to disregard the question of whether
a models assumptions are realistic or not, on the basis that only the
models predictive value really counts.
State of Institutional Economics, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 19, no. 4, 1995,
pp. 569590 (p 571).
19
G. Hodgson, What are Institutions?, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. xl, no. 1,
2006, p. 18.
20
B. Fine, A Question of Economics: Is it Colonizing the Social Sciences? Economy
and Society, Vol. 28, 1999, pp. 403425.
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craig macmillan
With regard to institutional labour economics in particular, the

leading figure during its formative period was John R. Commons and
the central organisation advocating an institutionalist approach to the
study of the labour was the University of Wisconsin. The intellectual
roots of institutionalist labour economics lie in the German historical
school, the work of Sydney and Beatrice Webb in Britain, American
Pragmatist philosophy and the Social Gospel movement in America.21
Commons argued that core economic processes were not natural phenomena but the product of collective action. Competition, as Commons
put it, is not Natures struggle for existence but is an artificial arrangement supported by the moral, economic, and physical sanctions of collective action.22 Indeed, Commons argued that [T]he subject matter
of the institutional economyis not commodities, nor labor, nor any
physical thingit is collective action which sets the working rules for
property rights, duties, liberties and exposures.23 Commons defined
an institution as collective action in control, liberation and expansion
of individual action.24 He understood an institution to be a system of
working rules which coordinates and sets limits on individual behaviour. Commons concept of collective action covered a vast range of
human behaviour, from unorganised custom to many organised going
concerns, such as the family, the corporation, the trade association, the
trade union, the reserve system, the state.25 From a legal perspective,
institutions also establish the rights and duties that pertain to individuals when engaged in certain activities: [I]n the language of ethics
and law, Commons wrote, all collective acts establish relations of
rights, duties, no rights and no duties.26
The perspective adopted by Commons was that institutions or
working rules construct and guide all types of social interaction among
21
See S. Jacoby, The New Institutionalism: What can it Learn from the Old?
Industrial Relations, Vol. 29, n. 2, 1990, pp. 316359; B. Kaufman, The Institutionalist
and Neoclassical Schools in Labor Economics, in Champlin and Knoedler, eds. The
Institutionalist Tradition in Labor Economics; D. Spencer, The Political Economy of
Work, London, Routlege, 2008.
22
J. Commons, Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political Economy, New
Brunswick, Transaction, 1990, 1934, p. 713.
23
J. Commons, Institutional Economics:Its Place in Political Economy, p. 523.
24
J. Commons, Institutional Economics, American Economic Review, Vol. 21, no.
4, 1931, p. 649.
25
ibid.
26
ibid.

people.27 Consequently, Commons believed that human beings are
institutionally constructed. This view stands in sharp contrast to that
of neoclassical economics which assumes the existence of rational selfinterested individuals with a given set of consistent preferences and
tastes. In other words, individuals are assumed to come to the economy to participate in market exchange preformed. Commons took the
opposite approach, arguing that the institutional structure (including
the market) is analytically prior to the individual and that the individual can only be understood in the context of background formative
institutions:
If it be considered that, after all, it is the individual who is important,
then the individual with whom we are dealing is the Institutionalized
Mind. Individuals begin as babies. They learn the custom of language, of
cooperation with other individuals, of working towards common ends,
of negotiations to eliminate conflicts of interest, of subordination to the
working rules of the many going concerns of which they are members.
They meet each other, not as physiological bodies moved by glands, nor
as globules of desire moved by pain or pleasure, similar to the forces of
physical and animal nature, but as prepared more or less by habit,
induced by the pressure of custom, to engage in those highly artificial
transactions created by the collective human will Instead of isolated
individuals in a state of nature they are always participants in transactions, members of a concern in which they come and go, citizens of an
institution that lived before them and will live after them.28
Commons conception of the individual as institutionally formed had

implications for the school of psychology he drew upon to explain
human behaviour. For Commons:
[N]early all historic psychologies are individualistic, since they are concerned with the relation of individuals to nature, or to other individuals,
treated however, not as citizens with rights, but as objects of nature without rights or duties. This is true all the way from Lockes copy psychology, Benthams pleasure-pain psychology, the hedonistic marginal
utility psychology, Watsons behaviourism, All are individualistic.
Only Deweys notion is socialistic.29
27
See Hodgson, What are Institutions? and B. Kaufman, The Institutional
Economics of John R. Commons: Complement and Substitute for Neoclassical
Economic Theory, Socio-Economic Review, Vol. 5, no. 1, 2007, pp. 345.
28
Commons, Institutional Economics:Its Place in Political Economy, pp. 7374.
29
Commons, Institutional Economics, p. 655.
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craig macmillan
Deweys notions of custom and habit were particularly important for

Commons because they provided explanatory mechanisms which
could account for the internalisation of working rules by individuals.
For neoclassical economics, in keeping with its individualistic perspective, theorising begins with individual economic agents, such as
the representative consumer or the representative firm. By contrast, for
Commons, because of the key role institutions play in structuring
human interaction, the basic unit of economic activity is the transaction, which is fundamentally interactive or relational. According to
Commons, [T]ransactions are, not the exchange of commodities,
but the alienation and acquisition of the rights of property and liberty
created by a society, which must therefore be negotiated between the
parties concerned before labour can produce, or consumers can consume, or commodities be physically exchanged.30 The study of transactions required an institutional psychology, which Commons called
negotiational psychology. Biddle has suggested that negotiational psychology was Commons term for the mental processes and associated
activities of people as they engaged in transactions.31 A key task of
negotiational psychology was to uncover the individuals habitual
assumptions: perceptions, expectations and strategies that are formed
through social interaction and maintained by social sanction. At the
level of the group these cognitive and behavioural regularities are
termed customary assumptions. In order to tap into the individuals
habitual assumptions, Commons particularly valued first-hand observation and interviews of participants to a transaction.32 When interviewing was not possible Commons advocated the detailed study of
historical documents revealing the experiences of people at the time of
conflicts; for example, newspaper articles on industrial disputes, union
pamphlets, court decisions and collective agreements. In this regard it
is important to note that one of Commons greatest intellectual achievements was the compilation of the multivolume work The Documentary
History of American Industrial Society.33
ibid., p. 652.
See J. Biddle, The Role of Negotiational Psychology in J. R. Commonss Proposed
Reconstruction of Political Economy, Review of Political Economy, Vol. 2, no. 1, 1990,
pp. 125.
32
Biddle even cites Commons as declaring the interview method to be the prime
method of investigation. Commons, Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political
Economy, p. 106; cited in Biddle The Role of Negotiational Psychology, p. 16.
33
See J. Commons et al, A Documentary History of American Industrial Society,
Volumes 110, Cleveland, Arthur H. Clark, 19101911.
30
31

4. Institutional Labour Economics and Honneths Immanent Critique
Commons documentary history illustrates the similarities between
institutionalist methodology and the recognition-theoretic approach
advocated by Honneth. The contrast between both and mainstream
economics is just as striking, since as we have noted, the latter sees little point in allowing explanations of socioeconomic phenomena to be
informed by the consciously articulated experience of market participants. In this section I will explore the relation between Commons
institutionalism and Honneths recognition paradigm in more detail,
with a particular focus on Commons institutionalist approach to
labour economics and the program of immanent critique laid out by
Honneth in Work and Recognition: A Redefinition.
A central feature of the institutional economics of Commons is that
it is a positive form of economic analysis. Commons was committed to
providing a detailed and rich description of how the economy, and the
labour market in particular, actually operates. In addition, Commons
was a social reformer and consequently there was also a strong normative dimension to his institutional economics. In a well known quote
concerning the aim of his research Commons made clear this normative orientation stating: I was trying to save Capitalism by making it
good.34 Ramstad has even claimed that there can be no doubt that the
central purpose to which the entire body of Commons policy prescriptions gave effect was that class income inequalities should and can be
reduced through public policy.35 However, it would be incorrect to
understand Commons normative vision as being narrowly focused on
redistribution. In terms of the labour market, Commons aimed primarily at equalising opportunities rather than outcomes. Kaufman
has identified the broad normative goals held by Commons and his
colleagues to be economic efficiency, equity and justice in the workplace, and opportunities for personal growth and self-actualisation.36
And as Ramstad has pointed out, Commons took individual selfrealisation to be based on the satisfaction of what Commons called
the three most fundamental wishes of mankind: equality, liberty and
J. Commons, Myself, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1934, p. 143.

Ramstad, John R. Commonss Reasonable Value and the Problem of Just Price,
p. 261.
36
Kaufman, John R. Commons and the Wisconsin School on Industrial Relations
Strategy and Policy, p. 5.
34
35
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craig macmillan
security. Equality related to the desire to be treated the same as others,

while liberty was the desire to be free from the arbitrary will of those
in authority. Finally, security referred to the wish to have relatively stable expectations concerning the future.37
Central to the normative dimension of Commons institutional economics was the concept of reasonable value. According to Commons,
whether or not a particular outcome, such as a market price, represented a reasonable or fair value was not linked to the intrinsic pro
perties of a particular commodity but rather was determined by the
processes or working rules that generated the market outcome. For
Commons, a reasonable or fair value emerges when a transaction is
entered into by a willing buyer and willing seller.38 Moreover, a buyer
or seller can only be regarded as willing if the bargaining process is free
of duress or coercion. To explain this more fully it is important to note
that Commons identified three forms of power that could be deployed
by parties to a transaction in order to secure a desired outcome: duress,
coercion and persuasion. Duress refers to physical power and primarily involves the use or threatened use of violence. Coercion refers to
economic power and is based on the principle of scarcity. The party to
a transaction for whom scarcity is less of a constraint has the capacity
to wait longer in a bargaining deadlock and hence press for terms that
are more advantageous at the expense of the other party. The grip of
scarcity on a party to a transaction is determined by their wants relative to their resources, and on their opportunities to deal with alternative parties. Finally, persuasion refers to what Commons called moral
power and involves each party to a transaction pressing their case
through argument and inducement. Commons argued that markets
generate reasonable values when the parties negotiate a transaction
free of duress, with balanced economic power, and rely on persuasive
argument. If these conditions are met then free competition is transformed into fair competition and people will compete in the full
assurance of equal opportunity, and their competition will not be
directed mainly to crush the weak, but will develop the highest forms
of voluntary cooperation.39
37
See Ramstad, John R. Commonss Reasonable Value and the Problem of Just
Price.
38
Commons, Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political Economy, p. 337.
39
Commons, Progressive Individualism, p. 573.

Commons regarded scarcity of resources as a universal principle
from which emerge two other principles: conflict of interest and a
sense of mutual dependence. This in turn gives rise to collective
action which generates a set of working rules to maintain order.40
The study of the conflict of interest between capital and labour in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was of particular interest to Commons and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin
and led to the development of the concept of the labor problem. The
labor problem was a constellation of poor labour market outcomes
including poverty level wages, low work effort, workplace accidents,
excessive work hours, strikes, high employee turnover, and child
labour.41 Documenting the labor problem and formulating strategies
to resolve it was a critical focus of Commons work. Kaufman noted
that Commons regarded the labor problem as an extremely serious
threat to social cohesion: If there is one issue that seems likely to
overthrow our civilization it is this issue between capital and labor.42
From Commons perspective individual bargaining, between an
employer and employee, was unlikely to produce terms of employment that could be regarded as fair or reasonable. Even if the law
proscribed the actual or threatened use of violence between the two
parties such that they could be regarded as equal in terms of their
capacity to exercise duress, Commons argued that they were unequal
in terms of economic power or coercion. The individual worker was
at a bargaining disadvantage because not only did he or she have few
alternatives due to the problem of persistent and pervasive unemployment, but the worker almost invariably possessed fewer resources
than the employer. Both of these factors meant that the power of scarcity had a greater grip on the individual worker than the employer.
Consequently, bargaining power and the subsequent terms of employment were tilted in favour of employers. This was empirically demonstrated by the existence of the labor problem. In order to solve this
problem Commons proposed a number of solutions in the course of
40
See Commons, Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political Economy and
Ramstad John R. Commonss Reasonable Value and the Problem of Just Price.
41
42
J. R. Commons, Industrial Relations, Papers Reel, Vol. 17, 1919, p. 1; cited in
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craig macmillan
his life that have been carefully documented by Kaufman.43 As with

Hegel and Durkheim, all of these solutions required institutional
adjustment.
Commons argued that it was critical to increase the bargaining
power of workers to equality with firms. In other words, Commons
aimed at ensuring that the principle of scarcity exercised the same control over both workers and firms and both had as equal as possible
powers of coercion. An early solution advocated by Commons involved
trade unions bargaining collectively on behalf of workers to secure
written collective agreements. Workers bargaining together with an
employer clearly had more economic power and were able to lift wages
above poverty levels. Commons also argued that collective bargaining
should occur on an industry-wide basis because this would remove
labour as a dimension along which firms could compete with each
other for a competitive advantage. If the terms and conditions of all
workers in an industry were set down in a collective agreement binding on all employers in the industry, a competitive advantage could
only be derived through improvements in technology or managerial
efficiency and not by cutting wages. Finally, Commons advocated that
government regulation and the courts should protect the right to collectively organise and should facilitate collective bargaining, but then
should allow the two parties to negotiate unencumbered the terms and
conditions of the collective agreement.44
In addition to wage levels, other conditions could be written into
trade agreements that introduced or increased worker voice and representation in the workplace, such as rules guaranteeing due process
in the investigation of employer and employee grievances. These due
process provisions meant that workers were recognised as in some
sense equal with their employers, and were also an important check
on the power wielded by management. This increased sense of equalitygenerated by the right to due process introduced industrial democracy into the workplace and allowed people to be recognised as
citizens not just in society but in the workplace too. Two quotes of
Commons reported by Kaufman bring home these points powerfully.
The first is Commons description of attending a week-long conference
43
Strategy and Policy.
44
ibid.

between the mine workers union and the coal operators association in
1900:
I was struck by the resemblance to the origins of the British Parliament.
On the one side of the great hall were nearly a thousand delegates from
the local unions, on the other side were about seventy employers It
was evidently an industrial House of Commons and House of Lords, but
without a King.45
The second quote also concerns industry-wide collective bargaining:

Here is an industry (coal) where, for many years, industrial war was
chronic, bloodshed frequent, hatred, and poverty universal. Today the
leaders of the two sides come together for two weeks parliament, face to
face, with plain speaking, without politics, religion, or demagogy The
most important result of these trade agreements is the new feeling of
equality and respect which springs up in both employer and employee.
After all has been said in press and pulpit about the dignity of labor, the
only dignity that really commands respect is the bald necessity of dealing with labor on equal terms.46
The terms and conditions of employment that emerged from collective

bargaining would be regarded as fair and reasonable having been
negotiated freely from an equal basis. Moreover, these terms and conditions written down in the collective agreement would give both parties security of expectations for the future, they would ensure that all
workers were treated equally, and they would free workers from the
capricious rule of the foreman. This strategy thereby allowed Commons
three fundamental goals of equality, liberty and security to be realised.
Notably, Commons advocacy of industry-wide collective bargaining is
also consistent with Durkheims general principle that professional
groups should be organised on a basis consistent with the market in
which they operate and that this should (at the time of his writing) be
a national basis because large-scale industries operate in a national
market.
Commons was concerned that a strategy built on trade unions, collective bargaining and industry-wide agreements would still not
include a large number of workers who either were not members of
unions or were members of weak unions. In order to extend many of
the improved working conditions written into collective agreements to
Commons, Myself, p 72; cited in ibid., p. 6.
J. R. Commons, Trade Unionism and Labor Problems, 1st edition, New York,
Augustus Kelley, 1905 (reprinted 1967), pp. 2 and 12; cited in ibid.
45
46
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craig macmillan
vulnerable workers, Commons advocated a combination of protective

labour legislation and social insurance schemes overseen by regulatory
bodies. Minimum wages, maximum hours of work, health and safety
standards, accident insurance and unemployment insurance were
some of the aspects of work that Commons sought to address. In order
to craft appropriate legislation and to enhance compliance with the
labour reforms, Commons proposed the formation of regulatory commissions that would be staffed by experts in the field and commissioners chosen by the key stakeholdersemployer groups, unions and
consumers or the public. Kaufman reported that Wisconsin was the
first state to adopt this strategy when it instituted the Industrial
Commission of Wisconsin in 1911 on which Commons served as a
commissioner representing the public.47 This tripartite structure was
consistent with Commons normative vision. Working rules were formulated on the basis of joint consultation between employers, unions
and consumers. Each group had equal representation and thus equal
bargaining strength. Duress and coercion were neutralised and rules
were established on the basis of moral power expressed in persuasive
argument. The outcomes of such a process could thus be said to satisfy
Commons theory of reasonable value. They also meet the normative
conditions of work spelled out by Honneth. For these new regulatory
bodies were designed to ensure that all working people were paid a living wage through minimum wage laws and more broadly that they
could not be coerced into accepting poor terms of employment. It is
important to note that during the first forty years of the twentieth century in the United States, when the institutionalist school was the
dominant approach to the study of labour, there was very strong support for minimum wage legislation among economists. Support was
based on a number of arguments including the substantial bargaining
disadvantage suffered by many groups of workers that resulted in levels
of remuneration inconsistent with a living wage. Such an outcome was
condemned on moral grounds because of the social maladies and general unrest it generated. Interestingly, in more recent times some institutionally oriented labour economists have also provided robust
defences of the minimum wage.48 This support for legislated minimum
See ibid.
B. Kaufman, Promoting Labour market Efficiency and Fairness Through a Legal
Minimum Wage: The Webbs and the Social Cost of Labour, British Journal of Industrial
Relations, forthcoming 2009; and R. Prasch, In Defense of the Minimum Wage,
Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. xxx, no. 2, 1996, pp. 391397.
47
48

wages among institutionalist economists contrasts sharply with the
negative view towards minimum wages of contemporary mainstream
economists.49
It is clear from the foregoing discussion that Commons institutionaleconomics addresses a number of the normative conditions of
work articulated by Honneth. In particular, it was important to
Commons that workers be able to freely consent to a labour contract
and having done so be paid a living wage. Commons did not have
much to say about the other normative conditions concerning the
opportunity to acquire qualifications and the opportunity to perform
moderately complex work in a collective context. But an argument
could be made that Commons emphasis on industry-wide collective bargaining at least indirectly addressed the latter issue because
it created an experiential foundation on which workers within an
industry could experience a sense of social solidarity. More importantly, however, later institutional labour economists have explicitly
attended to these issues.
Two post-world war institutional labour economists in the United
States, Clark Kerr and John Dunlop, have described the way sociocultural, economic, and political forces interact to create internal
labour markets (ILMs). Kerr (1954) identified two different ILM models: the craft or guild model and the industrial or manorial model. The
guild or craft internal market was based on the craft union having control over the jobs falling within a carefully defined occupational and
geographical area.50 If firms required a specified occupational skill in
that area they must hire a union member or face industrial action.
Once a worker was a union member they could largely move anywhere
within the internal market, and movement between employers, and
between the plants of a particular employer, was normal, with workers
careers more associated with horizontal moves between employers
than vertical moves with a single employer. Workers could be fired by
an individual employer but could not be ejected from the craft ILM
49
R. Prasch, American Economists and Minimum Wage Legislation During the
Progressive Era: 19121923, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 20, no. 2,
1998, pp. 161175.
50
See C. Kerr, Labor Markets: Their Character and Consequences, Proceedings of
the Second Annual Meeting, Industrial Relations Research Association, 1950. Also see
C. Kerr, The Balkanization of Labor Markets, in ed. E. Wright Bakke Labor Mobility
and Economic Opportunity, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1954. Both reprinted in
C. Kerr, Labor Markets and Wage Determination: The Balkanization of Labor Markets
and Other Essays, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1977.
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craig macmillan
except by the union itself. Employment security was not linked to a

workers relationship with a particular employer but to his occupation
or skill, and therefore to union membership. Social norms relating to
fairness often played a role in determining which workers received
employment. For example, the daily allocation of work in the market
for longshoremen on the West Coast of the U.S. in the 1930s was based
on a rotational system, where those that had worked the day before
went to the end of the dispatch queue and those that had been waiting
longest for work were at the front of the queue.51
The second type of internal market, the manorial market, was based
on the industrial enterprise, rather than occupation. Production jobs
were structured into job ladders, with jobs rising in importance as
workers moved up the ladder. Access to the internal market was
restricted to entry-level jobs on ladders. These jobs were known as
ports of entry. Job vacancies within the firm were filled internally, with
promotion based typically on seniority and ability playing a secondary
role. Seniority also played an important role in determining the order
of lay-offs when the enterprise had to reduce its workforce. Therefore,
social norms relating to equity were important in terms of determining
both promotion and lay-off. Power was also important with the threat
of industrial action generally preventing the enterprise from filling
vacancies on job ladders by external recruitment. In addition, within
a particular enterprise, there could be a number of job families
production, maintenance, sales and white-collareach constituting a
separate sub-internal market. Typically, horizontal movement between
job families was not possible. Unlike in craft based internal markets,
horizontal movement between enterprises was discouraged not simply
by seniority-driven promotion systems but also by the non-portability
of pension plans, the knowledge that a worker would only be employed
at a port of entry in another enterprise, and sometimes by the existenceof a gentlemans agreement between employers against pirating
labour from each other. Wages were attached to jobs, and therefore
primarily determined by the position of one job relative to another
within an ILM. The influence of market forces on wages was relativelymuted in such ILMs because a change to one wage rate would
51
See L. Kahn, Internal Labor Markets: San Francisco Longshoremen, Industrial
Relations, Vol. 15, 1976, pp. 333337. Also see W. Finlay, One Occupation, Two Labor
Markets: The Case of Long-shore Crane Operators, American Sociological Review, Vol.
48, 1983, pp. 306315.

necessitate a change to all wages within the ILM, if notions of equity
were to be maintained.52
These two markets were seen as separated from the open or
unstructured labour market by institutional rules. Kerr made clear
however, that the open market was not free of institutional influences
but was rather not as structured as craft or industrial markets. This
perspective was implicit in Kerr and Siegels argument that the labour
market did not exist in isolation from its socio-cultural, political and
historical context but was embedded within it and structured by a
web of rule which emerged from the interplay of worker organisations, employers and the state.53 The web of rule related to rules concerning the recruitment and training of the labour force, the level and
form of pay received by workers, the pace and quality of work, the
movement in and out of work and from one position to another, etc.
The work of Kerr and Dunlop was elaborated and refined by Peter
Doeringer and Michael Piore in their classic work Internal Labor
Markets and Manpower Analysis.54 Specifically, they focused on industrial ILMs which they re-labelled the enterprise model. According to
Doeringer and Piore enterprise ILMs emerged because of three factors: asset specificity, on-the-job training and customary law. Drawing
on Beckers distinction between specific and general training,
Doeringer and Piore argued that skill specificity related to the idea that
many of the skills a worker acquires are specific to the job he or she
performs for a specific firm.55 In addition, these skills typically are not
acquired through employer-provided formal in-house training, rather
they are acquired informally, on-the-job, by asking questions of more
experienced workers, by simply observing fellow workers, and by practicing during slower production periods. Consequently, incumbent
workers are more valuable to the firm than those outside and if an
Kerr, The Balkanization of Labor Markets.
C. Kerr and A. Siegel, The Structuring of the Labour Force in Industrial Society:
New Dimensions and New Questions, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 8,
no. 2, 1955, pp. 151168.
54
P. Doeringer and M. Piore, Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis,
Lexington, D. C. Heath, 1971.
55
See G. Becker, Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special
Reference to Education, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1975. Becker describes
the general training as training which equips workers with skills that are transferable
to workplaces in other firms. By contrast, specific training refers to training in which
workers acquire skills that are either not transferable to other firms or if so only
imperfectly.
52
53
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craig macmillan
incumbent exits, firms are faced with a new round of recruitment,

screening and training costs. In order to economise on these costs
firms create enterprise ILMs to foster worker attachment to the enterprise. The third factor, customary law, is more elusive. Doeringer and
Piore defined custom at the workplace as an unwritten set of rules
based largely upon past practice or precedent(and) appears to be the
outgrowth of employment stability with internal labor markets.56
Customs are also vehicles through which social norms relating to
equity or fairness are expressed and they can either facilitate or diminish economic efficiency.
Piore argued that the nature of the training process had been relatively neglected in the economics literature.57 He pointed out that
workers, especially in enterprise ILMs, acquire most of their skills
through on-the-job training that occurs within informal social groups.
Moreover, for this type of training to be successful, new workers are
required to understand and abide by the norms of the work group
regarding how work should be performed, and how they should relate
to each other in their respective roles. Indeed, inextricably woven into
the training process is the induction of workers into knowledge of
these group norms. Knowing the norms and customs of the work
group was therefore just as important to doing a job well as possessing
the required technical skills. Piore also noted that when these norms
develop in the context of a long-term employment relationship they
acquire within the work group an ethical aura. Abiding by the group
norms is a moral issue. It is through acquiring an understanding of the
group norms and the required specific skills that workers come to
experience their work as meaningful in the sense suggested by
Honneth. More particularly, it can be argued that workers would experience their work as moderately complex, and thus meaningful, as a
consequence of having acquired a range of new skills. This experience
would be reinforced by the promotion-from-within policy adopted in
most enterprise ILMs. Furthermore, by performing their work in
accordance with group norms their efforts would be recognised as
contributing to the common good by their fellow workers.
Doeringer and Piore integrated their account of ILMs with Piores
dual labour market theory which contends that the aggregate labour
Doeringer and Piore, Internal Labor Markets, p. 23.
M. Piore, Fragments of a Sociological Theory of Wages, American Economic
Review, Vol. 63, no. 2, 1973, pp. 377384.
56
57

has two segments: a primary market and a secondary market.58 The
primary market is made of jobs located in craft and industrial ILMs.
These jobs typically have decent wages, good working conditions,
employment stability, due process provisions and good career prospects. By contrast jobs in the secondary market are characterised by
relatively poor wages and working conditions, little protection from
harsh and capricious management, and a highly truncated career trajectory. Consequently, it is only a section of the workforce that can
hope to enjoy the sort of training and employment conditions that
make work both technically and socially meaningful.
While Honneth does refer to recent developments in economic
institutionalism and economic sociology in Work and Recognition:
A Redefinition it is not without misgivings. He correctly notes that the
institutional rules or the economic presuppositions of the market identified by these new disciplines are not moral in nature, and so should
not be hastily identified with the recognition norms he has in mind.
But the developments in institutionalism Honneth describes are in fact
characteristic of what economists now call the new institutional economics, which should not be conflated with the institutionalist tradition as such.59 The so-called new institutionalism aims to provide
economic efficiency-oriented explanations of the institutional rules
operating in the economy.60 Indeed, the bias towards efficiencyoriented explanations is so strong that at least one prominent e conomist
has called for the approach to be renamed the new efficiency oriented
institutional labour economics.61 It is also true that, in most instances,
new institutional economics is committed to finding explanations of
economic phenomena that exclude reference to moral and other noneconomic concerns. There is considerable debate in the economics
literature concerning the relationship between the old institutionalism associated with Veblen, Mitchell and Commons and the new
institutionalism. Some scholars, such as Kaufman, have argued for
considerable commonality, and therefore continuity, between the old
Doeringer and Piore, Internal Labor Markets, pp. 164183.

O. Williamson, The New Institutional Economics: Taking Stock, Looking
Ahead, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. xxxviii, 2000, pp. 595613.
60
G. Dow, The New Institutional Economics and Employment Regulation in ed.
B. Kaufman Government Regulation of Employment Relationship, Industrial Relations
Research Association Series, 1997, pp. 5790.
61
See Jacoby, The New Institutionalism: What can it Learn from the Old?.
58
59
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craig macmillan
and new institutionalism.62 By contrast, others, including Ramstad,

have rejected any meaningful common ground between the two
schools.63 There is not the space here to discuss in adequate detail the
complex issues which lie at the heart of this question. However, the
present discussion, which has focused on the institutional economics
of Commons and more recent institutionalists working in the tradition
he founded, has shown that much more than economic efficiency in a
narrow sense is at stake in the institutionalist economic approach.
5. Recognition Theory and Institutionalism
Let me now draw together some of the threads of my discussion by way
of some suggestions for what institutionalist economics and Honneths
theory of recognition can learn from each other.64
We have seen that both approaches conceive of the human subject
as socially constituted and argue that individual economic action can
only be properly understood when the socio-institutional context
in which it occurs is given explanatory priority. But the concept of
subjectivity, and the relational psychology behind it, remains underdeveloped in Commons work. His so-called negotiational psychology remained an unfinished project and nowhere did he provide a
comprehensive statement of the psychological framework he associated with his negotiational psychology.65 As Albert and Ramstad
have observed, institutionalism has still not developed an adequate
psychology to underpin its account of the economy. Albert and
Ramstad have sought to address this theoretical weakness by linking
See Kaufman, The Institutionalist and Neoclassical Schools in Labor Economics.

See Y. Ramstad, Is a Transaction a Transaction? Journal of Economic Issues, Vol.
xxx, no. 2, 1996, pp. 413425 and Ramstad John R. Commonss Reasonable Value and
the Problem of Just Price.
64
See also J-P. Deranty, Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical
Theory: A Defence of Honneths Theory of Recognition, in eds. H.-C. Schmidt am
Busch and C. Zurn The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 2009. While Deranty examines the relationship
between institutionalism and recognition theory from the point of view of how institutionalism can enhance recognition theory, the question of how recognition theory
can enhance institutionalism also needs to be considered.
65
A. Albert and Y. Ramstad, The Social Psychological Underpinnings of
Commonss Institutional Economics: The Significance of Deweys Human Nature
and Conduct, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. xxxi, no. 4, 1997, pp. 881916. See also
Biddle, The Role of Negotiational Psychology.
62
63

Commons account of the will-in-action to Meads concept of the
social self.66 But they acknowledge the speculative basis of this
effort as Commons made no reference himself to Meads ideas in
his writings. At this point Honneths meticulous reconstruction of
Meads psychological framework can be brought into the picture.67 His
Mead-inspired account of the human subject as constituted by intersubjective processes of reciprocal recognition promises to provide just
the kind of psychological framework that institutionalism currently
lacks.
Furthermore, a recognition-theoretic, Meadian psychology might
be put to work to address some of the concerete practical problems at
the heart of the institutionalist enterprise. As is well known, Honneth
posits three practical relations-to-self that are crucial to human flourishing: self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem. Each of these are
acquired and sustained through processes of mutual recognition. This
normative model of the human subject can be fed into strategies pursued by Commons to deal with the labor problem in the following
way.68 Commons valued the due process provisions in collective
agreements which protected workers against capricious and discriminatory decision making by management.69 By attempting to ensure
that all workers were recognised as equals these provisions can be
viewed as providing workers with a sense of self-respect. Commons
was also concerned that workers received wages that were reasonable
and fair, and which in Honneths terms, conveyed a sense of selfesteem. Moreover, because in Commons preferred model of collective
bargaining the state did not arbitrate wage outcomes in a bargaining
deadlock, the wages (and conditions) that were finally negotiated
would be based on a mutual recognition of workers contribution to
the production process and the employers capacity to pay.
I have already commented on the shared methodological approach
adopted by Commons and Honneth. Both allow the conscious
66
A. Albert & Y. Ramstad, The Social Psychological Underpinnings of Commonss
Institutional Economics: The Concordance of George Herbert Meads Social Self and
John R. Commonss Will, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. xxxii, no. 1, 1998, pp. 146.
67
See Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 7191.
68
The argument advanced here is that Honneths normative account of the human
subject could contribute to the psychological underpinnings of institutional economics, however, it is acknowledged that Commons notion of negotiational psychology
takes in areas not directly addressed by Honneth.
69
Strategy and Policy.
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craig macmillan
e xperience of labour market participants to be explored, and indeed

prioritise the normative expectations contained in this experience.
At the same time, Honneths position in Work and Recognition:
A Redefinition, departs somewhat from his earlier writings, which
focus on the normative presuppositions of society as revealed by a
phenomenological analysis of moral injury.70 The account of the
relationship between work and recognition elaborated by Honneth
leans less on this idea, indeed it is not clear where it fits in at all. In
this respect, Commons seems to suggest a different path, one that
might actually lead recognition theory back to a more phenomenologically grounded understanding of the relation between recognition
and work.
Commons research might also serve as a source of potential solutions to the problems identified by Hegel and Durkheim. We have seen
how Honneth distils from their writings a set of normative conditions
relating to the organisation of work in capitalist society. Both Hegel
and Durkheim proposed that these normative conditions could only
be reliably sustained if there were institutions supporting the operation
of the labour market. As has been demonstrated in this chapter, such a
position is consistent with the tenets of institutionalism generally and
with the institutional economics of Commons in particular. Rather
than tackle poor labour market outcomes through redistributive policies, Commons sought to prevent them emerging in the first place by
establishing institutional arrangements that put workers on an equal
footing with employers when negotiating the terms of employment. In
order to equalise bargaining power, workers needed to be organised
and such collectives needed to be recognised as legal entities. Further
more, collective bargaining also needed to be recognised and facilitated by legislation. Thus Commons strategy required that new
working rules be established that accorded certain groups (unions)
and certain activities (collective bargaining) greater social standing.
More broadly, Commons strategy was based on the understanding
that poor labour market outcomes were the product of inappropriate
institutional arrangements.
Honneth follows a similar conceptual path when he assigns a crucial
role to pre-market institutional arrangements in determining economic outcomes:
Honneth, Recognition or Redistribution? p. 48.
70

[The] rules organising the distribution of material goods derive from
the degree of social esteem enjoyed by various social groups, in accordance with institutionalised hierarchies of value, or a normative order
[They are not] simply derived from the relations of production, but are
rather seen as the institutional expression of a sociocultural dispositive
that determines in what esteem particular activities are held at a specific
point in time.71
With regard to the normative conditions of work that Honneth distils

from Hegel and Durkheim, those relating to the ability of workers to
freely consent to a labour contract and the payment of a living wage
have deep connections with Commons normative goals. Commons
argued that in order for the terms of employment to be considered fair
and reasonable they must have been negotiated in a context of equal
bargaining power and free of duress. Furthermore, only when these
conditions were satisfied could employees be regarded as having freely
or willingly consented to a labour contract. The other normative conditions were not directly discussed by Commons, but later institutionalist economists such as Doeringer and Piore have shed some light on
the role of social groups in equipping workers with skills that enable
workers to perform increasingly complex and meaningful tasks and
also in establishing a sense of social belonging at work. They have also
shown that, due to the structure of the labour market, only a segment
of the workforce has such experiences. This is an important conclusion
for contemporary institutionalism as well as recognition theory to
reflect upon. The links between these two research paradigms I have
discussed in this chapter suggest they should perform such reflection
together.
ibid., p. 54.
71
PART TWO
CRITIQUE, NORM AND WORK
Chapter five
The Political Invisibility of Work and

its Philosophical Echoes
Emmanuel Renault
Although new conditions of work are a major concern for employees
and unemployed workers, work as such, in a sense that must be distinguished from employment, is no longer considered as a major issue in
the political public sphere. Various processes explain this fact, and it
seems that they have produced their effects not only in the political
public sphere, but in political philosophy as well. Here, political shortcomings seem to reproduce in philosophical shortcomings, so that,
as regard to work, the relation between philosophy and political philosophy could be compared to what Marx had in mind when he
explained that a critique of the political justified a critique of political
philosophy.
One could distinguish three political, social and psychological processes that tend to produce a denial of work itself, or of the problems
experienced at work. First, a political denial of work is linked to the
victory of neoliberal ideology and the defeat of the workers movement
and its social democratic off-shoots. The workers movement, the
social democratic parties and unions have given to workers a means to
express their social point of view in the public political sphere, as well
as their claims for a collective control of work. The sociologists Beaud
and Pialoux have shown how, as soon as they were defeated, the workers tended to be made more and more invisible in the public sphere, as
well as work itself.1 The force behind this invisibility has been supported and enhanced by a neoliberal ideology according to which the
economy has to be considered as a functional system that no State
policy should try to regulate. Second, a social denial of problems at
work takes various forms. Hughes has explained that because all
professions try to improve their social position, their members tend
to dissimulate the bad aspects of their work to others eyes as well as to
S. Beaud, M. Pialoux, Retour sur la condition ouvrire, Fayard, Paris, 1999.
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emmanuel renault
themselves.2 This kind of social denial is restricted to socially esteemed

professions, but a comparable denial is socially produced in jobs that
enjoy less social status. Another social denial of the problems experienced at work is linked with long term unemployment in Europe and
the dismantlement of social protections in other western countries. In
this context, people tend to believe that work has become a privilege,
or a wrong not so severe as unemployment and marginalisation.
Consequently, as Dejours has pointed out, employees tend to feel guilty
about facing problems at work.3 Moreover, in todays finance-ruled
economies, trade unions are becoming the managers of the pension
funds of their members, and employees are becoming interested in the
profit rate of their firms in order to consolidate their pensions, so that
the social motivations and institutional settings of the critique of work
are undermined. Third, there is also a general psychological factor that
tends to deny problems at work. As Bourdieu has stated in his article
The double truth of work,4 work is a social activity in which individuals can engage only if they ignore the pain they suffer in it and minimize the social and political problems that are intrinsically contained
in it. How could political philosophy avoid reproducing these three
types of denial in its own discourse? How could it address the invisibility they produce, and how could it develop the social critique of work
they impede?
In this chapter, I analyse neither the various forms of the denial of
work, nor their link with its philosophical denial. I only describe the
main ways in which the issue of work gets marginalised in political
philosophy and the reason why a theory of recognition could provide
means not only for bringing work back to the fore, but also to analyse
its normative content and its political significance in order to promote
a social critique of work.
1. The Theoretical Denial of Work
In contemporary political philosophy, the exclusion of work is the
result of various trends, some of which belong to the normative
E. Hughes, Work and Self, in eds. J. H. Roher and M. Sherif Social Psychology at
the Crossroads, New-York, Harper & Row, 1951, pp. 313323; and Studying the
Nurses Work, American Journal of Nursing, Vol. 51, (May) 1951, pp. 294295.
3
C. Dejours, Souffrance en France. La banalisation de linjustice sociale, Paris, Seuil,
1998.
4
P. Bourdieu, Mditations pascaliennes, Paris, Seuil, 1997, pp. 241244.
2
political invisibility of work and philosophical echoes135

assumptions of political philosophy, others to the social theories presupposed by political philosophy.
In the Marxian-Hegelian philosophy that was influential in the post
second world war intellectual world, as well as in some existentialist
philosophy of that time, the notion of alienation defined a normative
point of view for social critique, and one of the targets of such a critique was work. The renewal of normative political philosophy since
the beginning of the 70s has been accompanied both by a disqualification of the issue of alienation and a disappearance of work as a political
problem. It is as if the rejection of the theoretical scheme that has been
used to analyse and critique work has been accompanied by the rejection of work itself. Two alternative stances have replaced that of alienation, and in both of them work can no longer be a real target of social
critique.
The first normative stance is that of democracy. According both to
republican and proceduralist theories of democracy, political freedom
is constituted in a public sphere that is external and independent of the
social sphere of work. And in the republicanism of Arendt, as well as in
that of Habermas, it is essential to political freedom that it develops
itself independently of economic constraints and labour activity. Even
if political discussions can take some economic problems into consideration, there is only a loose and secondary link between democracy
and work. The liberal conception of democracy can obviously not take
work into consideration as a normative issue any more. Interpreting
work as an individual freedom, and restricting the right of the State to
limit freedom, it can even lead to the exclusion of work as a legitimate
object of political democratic discussions. As Honneth has pointed
out, in his article Democracy and Reflexive Cooperation,5 it is only
with the pragmatist conception of democracy as a way of regulating
problems arising from social cooperation that contemporary political
philosophy offers an alternative view. It is only here that work becomes
a normative issue that is essential for the very possibility of democracy.
But in current discussions, the reference to Dewey is not so common,
and it should be considered as an exception to the exclusion of the
relevance of work by normative theories of democracy. Moreover, in
the Deweyan model, the link between work and democracy remains
external. It is not work itself that can be judge from the point of view of
5
A. Honneth, Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the Theory
of Democracy Today, Political Theory, Vol. 26, No. 6 (Dec. 1998), pp. 763783.
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emmanuel renault
democracy, but only the participation in a just division of labour that

belongs to the conditions of a democratic public space. But on closer
consideration, work has to be considered as an instrumental activity
(or technical mastering of instruments of production) and as a communicative activity: it is a cooperative activity where the prescriptions
of hierarchy and the rules of interaction between colleagues have to be
interpreted and specified in an internal public space.6
The second normative stance is that of justice. There are various reasons why work can be excluded as a significant issue in discussions
about justice. According to a liberal definition of justice, the priority of
negative freedom over positive freedom and good life implies that the
effects of work on the quality of life and the possibility of reaching
strong evaluations about work can only be secondary. According to a
socialist definition of justice as redistribution, work seems better off:
issues of wages and of a repartition of work inside society then appear
as plainly relevant. But on closer consideration, it appears that it is
more employment as a means of income and social status (having a job
and obtaining social recognition from that) than work as particular
activity (technical and cooperative activity in a work place) that is
introduced in the framework of justice. Just as democracy is at stake in
the internal public space of work, so justice is at stake in work as activity. There is substantial sociological evidence that workers complain
about the injustice of their work,7 but normative political philosophy
usually fails to capture this kind of understanding of injustice in their
models.8 What would be required instead would be an enlarged conception of justice taking the standpoint of the normative expectations
that are dissatisfied in the various experiences of injustice. Honneths
theory of recognition provides the best example of such conception of
justice.9
The counterpart of this normative narrowness of contemporary
political philosophies, their descriptive side, social theory, also plays a
role in the exclusion of work. A first social theoretical argument to take
into account is that of the economy as a social system that only has
functional regulations. The Habermasian distinction between system
6
See C. Dejours, Subjectivity, Work, Action, Critical Horizons, Vol. 7, 2006,
pp. 4562.
7
F. Dubet, Injustices. Lexprience des ingalits au travail, Paris, Seuil, 2006.
8
For a critique of theories of justice from this point of view, see E. Renault,
LExprience de linjustice, Paris, La Dcouverte, 2004 and Radical Democracy and an
Abolitionist Concept of Justice, Critical Horizons, Vol. 6, 2005, pp. 137152.
9
A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995.

and lifeworld gives a good illustration of this position and of its consequences. As a result, the economy as such is no longer a normative
problem but only its colonising intrusions into the lifeworld. Honneth
has plainly shown the dead ends of this position, insofar as it is not able
to take into account the distinction between economy as coordinated
interaction, and work as individual activity loaded with specific normative expectations. The only normative issue it can associate with
work as such is that of the liberation from work, namely, that of the
reduction of the limit on working hours. A second social theoretical
argument is linked with the description of society as a network of
social supports. In this case, work can appear as a normative issue
through the critique of casual work. But here again, it is more employment than work as such, that comes to the fore. Castel gives a good
illustration of the kind of social critique that results from this: it is
focused on the deregulation of the labour market rather than on the
organisation of work inside of firms, and the solution it advocates deals
with legal protection rather that transformation of working conditions.10 It is interesting to notice that when sociologists want to
approach work as a social activity within firms, they tend to focus on
the rules of interaction between employees rather than on the technical and cooperative dimensions of work as social and material activity.
The approach to work through principles of justification and through
the sense of justice in Boltanski and Dubet provide good illustrations
of this last trend.11 This focus would be plainly legitimate if work could
be defined as a social activity that has been extrinsically defined as
work by given social norms, that is, if working activity was nothing
more than other social activities and if the rules of the working activity were nothing more than rules of social interaction. But working
activity is not a given social activity among others, is it a productive
activity where one has to cope with the real (technical constraints, mistakes and failures) and with the other (with a hierarchy and with
peers) in a very specific way. It is also a social activity overloaded with
psychicstakes: work can enlarge and enhance subjectivity or wound
self-confidence, self respect and self esteem. And the working activity
also has very important stakes as far as it is a powerful place of ongoing
10
R. Castel, From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Transformation of the Social
Question, trans. and ed. Richard Boyd, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers,
2003 [1995].
11
L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott,
London, Verso, 2005 [1999]; F. Dubet, Injustices. Lexprience des ingalits au travail.
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emmanuel renault
education to sociality and democracy, or on the contrary, to adaptation

to domination or to unbearable conditions of life.12
In brief, it is because of its normative models as well as because of its
descriptive models that political philosophy is able neither to make
explicit the importance of the normative expectations that individuals
associate with their work, nor to take into account the fact that for
many individuals, work remains the main issue of social life. In a way,
one might argue that the issue of work reveals the incapacity of political philosophy to deal with what appears to individuals as real normative problems.
2. Three Challenges
If one wants to avoid these shortcomings, one has to address three
challenges. The first is that of the normative assumptions of a critical
conception of work. The second is that of a conception of work which
is able to describe work as working activity. The third is that of a conception of the social that is able to make explicit what is experienced in
work as a normative problem by individuals.
a. A Critical Conception of Work
In his article Work and Instrumental Action, Honneth has explained
why political philosophy should elaborate a critical conception of
work in order to fulfil its goals, namely, its claim to grasp all significant social problems within a normative model of the social.13 We have
already shown that some conceptions of democracy as social cooperation can be useful since work appears as a condition of a real democratic public space, and a mode of cooperation where communicative
action is more or less democratically shaped. We have also seen that
various feelings of injustice emerge from the working activity so that a
relevant conception of justice could meet the requirements of a critical
conception of work. Two other normative points of view could meet
these requirements, that of autonomy and that of health. The various
normative assumptions of a complete critical conception of work are of
C. Dejours, Subjectivity, Work, Action.
A. Honneth, Work and Instrumental Action : On the Normative Foundations of
Critical Theory, in Honneth, The Fragmented World of the Social, Albany NY, SUNY
Press, 1995.
12
13

different types, and it seems particularly important here to keep in
mind the pragmatist warning against the philosophical temptations of
reducing the various types of normativity to a unique one.14
If understood as interplay between individual and collective autonomy, the norm of autonomy could sustain a normative conception of
work. In his book The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth has shown
that the recognitive relations related to work (in the third sphere of
recognition) belong to the intersubjective conditions of positive freedom in general.15 And in his article on Democracy as Reflexive
Cooperation, he has also suggested that what can be conceived of as
the highest form of freedom, namely political freedom in its democratic form, is also dependent on a just social division of labour. The
interest of such approach is not only that it identifies work as a significant normative problem; it is also that it captures some aspects of the
normative problems individuals experience at work. Indeed, individuals complain about injustice at work, but they also complain about
domination, a problem that can be described in the framework of a
model of communicative freedom or socially decentralised autonomy.
But in work as working activity, autonomy is also at stake as the individual ability of expressing ones identity and mastering ones own
activity and interaction with colleagues and clients. As Dejours
explains, the norm of autonomy captures an expectation to be able to
integrate the various aspects of ones social experience that interact
with the working activity, as well as expectations of being able to find
ways of preventing or solving problems and of sustaining interactions
with others. But this individual autonomy always relies upon collective
discussions with colleagues and passes through recognition as intersubjective confirmation of individual solutions, so that individual and
collective autonomy are closely interrelated.16
Another normative standpoint able to ground a critical conception
of work is that of health. It surely might sound strange to think of
health as a norm as long as one conceives of norms as claims that can
be universally accepted and can be used as criteria of distinction
See J. Dewey, Three Independent Factors in Morals, The Later Works, Vol. 5,
Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois Press, 1988, pp. 279288.
15
A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995.
16
On the link between autonomy, expression and cooperation, see J.-P. Deranty,
Expression and Cooperation as Norms of Contemporary Work, in this volume.
14
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emmanuel renault
between good and bad human practices. There are indeed very contradictory conceptions of health, they do not usually function as normative criteria, and they have no immediate link with the problem of
evaluation of human practices. But if one understands norms as ways
of making explicit what is a stake in our social experience, and to monitor our practical endeavors to make it better, there is no reason to
reject the ethical and political importance of health17at least if health
is understood and referred to in a negative way, especially with regard
to the various social situations where the feeling that something is
going wrong in our life is able to contaminate all our existence and to
alter our mental health. As Dejours plainly states it in his book Travail
usure mentale, work is a condition of mental health, an opportunity for
recovery, and a possible cause of extreme psychic suffering.18 If health
is understood as a condition of positive freedom, this other norm can
be conceived of as closely linked as well as complementary to this former one. It is worth noticing that the psychic investment in ones body
and in ones creativity within a cooperative community of work belongs
to the conditions of individual and collective autonomy. But it is also
important to highlight that the norm of health is able to capture other
aspects of the normative problems experienced at work. In fact, individuals do not complain only about injustice and domination. They
also complain about stress and unbearable conditions of work, about a
suffering at work that is able to undermine the meaning of their activity, and efforts to colonize not only their professional life but also their
social and private life.
It seems to me that a normative conception of work has to refer to
the norms of democracy, of justice, of autonomy and health. One interest of a theory of recognition is to offer a model to associate these four
norms, but maybe one of its limits is to reduce them to a common
term. Understood in the Honnethian framework, positive recognition
is a condition of collective and individual autonomy, as well as a condition of justice and good life. Conversely, the denial of recognition can
constitute an obstacle to democratic life, as well as lead to a loss of indi
vidual autonomy and to an alteration of identity (or psychic health).
17
For this pragmatist argument, see for example J. Dewey, Reconstruction in
Philosophy, Boston, Beacon, 1948, chapter 7; and Experience and Nature, New York,
Norton, 1925, chapter 10.
18
C. Dejours, Travail usure mentale, Paris, Bayard, 2000 (third ed.). For a comparison between Honneths and Dejours account on work and recognition, see E. Renault,
Travail et reconnaissance, Travailler, No. 18, 2007, pp. 119135.

To check that a recognition theory can really provide a critical conception of work, one has to describe more precisely the relationship
between work and recognition. The link between recognition and
employment is easy to describe. To have a job is to have a double
opportunity to have the social dimension of ones existence recognised:
wages, on the one hand, and social prestige, on the other hand, are
social evaluations of ones social activity. Wages can be experienced as
social recognition by individuals, but also as disrespect and injustice
when they do not meet the expectation of individuals. The prestige
hierarchy of professions also means that individuals do not benefit
from the same social recognition, so that it can produce either positive
recognition or denial of recognition. As Honneth has explained it, the
need for recognition is one of the main incentives of the struggle for
redistribution through increased wages. And as Hughes has shown,
transformations of professions are not only due to technical innovations, but also to attempts to obtain higher prestige and better social
recognition.19
A theory of recognition seems very appropriate to make the normative content of work as employment explicit. But in order to set up a
critical conception of work, another step is required. One has also to
describe the relationship between recognition and work as working
activity.
b. A Definition of Work as Specific Activity
And here we are coming to the second challenge: the definition of the
specificity of work as activity, and the definition of the role recognition
plays in it. One can distinguish three types of definition of work as
activity, or three types of activity. Each of them is correlative of a different normative stance and to peculiar modes of recognition.
The first definition of work as activity is that of technical activity
which involves an implicit reference to norms of efficiency. As an activity of production of goods and services, work presupposes the use of
given means of production in a given material environment and is
defined by various technical constraints. If work as activity was nothing else than technical activity, then the critical conception of work
would only have to take work as employment into consideration,
19
E. Hughes, Social Role and the Division of Labor, Midwest Sociologist, Vol. 17,
No. 1, 1956, pp. 37.
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emmanuel renault
focusing on the problems of social prestige associated to the various

professions and on the social definition of given productive activity as
belonging or not to work. But there are other levels of activity in work.
The second level of activity is that of coordinated activity. A specific
feature of the working activity is that it takes place in a social and technical division of labour, and that it develops under hierarchical constraint (formal or informal in the case of domestic work) in interactions
with member of a higher or lower hierarchy, with peers and with customers. As a result, it is defined by specific rules of interaction within
work places and by specific expectations toward the other as customers, peers or member of the hierarchy. These rules and expectations are
defined by the structure of the division of labour inside the productive
activity and in the relations between producers of goods or services
and customers. The norms that are involved in this level of activity are
not only efficiency, but also utility: utility of the employees activity for
the firm, or utility of the service for the customer. What is at stake in
this level of activity could be compared with what is at stake in work as
employment. As well as identification with a profession being part of
the socialisation process, the cooperative activity inside the work place
is part of the socialisation process. Just as professions give the means to
obtain recognition of the social value of ones activity, the community
of work (that of the hierarchy and the peers) and the customers can
provide recognition to its members. Nevertheless, these two kinds of
socialisation and of valuing must be distinguished. The value at stake
here is no more that of prestige linked with a collective identity, but
that of the utility of an individual activity. Two distinctions are to be
made. The first one relates to the object of the valuing and to the distinction between collective and individual identity: the valuing of the
community in which I participate, that of my profession or of my firm
(collective aspect of my identity), differs from the valuing of my individual activity (individual aspect of my identity). The second distinction relates to the type of valuing and to the distinction between the
social as global society and the social as social situations or as sets of
local social relations: conceived of as prestige, the social value of my
profession means its value for the whole society and it is internally
associated with the goods and services produced; conceived of as utility, the social value means its value in given interactive and hierarchical relations and it relates to the process of my producing activity.
One interest of a theory of recognition for a critical conception of
work is that it can capture this specific normative content. It is simply

a fact that people expect recognition of the value of their activity in
work places and that they hope that the hierarchy, colleagues or customers will offer them recognition. It is also a fact that this recognition
can transform work into a pleasure and provide incentives for increasing involvement and creativity, whereas lack of recognition can produce feelings of injustice, of suffering and of loss of meaning. In order
to capture this normative dimension of work as activity, it is not only
important to distinguish these types (prestige, efficiency, utility) and
sources (scale of social esteem, individual customers, peers and hierarchy) of recognition. This dimension also relates to the fact that various
tensions and conflicts can develop between these types and sources of
recognition. Resolving them is also part of the working activity.
Dejours for example, but also sociologists like Lallemant, Osty or Eme
have given plenty of evidence for these facts.20 Even if the conceptual
framework of Honneths theory of recognition provides no systematic
room for this particular form of social esteem, it can easily be introduced into it. And the valuing of the utility of work by the hierarchy,
colleagues and customers can be interpreted as one recognitive expectation that defines the specific normative content of work as a specific
form of socialisation. In other words, I would say that within the
framework of Honneths theory of recognition, the general link
between socialisation, normative expectations and recognition offers
an interesting model to capture the normative content of work as
employment and as coordinated activity. Its only limitation is that it
seems not very appropriate to take the third level of activity into
account.
The third level of activity is that of practice as coping with the real.
As Hughes has pointed out, work activity is mainly an attempt to deal
with errors that arise in technical and cooperative activity, and with
errors that could arise. As the French psychoanalyst of social action
Mendel explains, work cannot be conceived of as the development of
action planning, but instead must be understood as an attempt to practically subjectify the affective and social dynamics that converge in our
activity as well as to appropriate subjectively our deeds.21 According to
20
M. Lallemant, Qualit du travail et critique de la reconnaissance, in ed.
A. Caill, La qute de reconnaissance, Paris, La dcouverte, 2007, pp. 7188; F. Osty, Le
dsir de mtier. Engagement, identit et reconnaissance, Rennes, PUR, 2003; Bernard
Eme, Jeunes salaris en qute de respect, Sciences humaines, No. 172, Juin 2006.
21
G. Mendel, Lacte est une aventure, du sujet mtaphysique au sujet de lactepouvoir,
Paris, La Dcouverte, 1998.
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emmanuel renault
these approaches, one specificity of working activity is that it is an

encounter with the real, in a Freudian sense in which the real can be
distinguished both from conscious expectations and desire. Work is
surely not the only encounter with a real that can disturb our technical
mastering of our own activity, that can dissatisfy our desires and expectation toward the other. But it is the only activity where one is structurally imprisoned in the necessity of dealing with the fragility of our
technical skills and of coping with a social environment saturated with
social rules and roles. More than anywhere else, the resistance of the
materiality and the constraints of social domination and interaction
converge on our body and affect our psychic life.
The French psychology of work has developed this analysis of work
as encounter with the real showing its importance for psychic life and
describing its normative implications. The psychic implications of
work have been highlighted by Clot and Dejours. Clot has spoken
about a psychic function of work, in order to show that the need to
deal with the material and social constraints of work implies some
kind of subjective decentration that is the condition for an ethical
reflexivity and a flexible personal identity.22 Dejours has explained how
these psychic, material and social constraints produce a suffering with
which individuals have to cope, so that practical activity at work is
accompanied by a psychic work on the psychic and social dimensions
of our existence that is able to transform deeply our identity.23 Both of
them have highlighted the implications of the distinction between the
prescribed work (the prescribed coordination of activities) and the real
work (the activities of coping with technical and coordination problems). Work activity is always an invention of a particular interpretation of rules, so that the very individuality of the worker is always at
stake in its own activity, his or her very identity not only as a psychic
body involved in working activity, but also his or her identity as thought
and reflection on oneself. It is interesting that in its suffering part as
well as in its inventing part, recognition plays a role. Because of the
difference between prescribed and real work, the cooperation is always
something more than a mere coordination of action in a technical division of labour, and it is something more than simply following the
rules of coordination according to shared habits. Therefore, a worker
Y. Clot, La fonction psychologique du travail, Paris, PUF, 1999.
See C. Dejours, Coopration et construction de lidentit en situation de travail,
http://multitudes.samizdat.net/spip.php?article638.
22
23

always has to obtain recognition of the value of his or her idiosyncratic
way of following the rules of coordination if cooperation is to be sustained. This particular form of recognition is termed recognition of
the beauty of work by Dejours, in order to distinguish it from the
norms of efficiency as well as from those of utility.24 Recognition of the
beauty means that colleagues recognise that the invention is appropriate for making cooperation more satisfying, for saving time, for preventing errors and for ease of repair. To phrase it in Meadian terms, the
judgment of beauty is not only raising the issue of the recognition of
the worker as Me (or conformity with general expectation about efficiency and utility of all working activities inside a firm) but also as I
(or as non conformity with the rules that are supposed to coordinate
the working interaction).25 Important to note is that this new kind of
recognition, as well as recognition of utility, plays a decisive role in
coping with suffering at work, and in transforming it into pleasure.
Here, one can understand why lack of recognition at work can produce
not only injustice or deterioration of psychic health, but also a feeling
that ones efforts are made in vain and that ones whole life is losing its
meaning.
What seems to me important in this third level of working activity is
that it raises new normative problems that a critical model of work has
to take into account. First, it raises the problem of possible denial of
recognition that can be produced by the practice of work itself, whatever the social valuing of professions, or the recognitive relationships
between colleagues, might be. Examples of this problem are provided
by extremely degraded working conditions where people can just not
identify with their activity. It is the case for example with work assigned
to the lowest group of the lowest caste (Dalits) in India, the Dangis,
untouchable among untouchables, scavengers that have to cope every
day with the piss and shit of other castes. As Rajeev Bhargava has
recently shown, the activity as such produces a deep feeling of disrespect, or denial of recognition, that no social recognition can compensate.26 The problem is not primarily that of social evaluation, but that of
See C. Dejours, Le facteur humain, Paris, PUF, 1995, pp. 5962.
On the problem of the dialectic between Me and I in the working places, see
S. Voswinkel, Anerkennung und Reputation. Die Dramaturgie industrieller Beziehungen,
Konstanz, UVK, 2001, p. 69 ff.
26
See R. Bhargava, Hegel, Taylor and the Phenomenology of Broken Spirits, in ed.
M. Seymour, The Plural States of Recognition, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan, 2010,
pp. 3760.
24
25
146
emmanuel renault
the real of its work, that of its raw material, that of its infinite distance
from all the strong evaluations that are shaping identity and with all
recognitive expectations. What is coming to the fore, here, is that recognition is not the only condition that enables one to identify with
ones activity. Other conditions depend on other subjective dynamics
of activity.27
A second important normative problem relates to what Dejours has
termed deontic activity. Because the real work is always different
from the prescribed work, working involves normative invention. And
the necessity for individuals to cope with their suffering also drives
them either to sublimation or to rigidified psychic defences. Mental
health depends largely on the possibility of using collective norms to
produce sublimation of the suffering. Instead, individuals and communities of workers will resort to psychic or collective psychic defences
as modes of denial of the problems and, because of the rigidity of these
defences, will lose the normative creativity that is part of mental health.
This point is important to note because it plays a great role in the
degradation of working conditions, in a context in which, as Dejours
has pointed out, the intensification and decreasing protections of work
produce more suffering at work, whereas managers are sometimes
tempted to manipulate collective defences and denial to increase the
productivity of work, increasing again, therefore, the suffering at work.
As a conclusion of the discussion of this second challenge, it seems
that a theory of recognition can definitely provide the various normative principles that are required by a critical conception of work as
employment and as working activity. In this respect, Honneth and
Dejours offer complementary insights, and it seems that each of them
offers a conceptual framework in which the theoretical proposal of the
other could be integrated.
c. A Definition of the Social where Work As Such Exists
The third challenge deals with the social theory in which the problems
at work would exist. If a conception of work has to contribute to a
social critique of work, it must capture the social processes that produce the normative problems of work. What does that mean? Let me
address this problem with three brief remarks.
See Y. Clot, Travail et pouvoir dagir, PUF, 2008, pp. 249268.
27

First, a social critique of work cannot define the social only according to an interactionist paradigm: in general, it might be problematic
to reduce the social as a mode of interaction to social rules and roles,
but in the analysis of work in particular, the shortcomings of this
approach become obvious. As we have seen, work is not only a cooperative action, but also a transaction with the real where materiality,
corporeity and social constraints play a role. According to the rule
approach, the normative problems at work are only about injustices of
treatment. According to the role approach, the normative problems at
work are only recognitive expectations included in professions as collective identity. These normative problems are surely important parts
of individual experiences of work as an ethical and political problem.
But a critical conception of work should also take other problems into
consideration.
Second, a social critique of work cannot complete this first model
solely by a definition of the social as a network of social support. This
kind of approach, which is developed in social psychology as well as in
the writings of sociologists like Latour28 or Castel, is surely insufficient
to ground a general social theory, but its shortcomings become even
more obvious in the analysis of work. It is true indeed that a community of workers must be conceived as a network of social support, and
the reason why casual work is so much a problem for individuals is
partially because it undermines the support one expects from ones
colleagues. But even in the critique of casual work, the approach in
terms of social support alone is not sufficient. An obvious fact is that
social protections offered by colleagues are also a means of resistance
against attempts to make individuals compete against each other in
work places in order to intensify work, to increase productivity, and to
consolidate the domination of the hierarchy.
Then the interactionist and the social support approaches have
to be completed by a theory of domination. The idea of domination
captures two features that are central to the experience of work as
activity: first, this activity develops under a hierarchical constraint;
second, because work as employment is a scarce good and the best
means to satisfy ones needs, ways of resisting or escaping the hierarchical constraint are very limited. Domination is always accompanied
28
See B. Latour, Factures/fractures : de la notion de rseau celle dattachement,
in A. Micoud and M. Peroni, Ce qui nous relie, ditions de laube, La Tout dAigues,
2000, pp. 189208.
148
emmanuel renault
by legitimating principles, and because of the suffering we experience

under domination, the social dynamics of legitimation can be supported by a psychological dynamic of identification or denial. In this
sense, domination is also a way of thinking about and identifying with
unequal roles that has strong effects on the ways individuals use the
principles of justice. In other words, the analysis of experiences of
injustice at work cannot achieve its goals without analysing social relations of domination. Social support approaches also have to take social
relations of domination into consideration if they want to distinguish
between our identifications with supportive relations of domination
(voluntary servitude or alienation) and our identification with what
protects us against domination and violence.
Social relations of domination are structuring work places and they
are part of the real we encounter in work as activity: they are part of the
social real we have to cope with. They explain the specific vulnerability
we experience at work, a vulnerability that cannot be explained only by
the fragility of social support. An analysis of these relations enables us
to capture an important feature of what individuals experience as normative problems at work: for example, it enables us to explain what is
at stake with the rejection of casual work. And it also offers us an interesting means to make sense of the ambiguity that is often characteristic
of the moral experience of work: for example, the paradoxical identifications with firms (identification to a given firm even when it is perceived as a place of domination or injustice), the temporary approval
of organisational transformations and support for promises made liberation from constraints (through flexibilisation, through autonomy,
or through recognition).
Since the theory of recognition seems to provide the most promising attempt to develop a critical conception of work, the social theoretical challenge could be phrased in the following way: how can a
theory of social domination be developed within a theory of recognition? On the one hand, it seems to me that the theory of recognition
has been very convincingly developed as a theory of justice and as a
theory of social support by Honneth. But even if domination can be
conceived of as a kind of symbolic domination, Honneth has not yet
tackled systematically the problem of social domination.29 On the
29
For a discussion of model to associate recognition and domination, see
E. Renault, Reconoscimiento, lotta, dominio: il modello hegeliano, Post Filosofie,
Vol. 3, No. 4, 2007, pp. 2945.

other hand, Dejours has placed the social relation of domination at
work in the centre of his theory of suffering at work and of the social
conditions of health. But it seems that he has made explicit neither the
relationship between recognition and domination, nor the general
definition of social domination his analysis assumes. In other words,
the issue of work not only offers an opportunity for developing the
theory of recognition as the critical conception of work that contemporary political philosophy needs, it also offers the opportunity to
develop the social theoretical part of the theory of recognition.
Chapter six
Expression and Cooperation as Norms

of Contemporary Work
Axel Honneth is one of the few contemporary philosophers to have
consistently maintained an interest in the problem of work, from his
very first writings to his latest publications.1 His best known book,
The Struggle for Recognition, deals for a substantial part with issues
arising from the meaning of work and employment for modern individuals, notably as they pertain to the recognition of the individuals
contribution to the division of labour.2 With his attempt at a redefinition of the problem, presented for the first time at the 2007 Recognition
and Work conference at Macquarie University,3 Honneth has cast a
reflexive glance upon the evolution of his thinking on issues of work,
and performed a partial self-correction.
1
A. Honneth, Work and Instrumental Action: On the Normative Basis of Critical
Theory, (1980), in ed. C.C. Wright, The Fragmented World of the Social. Essays in
Social and Political Philosophy, New York, Suny Press, 1995, pp. 1549; A. Honneth
and H. Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, trans. R. Meyer, Cambridge University
Press, 1988 (German edition: 1980), pp. 1825; A. Honneth, Critical Theory, (1989),
in The Fragmented World of the Social, pp. 6191; A. Honneth, The Capitalist
Recognition Order and Conflicts over Distribution, in N. Fraser and A. Honneth,
Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb,
J. Ingram and C. Wilke, London, New York, Verso, 2003, pp. 135159. For a detailed
study of the shifts in Honneths conceptualisation of work in relationship to struggles
for recognition, see Nicholas H. Smith, Work and the Struggle for Recognition,
European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 4660. See also the passages in
my study of Honneths writings, specifically dedicated to work: J. -P. Deranty, Beyond
Communication. A Critical Study of Axel Honneths Social Philosophy, Boston and
Leiden, Brill, 2009, notably pp. 4360, and pp. 410425.
2
A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts,
trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994, pp. 121131.
3
Work and Recognition: A Redefinition, in eds. H. -C. Schmidt-am-Busch and
C. Zurn, The Philosophy of Recognition. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,
Lanham, Lexington Books, 2010, pp. 223239. Republished in German in Das Ich im
Wir. Studien zur Anerkennungstheorie, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 2010, pp. 78102.
152
jean-philippe deranty
Honneths very first article on the topic presented a programme for

a critical conception of work. Under this term, Honneth envisaged a
quasi-anthropological characterisation of work that would allow him
to find within the very activity of work the normative resources upon
which to ground broader claims of social and political theory. Today,
Honneth rejects such an endeavour. He now considers as doomed
from the outset any attempt to conduct a critique of work by referring
to norms that would be inherent in the activity of work itself. Immanent
criticism of work practices and work organisations continue to define
Honneths interest. But he now locates such immanence at a difference
level: namely, no longer in work as an activity, but rather in the social
organisation of work. The norms to which he now appeals for his
critical diagnoses are the norms implicit in current social-economic
organisations, no longer the norms of an autonomous working activity.
These latter norms were encapsulated in the ideal figure of craftsmanship. They denoted an autonomously designed and autonomously
conducted activity in whose products the working subject could recognise the expression of its skills. Honneth has replaced his initial
normative model of work based on the norms of expression and cooperation, with a model based on the norms linked to a fair division of
labour in society. We could say that the normative ground for the critique of contemporary economies has shifted, from an anthropology of
work, to a social theory of labour.
This chapter aims to offer an immanent-critical appraisal of
Honneths shifts in the critique of contemporary work. I would like
to suggest that in order for Honneth to maintain the force of his earlierapproach to work, and so, for him to continue to accept the normative and critical force of expression and cooperation, all that would
be required would be to understand his initial critical conception of
work no longer in anthropological, but in psychological, or phenomenological terms. This means simply to approach work not just
from the perspective of its inscription in the social division of labour,
but also from the subjective perspective of the working agent. The
research that Christophe Dejours has devoted to the meaning of
workfor modern subjects from a psychodynamic perspective, that
is, from the perspective of subjective economies, is the reference
point for this proposal. The chapter will argue in effect that Dejours
psychodynamics of work provides, amongst other things, a striking
confirmation of the validity of Honneths initial, critical conception
of work.
expression and cooperation as norms153
This kind of immanent criticism will appear all the more modest if
we consider the fact that Honneths new characterisation reinstates
norms that remain close to the ones used in the initial argument. The
main difference rests not so much on the content of the norms but
rather on their methodological status. Honneth now argues that these
norms are not to be externally applied from some external ontological
standpoint. Rather, they should be extracted from the normative presuppositions underpinning contemporary markets. But if it can be
shown that the norms used by Honneth remain similar in their content, then my arguing for the usefulness of the initial normative framework might seem of little merit and of little use. The first point in my
argument, however, is not so much to defend the normative value of
expression and cooperation, but to defend the place in which they
were found in the initial proposal, that is, the activity of work itself.
This is what a deep-psychological, phenomenological approach like
that of Dejours allows us to do.
In the end, though, this methodological discussion impacts also
on the scope of the norms of expression and cooperation. The basic
intuition at the heart of this chapter is that one gives only a truncated account of the normative significance of work experience
for modern subjects if one interprets its ethical weight solely from
the perspective of the individuals inscription in the division of labour.
The full ethical weight of the work experience can only be fully measured if work is approached also as subjective activity. It is in that very
specific sense that the craftsman model will be defended in this
chapter.
Finally, this difference in methods, which leads to a different description of the ethical weight of work, also has political implications.
Honneth now rejects the norms inherent in the subjective activity of
work because of the alleged impossibility of articulating such normative dimensions in proper practical discourse. This argument is surprising as it seems to run counter to the gist of Honneths earlier
objection to Habermas approach to normativity. Was not the model of
a struggle for recognition devised precisely in order to account for
the transformation of inchoate experiences of injustice and suffering
into valid, practical claims? If that were the case, then the theory of
recognition would, despite its authors reservations, provide the
theoretical means to think of the ways in which the myriad of diffuse
experiences of ill-being at work can still fuel substantive political
contestations.
154
1. The Norms of Work: Work as Activity
To begin with, let us recapitulate the substance of Honneths rejection

of the craftsman model as a valid normative source for the critique of
contemporary work. The basic trait of this model is the autonomy of
the worker in the act of working, the capacity for the working individual to retain control over the production process in its entirety.
This autonomy itself is articulated along two normative lines, one
intersubjective, the other objective.
Autonomy means first of all free and self-determined cooperation.4 This again can be taken in two senses. The initial image is that of
single artisans, or independent workers akin to artisans, related to each
other externally through the general division of labour.5 In this
image, the workers are free in the simplest sense, inasmuch as they
alone decide on the different dimensions of their work, that is, how
and how much, they work. Cooperation is external, a coming together
of free individualities. This is the ideal single worker canvassed by the
political economists as they set out to explain the origin, rise and benefit of the division of labour.6 It is also the implicit image of the worker
for Hannah Arendt, for whom isolation from others is the necessary
life condition for every mastership.7 Strictly speaking, this image is
extremely unrealistic since even in times well antedating the rise of
manufacture, the division of labour in detail had already entered the
workshops and building sites.8 However, despite the fact that this ideal
of autonomy is problematic on a factual level, it can be kept as an ideal
image, if only because the small number of workers gathered in workshops, combined with the strong ethical standards shared by all participating in the same trade, meant that, even in the direct dependence
on other workers, especially towards the master, each single worker
could retain a sense of control over the production process. The authority of the master, for instance, was predicated on the mastery of a skill
Recall that the division of labour has three meanings: general, between the
main sectors of economic activity; in particular, between different trades within
these broad divisions; and in detail, between specific types of activities in the work
unit itself, see Marx, Capital I, trans. B. Fowkes, London, Penguin, 1976, p. 471.
6
Paradigmatically, in the first chapter of Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations.
7
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 161.
8
As Richard Sennett has remarked, the Ford manufacture itself was still made up
in the early 20th century of a number of specialised workshops of skilled workers,
The Corrosion of Character, New York, Norton and Company, 2000, p. 40.
4
5
that was potentially shared by all, a mastery which the apprentice could
aspire to.9
Autonomy within the production process means secondly that the
worker can retain a sense of control in the act of production itself. The
act of production could in theory represent a double alienation: first by
directing the workers forces towards an activity that would be perceived as painful constraint. This is work as toil, as exertion of physical
and mental forces, as travail and labour (labeur). And secondly, the
finished product, as a coagulation of the workers labour-power, could
appear metaphorically as the objective proof of the stealth of the workers strength and life powers. The norm of expression, however, inverts
this possible reading: activity is nothing if it is not exerted; the act of
work itself, working, and the product of work, present to the worker the
possibility to develop, apply and demonstrate his or her vital skills.
This is the ideal of an organic process in which the workers skills are
objectified in a finished product.10 The process is organic because the
working activity remains unified throughout, the aim of the activity is
present at every one of the productions stages, and so the worker
retains a sense of purpose even in the most exerting or debilitating
moments, and indeed sees a concrete incarnation of his or her ideas
and purpose in the finished product.
On what grounds does Honneth reject these two norms, cooperation and expression, and the general ideal of an autonomous work
activity, as a valid normative framework to critique contemporary
work formations?
The main ground is the inappropriateness of the craftsman model to
account for the reality of socially organised work. Most work in contemporary society cannot be appropriately measured to a high standard of holistic autonomy simply because it involves a high degree of
interconnection and interdependence amongst all social agents. To
uphold the craftsman ideal is therefore to commit a logical mistake, by
generalising from a few cases where work indeed continues to be akin
to artistic production, to all instances of work.11 The craftsman ideal is
too utopian in the face of the constraints and conditions that prevail
in real work. Drudgery, subordination to superiors, dependence on clients, and so on, make the ideal of work along the model of craft or art
See R. Sennett, The Craftsman, Yale University Press, 2009, p. 54.
11
ibid., pp. 227228.
9
10
156
completely unrealistic. This is all the more true today with the rise of
the service sector in contemporary economies, indeed with the shift to
a new paradigm of work, from production to service, in which ever
greater number of work activities are redescribed and redesigned as
services. As Honneth writes,
in this sector, no product is constructed in which acquired skills could be
mirrored, rather the worker merely reacts with as much initiative as possible to the personal or anonymous demands of those in whose service
the respective task is performed.12
As a result of the chasm between the reality of modern work and the
excessive ideal of holistic work, the latter in fact only ever remained a
dream, notably in the era where work and the organisation of labour
were the burning issues in social and political confrontations:
as vivid and enthralling as all these ideas about the emancipation of work
were, they ultimately failed to have any effect on the history of the organisation of societal labour. Although the romanticised model of the craftsman and the aesthetic ideal of artistic production had sufficient impact
to alter permanently our conception of the good and well-lived life, they
exerted no real influence on the struggles of workers movements, nor on
socialist efforts to improve working conditions and give the producers
control over these conditions.13
By contrast, Honneth favours a method of immanent criticism,

whereby the norms to be used for the critique of economic orders must
already be implicitly assumed as valid and as structural preconditions
underpinning those very orders. Honneth finds in Hegels Philosophy
ibid., p. 228.
ibid., The historical reference is not entirely convincing. In The Making of the
English Working Class, E.P. Thompson reminded us of how the Luddite rebellion was
due in no small part to the deep frustration felt by the English artisans towards the
lowering of professional standards, as a result of the introduction of machinery. It was
not just the question of the right price which decided whether a frame would be
broken or not, but also whether the frame was making full fashioned work (p. 555).
Thompson argues for the transitional nature of the Luddite movement, whose
streams run in one direction back to Tudor times, in another forward to the factory
legislation of the next hundred years (p. 552). One can argue that the norms of craft
and artisanship have played as much if not an even greater role in the constitution of
the French labour movement, see R. Magraw, A History of the French Working Class,
Vol. I, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992, notably the conclusion, pp. 281293.
In reference to Thompson, some very convincing pages on the impact of the devaluation of good work in capitalism can be found in an important book by N. Dodier,
also positively referenced by Honneth: LHomme et les Machines, Paris, Mtailli, 1995,
pp. 192197.
12
13
of Right precisely this type of approach to the fundamental norms

underpinning the modern economy, which allows the theorist to turn
description into criticism by measuring reality by its own implicit
norms.
The basic concept of the modern, capitalistic economy is that
every individual is linked to all the others through the market, in particular through the labour market, which brings about a general interconnection of exchanges between all the individual productive
activities. The coordination of all individual productive activities
allows the satisfaction of everyones need, the material reproduction of
society. But this functional capacity rests on fundamental normative
premises from the perspective of each working individual. The most
fundamental of such norms is that an individual contribution to society must allow the individuals to satisfy their needs. Otherwise there
would be neither incentive nor justification for the individual to enter
the labour market.
This in turn requires that the productive activity receives a minimum of social recognition, so that it can count as productive, that is,
as socially useful. For this to occur, the activity must be sufficiently
complex and allow for a sufficient display of skills to warrant a claim
for social recognition. We are thus implicitly retrieving the two ideas
of cooperation and expression. But this time, the normative crux
lies not in the contemplation by a single subject of his or her own skills
in an external object, or in the coming together of independent
artisans; rather, the normative crux lies in the reality of modern socialeconomic orders, as complex webs interlocking individual productive
activities. With this shift, cooperation now designates the acknowledgement by all economic agents of their radical interdependence
towards each other. This general relation of mutual dependence is
at first merely functional, yet it also necessarily entails the two mentioned normative components: that ones satisfaction be ensured
through the economic process; and that ones contribution to the
division of labour in society be recognised, and therefore given the
opportunities to be recognised. This leads to additional normative
elements that reformulate, from the new perspective, much of what
the norm of expression also entailed: that the task be complex
enoughtoallow one to demonstrate ones skills; and, negatively, that
productive activity not be emptied out of meaningful content
through fragmentation, hyper-specialisation or excessive productive
rhythms.
158
By turning to Durkheims early essay on the Division of Labour in

Society, Honneth is able to close the circle and basically retrieve most
of the normative substance that was contained in the craftsmans ideal,
but this time from the perspective of the individuals integration in the
division of labour. For instance, the idea of an organic form of solidarity as the basis of modern societies means amongst other things
that the cooperative connection between ones own activity and that
of ones fellow workers must be clearly visible from the perspective of
each individual job.14 With the help of Durkheim and the recognitiontheoretical perspective, Honneth is thus able to re-enter the hidden
abode of production15 and delineate the normative weight of work as
an activity. But from his point of view, this has been made possible by
a crucial methodological move: the cooperative and expressive qualities demanded of work are no longer extracted from an essence of
work, but rather from the normative assumptions underlying modern
societies organised through a complex, infinitely ramified division of
labour.
2. Immanent Criticism of Capitalism or the Market?
Before we attempt to evaluate this shift, a note is in order regarding the
remarkable absence of a reference to Marx in Honneths latest article
on work. The method of immanent criticism has always been a hallmark of Honneths approach, throughout his writings. He has always
been very explicit about his faithfulness to the tradition he calls
Left-Hegelianism, as he sees in it the most appropriate means of conducting social criticism, both for theoretical and practical reasons.16
The passages where Honneth shows how the new, recognitiontheoretical normative approach to work would be applied for concrete social criticism are typical of this position: norms that remain
external to the social reality they are meant to critique are toothless,both epistemically (they remain arbitrary) and practically (their
application is problematic). By contrast, norms that are already at play
14
E. Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, New York, The Free Press, 1984;
15
Marx, Capital I, p. 279.
16
I have traced Honneths commitment to the methodological principles he identifies as left-Hegelian throughout his oeuvre, in Beyond Communication. A Critical
Study of Axel Honneths Social Philosophy, Leiden, Brill, 2009.
represent a real critical leverage point. This is so first of all for theoretical reasons, but it can also be demonstrated empirically, via the examples of real social struggles.
But then the way in which Honneth pursues the Left-Hegelian tradition in this particular paper might seem paradoxical since Hegel is
upheld as a better conceptual solution to his later theoretical offsprings whereas the Left-Hegelian tag generally denotes the reverse,
namely an approach anchored in later authors for whom Hegel
furnishes only a set of basic methodological and conceptual presuppositions. This paradoxical take on Left-Hegelianism characterises
Honneths general approach since The Struggle for Recognition at least,
but it is especially striking regarding the work question since Marx, the
most significant Left-Hegelian, is also the philosopher who in that
particular tradition tied the analysis of contemporary social-economic
orders substantially to the fate of work, in all of its dimensions. Thus,
one cannot help but interpret the absence of any direct reference to
Marx as an implicit point made by Honneth. When he writes in rejection of the craftsman model, particularly amongst the socialist heirs
of early German Romanticism, the idea spread that all human labour
should possess the self-purposeful creativity exemplified by the production of works of art, it is difficult not to think first and foremost of
Marxs early writings, or his famous characterisation of work in the
Grundrisse.17 Against the background of Honneths significant earlier
work in critical Marxist exegesis, and given the continued predominance of the Marxian reference for a critique of contemporary work,
Honneth seems to imply that it is in Hegel and not in Marx that an
appropriate critique of contemporary political economy can be
grounded, that is, a proper immanent critique of capitalism.
This return to Hegel away from Marx, however, might come at a
cost, depending on ones theoretical options. Honneths analysis is
premised on the idea that market-mediated exchange and more particularly, the market-mediated exchange of labour, the marketmediated division of labour, are synonymous with capitalism. Given
that for him the norms of critique can only be found in the immanence
17
Marx, Grundrisse, trans. M. Nicolaus, London, Penguin, 1973, p. 611: (Adam)
Smith has no inkling whatever that this overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating
activityand that, further, the external aims become stripped of the semblance of
merely external natural urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual
himself positshence as self-realisation, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom, whose action is, precisely, labour.
160
of existing social reality, the critique of political economy, before it

turns critical, must first posit the existing capitalistic order as an
unquestionable premise that is itself out of reach of critique. From the
perspective of immanent critique, to question capitalism would be to
adopt a type of externally based criticism that is inherently mistaken.
On the other hand, since the capitalistic economy is organised as a
market, the latter, now interpreted as a type of social order, also provides the opportunity to find implicit norms upon which existing
social-economic conditions can be critiqued. However, since capitalism is posited as an indisputable premise, the reach of critique is limited in its scope from the beginning. Criticism can go far in the critical
diagnosis, in pointing out extant pathologies, in denouncing social
dominations that entrench those pathologies, but in terms of the directions for political practice, it can only point to reforms of the existing
order, in no way to something beyond that order, however pathological
and destructive the latter might be.
Of course, a Marxist perspective has a very different stance on this.
What I would like to point out is that a different take on the pathologies of existing capitalism does not necessarily originate in a conceptual confusion. From the perspective of certain readings of Marx, it is
Honneth who overlooks a crucial conceptual distinction, as he equates
market-mediated exchange with capitalism. The methodological
crux of Marxs Capital is the idea that, although capitalism has been
historically the social formation that has generalised and systematised
the market-structure of the economy, logically the relation is the
reverse: capitalism could only arise because the structural conditions
for it were given with the shift to modern society, with its specific mode
of economic coordination (the market), essentially related to decisive
normative advances (freedom and equality). The logical scheme to
think this relation is the Hegelian one of position and presupposition:
capitalism has posited in historical society the logical and normative
presuppositions that made it possible in the first place. From Marxs
perspective, one should not confuse the specifically capitalist form of
the process of social production with the organisation of social
labour in general that arises with modernity.18 In particular, capitalism added a decisive new element to the historical emergence of new
modes of social coordination, by confiscating in private hands a wealth
Capital I, p. 486.
18
that is essentially social. Even if on the foundations available to it,

it could not develop in any other form than the capitalist one,19 this
historical fact should not be confused with a logical necessity. In
other words, the fact that markets have arisen historically with capitalism does not necessarily mean that markets and capitalism are
indistinguishable.20
The implications of this other reading of modernity are clear. If the
market and capitalism are two separate things, it becomes possible to
retrieve the normative resources that Honneth draws from his analysis
of modern economies as markets economies without having to conclude that this entails renouncing a move beyond capitalism. From this
perspective, Honneths construal of immanent critique ends up in a
historicist justification of the given similar to what Hegel has been
accused of providing. On the other hand, a radical critique of capitalism can still claim to remain immanent if it rests on norms that are not
those of capitalism but rather the norms of modernity. Indeed such a
critique can diagnose in the logic of capitalism, that is, in the commodification of the entire world (of human labour, psyches, social relations, natural environments, cultural lifeworlds, and so on) for the sole
purpose of ever-increasing abstract valorisation, a perversion of the
norms of modernity, that led us to the crises we now face. Very concretely, the distinction means that there are other ways to organise the
markets, and in particular, to articulate them to other forms of social
coordination, than in capitalistic ways.
This general remark regarding the reading of modernity and the
ways of conducting its critique is in fact not too distant from the analysis of the norms of work. Despite the difficulty of delineating precisely
the normative status of work in Marxs writings, it is certain that his
analysis of the injustice implicit in the production of surplus-value has
strong moral overtones. Honneth might well be right when he writes
that the analysis of social struggle ends up, in the late economic writings, in a utilitarian model, where each class struggles for its own interests.21 At the same time, though, many critical passages in Capital rely
ibid.
J. Bidet, Exploring Marxs Capital: Philosophical, Economic and Political
Dimensions, Chicago, Haymarket Books, 2009. For the concrete political implications
of this reading of Marx, see J. Bidet and G. Dumnil, Altermarxisme. Un autre marxisme pour un autre monde, Paris, PUF, 2007.
21
A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, trans. J. Anderson, London, Polity
Press, 1994, pp. 148149.
19
20
162
on a different normative stance. In these passages, the scandal of

exploitation is not just that a false bargain, an arithmetic injustice, is
imposed upon the wage worker, but that vital forces are directly
attacked and undermined.22 In other words, there is a phenomenological strand running through Capital, which sees Capital as a force that
must be resisted also for what it does to life.23 It is a similar strand
Iwould now like to retrieve to discuss the two norms of work, expression and cooperation. If these are taken not as dimensions of instrumental activity, but rather in relation to their constitutive importance
to human subjectivity that is, taken in a deep-psychological sense then
it might be possible to show that they retain a normative significance
despite Honneths reframing of work in social-theoretical terms.
Indeed if it can be shown that psychic economies rely on processes of
expression and structures of cooperation to sustain themselves in work
experiences, then the reproach of using external criteria in social criticism no longer holds since nothing is more immanent to socialeconomic life than the subjectivity of the individuals engaged in it. As
a matter of fact, one could reasonably argue that subjective vulnerability as a result of social dependency is also the normative bedrock of
Honneths own ethics of recognition.24
3. Autonomy in the Working Activity: Expression
The key question, then, is the following: Is it true that the demand for
autonomy within the production process is an external and unrealistic
criterion, which should be rejected for that reason? We can ask that
22
Through the modern division of labour, Marx writes, Capital seizes labourpower by its roots, Capital I, p. 481. Modernity sees the emergence of an industrial
pathology, p. 484. For a detailed analysis of this naturalist strand in Marxs critique of
capitalism, see Stphane Haber, Alination. Vie sociale et exprience de la dpossession,
Paris, PUF, 2007.
23
To human life and to natural life more generally. The famous chapter on Largescale industry and agriculture in Capital I links tightly the two forms of life degradation: Capitalist production only develops the techniques and the degree of
combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the
original sources of all wealththe soil and the worker, Capital I, p. 638.
24
See a particularly telling page in The Struggle for Recognition (p. 48), in which
Honneth uses the term of Versehrbarkeit as he appropriates Hegels Iena theory of
recognition. His core normative concepts of integrity, successful self-realisation,
unimpeded realisation of goals or positive self-relations all relate back to this
notion of essential vulnerability.
same question twice, in relation to the two core norms in view, expression and cooperation.
A simple argument can be made to rescue the norm of autonomy in
the expressivist sense. It is one thing to argue that the subject at work
demands a certain level of autonomy in the conduct of the task, and
that he or she suffers when that level of autonomy is not present; and
it is a different thing to argue that the whole production process must
be organised in such a way that every individual worker, whatever
their individual task, must remain in full control of her or his task from
beginning to end. It seems as though Honneth is arguing against
autonomy on the basis of the second maximalist claim. The reason why
he does so relates to the problem of the practical legitimacy of normative claims. Against the grain of his earlier work, he now follows
Habermas much more closely in arguing that only universalisability
makes a normative claim practically receivable. Since it is not possible
to universalise a claim to autonomy (because this is unrealistic given
the reality of contemporary work), the feelings and sentiments of contemporary workers denied autonomy and who, in one way or another,
express this discomfort have no decisive normative value. But one
might object the following: just because a claim cannot be maximally
universalised does not necessarily make it normatively irrelevant.
We consider the political dimension of the problem in the last section. Honneths rejection has a lot to do with the capacity of a claim to
be politically justified and practically effective. In this and the next section, we remain at the descriptive level and investigate whether there is
not a way to reintroduce expression and cooperation as two norms of
work, once the burden of their potential universalisability has been
bracketed. The question then is not whether it would make any sense
politically to criticise modern work on the basis of autonomy, but
whether modern work can be described, inasmuch as it has a normative component that is not just instrumental, as entailing a demand for
autonomy. In the end we will see that indeed a strong normative core
of contemporary work can be described in the language of autonomy,
and that it is in fact Honneths own approach to politics that allows us
to delineate realistic modes of politicisation on this basis.
In this chapter, normative therefore designates the dimensions
of work when the latter is considered as a practice involving human
subjectivity, by contrast with a mere instrumental approach to work
interested only in the articulation of means to productive ends. In
other words, normative conclusions are drawn from psychological and
164
phenomenological considerations. This will strike many as an inherently flawed methodology, given the tendency today to identify
normativity with discursive redeemability. However, I believe this
approach to the normativity of work can be defended. Normative after
all simply denotes at first what differentiates the right from the wrong
in given practices. Normative here will mean what is right and wrong
for working subjects, insofar as they are human subjects. The basic
assumption here is that, whatever their subjective construct, no human
subject is left unaffected by the experience of work and some forms of
work (work organisations, types of tasks, work relations and so on)
affect human beings for the worse. The approach to the normative is
thus the following: if some practices of work impact negatively on the
agents, they are normatively wrong.
This approach is heavily influenced by the way in which Christophe
Dejours deals with the question of work. Dejours psychodynamic
analyses of work situations, and the theory of work he has developed as
a result of his practice as a clinician, are premised on the idea that one
cannot form a proper judgement of what work means to individuals if
one does not bring into the analysis a sufficiently rich notion of what a
human subject actually is and requires, as a result of this constitution.
As soon as one takes a realistic view of the human subject as an individualised, unified, yet fragile, construct binding somatic, psychological and intellectual resources, then work must appear at first as a
challenge because of the many constraints that are structurally present
in it. Work is necessarily a challenge to body, soul and mind. As a
result, all work is potentially pathogenic because all work involves
constraints which can impact more or less deeply on an individuals
subjective construct. Suffering is for Dejours an irreducible part of
all work.25 The key questions therefore turn on the analysis of the ways
in which these pathogenic traits are dealt with by subjects and organisations, in the negative and the positive: for example, under what
conditions work ceases to be a destructive experience; what the thresholds are after which the constraints become active factors of subjective disintegration; what specific individual and collective defence
mechanisms are developed to deal with the suffering involved in work,
and so on.
The earlier chapters of Travail, Usure Mentale focused on the most
obvious source of tension between subjectivity and work, namely the
See in particular the text by Dejours published in this volume.
25
organisation of work, which defines and implements the constraints

under which work is performed: productive cadences; targets; working
conditions; hierarchical relations; relations between peers, and so on.
Very simply, work organisations force people to do things in circumstances for which their constitutions (physical, emotional, social and
intellectual) are not well adapted, sometimes not at all.
The later chapters of Travail, Usure Mentale identify a second structural tension within the work process. All work entails the possibility
of suffering because all work challenges the need for a sense of minimal mastery that is a structural need of subjective constructs. This
challenge, however, is not just the challenge represented by the difficulty (physical exertion, emotional or intellectual affront) inherent in
the production process. Even for the most basic or the most thoroughly
programmed operations, Dejours argues, following a wealth of research
in ergonomics, there is always a gap between the prescriptions and the
effective realisation of the task.26 This gap between the prescribed and
the effective is a structure of all forms of work, whatever the work
organisations. Indeed, this gap is a challenge both for subjects and
organisations. No prescriptions, rules or regulations can ever predict,
pre-empt and organise in advance all the possible contingencies, vagaries, variations, and hazards involved in productive tasks. An infinite
number of factors can obstruct and prevent the production process:
human factors (human errors; limitations of all kinds, physical and
intellectual); inter-human factors (relations with peers; relations with
hierarchy; competing demands from different groups within productive units); institutional factors (an organisational culture that actually
makes it more rather than less difficult to circumvent obstacles to productive efficiency); material factors (resistance of materials; negative
interactions between machines and/or materials; wearing down of
machines); scientific and technological limitations (lapses in knowledge; insufficient account of complex interrelations; short-term thinking); the list is indefinite.27
The focus on the subjective engagement of individuals in their
work leads to the following new definition of work: the activity
deployed by men and women in order to overcome what the prescribed
26
For another clear exposition of this essential feature of work, see also Le Facteur
Humain, Paris, PUF, pp. 3846.
27
It is a well established fact that even in fully taylorised work, production can only
occur through the initiative and creativity of workers.
166
organisation of work did not anticipate,28 with the added implied element: in the fulfilment of a productive task. For Dejours, in order to
understand the moral and existential impact of work on human subjects, one must view it as subjective activity, as working. From this
point of view, work is the activity that is required of subjects in order
to bridge the gap between what is prescribed and what is demanded for
the productive end to be met.29
This vision of work leads to a highly specific normative consideration. The gap between the prescriptions and the effective realisation of
the task is an irreducible source of suffering because it can be bridged
only in conditions that are rarely available in real work organisations.
So again, it is the work organisation that is implicated in the emergence
of subjective suffering, but this time not directly as an affront to what
human subjects are and are capable of, but indirectly, as an obstacle to
their inherent desire to fulfil their tasks.
In all these cases, however, the normative bedrock is the possibility
for the working subjects to make sense of their activity. Sense here is to
be taken in the psychodynamic acceptation: can the working subject
integrate the activity in her or his subjective economy or does the
activity, in any one of its dimensions, represent too much of an affront
to subjective identity? Can the subject symbolise, that is, appropriate
into his or her own subjective life, the suffering that work represents
for him or her?
How do these two structural traits of work, the tension between
organisation and subjectivity and the gap between the prescriptions
and the realisation of the job, relate to the question of autonomy?
In the first instance, that is, the tension between organisation and
subjectivity, the link is straightforward: since the difficulties arise for
28
Quoted from the chapter by Dejours in this volume. In Le Facteur Humain, the
definition is the following: The coordinated activity deployed by men and women in
order to overcome that which, in a utilitarian task, cannot be obtained through the
strict execution of the prescribed organisation, p. 43.
29
Productive ends, utilitarian tasks in the note above, should not be taken in a
restricted, productivist sense, as excluding forms of work activity not directly related
to the production of goods. They point to all forms of activity whose primary feature
is the realisation of a socially defined good, whether the latter is a commodity, a service
or a form of care. Despite the great differences in all these kinds of work, all involve an
active engagement on the part of the worker, to circumvent the resistance of the real
and realise the task at hand. Using a similar approach as Dejours, Pascale Molinier has
shown the irreducible dimensions of skill use and technical know-how involved in
care. Indeed, as the chapter in this volume shows, she argues that it is important to
define care as care work to do justice to its ethical and political significance.
the subject as a result of the constraints imposed by the organisation of

work, more autonomy, a lessening of constraints is what is called for.
Dejours thus sees the world of pre-Taylorian artisans as a world in
which the subject was able to adapt the activity, and the ways in which
he or she went about it, to his or her own capacities.30 The fundamental
norm here is: the worker is the best placed person to know what is
compatible with her or his health.31 From this perspective, what is
inhuman in Taylors scientific organisation of work, or in current forms
of purely managerial definitions of working tasks, is that they eliminate
all the times, spaces and relations through which subjectivities would
in fact have been able to recharge their batteries, that is, restore the
conditions of sufficient well-functioning.32
In the second instance, that is, in terms of the gap between prescription and realisation, autonomy is again at stake but in a more specific
sense. Some work organisations recognise the impossibility of adjusting the production process a priori and from above, and leave room for
interpretation and innovation on the part of those who directly confront the resistance of the real in the reality of production. But these
are exceptions, even in the modern, post-fordist workplace. Most
contemporary workplaces continue to be highly prescriptive, organising a thorough surveillance of all aspects of activity. In most work
organisations today it remains a risk to not follow the prescriptions.
The generalisation and refinement of evaluation techniques to measure performance, with all the punitive aspects linked to them, render
the necessity to interpret and sometimes overlook the rules and regulations even more risky.33 But if, as Dejours argues, subjects have an
inherent interest in performing the productive activity, then all these
organisational obstacles to the realisation of the task impact directly
on subjective identity and integrity.34
From the psychodynamic perspective, autonomy therefore is
the normative term naming what makes it possible for subjects to
Le Travail Humain, p.62.
ibid., p.64.
32
See a particularly clear analysis of current management techniques in Dejours
latest publication with Florence Bgue, Suicide et Travail: Que Faire?, Paris, PUF, 2009,
pp. 3350. We might note that one of the key aspects of exploitation for Marx is the
inherent tendency of capitalistic work to push workers beyond the boundaries of
what they can sustain, that obstinate yet elastic natural barrier (Capital I, p. 527).
33
See C. Dejours, Lvaluation du travail lpreuve du rel. Critique des fondements
de lvaluation, Paris, INRA, 2003, as well as Suicide et Travail, pp. 4246.
34
See in this volume, p. xxx.
30
31
168
appropriate their suffering through work. The normative onus is the

opposite of what it is in the craftsman ideal. That ideal is a maximalist one, envisaging a state of productive autarchy where every moment
is under the command of the worker, from beginning to end. Here, the
norm of autonomy is a minimal one; it envisages a minimum of subjective control over the production process, conditions under which
work becomes a source of pathology.
There are obviously serious objections to this psychologically based
definition of autonomy at work.
The immediate objection is probably that the concept appears to
remain highly formal and indeterminate. This is firstly because each
subjective construct is different from every other one. Some individuals can flourish, or at least develop good enough strategies to cope with
some forms of work, whilst others wither in the same circumstances.
The psychologist might be able to explain an individual case where the
work organisation has been a more or less direct cause of pathology,
but this is not what is sought here. The problem considered here relates
to the norms for the critique of society, and so norms that can be
appropriately generalised. Before the issue of their possible politicisation, there is the issue of their generality already at the descriptive level.
Indeed, not just individual reactions to given work practices differ
greatly, but work situations and tasks are also specific.
Secondly, beyond the problem of the individualised meaning of
autonomy once it is defined psychologically, there is the issue of the
helpfulness of the model for concrete critique and proposals in real
work situations.35 If the idea is to retrieve the concept of autonomy in
such general terms as: the possibility for the subject to appropriate the
task inasmuch as the latter represents a challenge for his or her psychic
economy, then we may well ask: how would that be implemented in
concrete terms and in real situations? The notion does not seem at first
to contain what it takes to answer this question satisfactorily.
In response to the first part of the objection, we can probably
refer to the type of response Honneth himself has given to criticisms
35
This is one the main criticisms expressed by Alain Ehrenberg in his recent attack
on the growing influence of the suffering paradigm and Dejours influence in the
French debate, in La Socit du Malaise, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2010. Interestingly,
Ehrenberg also takes Honneth to task and, politely but forcefully, contrasts his analysis
of the rise of depression in Western societies with Honneths interpretation of the
latter.
questioning his grounding of normative social critique in a thick theory of the subject. Honneths response is that recognition does not designate the content of subjectivity but the conditions for the development
of autonomous subjectivity. The same applies to Dejours proposal.
However, beyond the idiosyncrasy of individual pathologies,
Dejours also identifies collective forms of pathology that are grounded
in general traits of work and affect large parts of the population. The
definition of work as subjective activity demanded of the subject to
bridge the gap between the prescribed and the real is true of all work.
The impact of constraining work organisations and in particular the
impact that organisations have in making the bridging of the gap more
difficult, these are again universal features in the subject-work relationship. Given the essential vulnerability of subjective constructs, it is
impossible for work not to represent, at some level, a source of discomfort and a challenge to subjective identity. The variability of individual
reactions to specific work situations remains an objection only within
certain limits, only in relatively benign cases. There are thresholds,
physical, emotional and intellectual, beyond which work becomes
more and more constraining and affects more and more people. To
give examples of contemporary problems arising in relation to the factors highlighted in Dejours approach: when the rationalisation of
work processes means that fewer workers are to achieve the same productive targets as previously (physical constraint); when increased surveillance makes the possibility of imaginary evasion more risky or
impossible; or when constantly changing or ever increasing demands
from the hierarchy give a sense of radical hopelessness.
Thresholds can be taken in an extensive or an intensive sense.
Extensively, Dejours argues that the pathologies of contemporary society are due to a large extent to the nature of work in neoliberal economies, because of the fear generated by new forms of work and work
organisation (fear of unemployment, fear arising from systematic
competition, from constant evaluation, and so on).36 In this case, we
could say that the thresholds have been crossed for a great number of
people, in a simple numerical sense. A rich and growing literature on
the magnitude and intensity of suffering caused by post-fordist work
organisations seems to lend massive, if indirect, empirical support to
36
In particular in Souffrance en France. La banalisation de linjustice sociale, Paris,
Le Seuil, 1998.
170
this side of the argument.37 But the notion of threshold remains valid
in smaller work units, this time in an intensive sense: here the analysis
can restrict itself to the smallest of units, down to a single individual
case, without losing sight of general work conditions, as in the case of
suicides at work, which remain exceptional in any given particular
workplace, but can be taken as symptoms of a general degradation of
working environments.
In response to the second part of the objection, regarding the usefulness of the notion of autonomy for concrete work situations, again, it is
based on a misunderstanding similar to the ones that have been raised
against recognition theory. The notion of autonomy as capacity to
appropriate meaningfully ones own suffering remains unspecified
only for as long as it is not applied to a concrete case, a social analysis
or the study of a particular work place. Of course, a great many factors
can contribute to blocking the subjective symbolisation of suffering:
material, institutional, intersubjective, factors arising from the productive demand, and so on. What a Dejourian notion of autonomy adds
to the analysis of these factors is a unique, and it seems to me indispensable, focus on the very activity of work. But such a focus is not to the
detriment of all the other dimensions mentioned. Rather, the subject at
work is the point at which all the other dimensions converge. The key
point though is that it is not just a social subject, but also a subject
engaged, with body, mind and soul, in the activity.
This is the point where the difference with Honneths approach is
most substantial. In attempting to redefine the possibility and the
meaning of a critique of modern work,38 Honneth also aims to maintain a strong connection between the conceptual, normative analysis
and the reality of pathologies of work as documented by clinical and
sociological analysis. His attempt remains squarely a work of critical
37
Amongst the immense literature on the rise of stress, burnout, muskeletal pathologies, and more generally the psychological and physical cost of work intensification
and flexibilisation, let us note simply, for the American context, a classical, particularly
clear study, which showed a clear link between individual suffering and the socialeconomic context: C. Maslach and M. Leiter, The Truth about Burnout, Jossey Bass,
1997. In the French context, two recent studies, directly informed by Dejours model,
give a particularly vivid picture of the situation: M. Pez, Ils ne mouraient pas tous,
mais tous taient touchs, Paris, Pearson, 2008; P. Coupechoux, La dprime des
opprims, Paris, Seuil, 2009.
38
See Honneths Organised Self-realisation. Paradoxes of Individuation, European
Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2004, pp. 463478, and Paradoxes of Capitalism,
Constellations, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2006, pp. 4258 (with Martin Hartmann).
theory targeting, and indeed largely taking its conceptual cue from,
social pathologies. But his interpretation of the ways in which the
critique of work needs to be properly conducted makes him view these
pathologies as arising solely from the social, intersubjective vulnerability of modern subjects, from the fact that they cannot escape taking
part in the contemporary division of labour. Everything comes down
to the possibility or not of taking place meaningfully in the division of
labour. There is no doubt that this dimension is crucial for subjective
well-being. Indeed, Dejourss own critical interventions on the social
impact of changes in the world of work overlap to some extent with
Honneths on this point.39 But Honneths new approach seems to be
tailored only to a certain band of pathological phenomena. It must
leave out of sight a number of other ways in which work affects modern subjects. By definition, Honneths social-psychological approach
excludes the possibility for social critique to target pathologies arising
from the ergonomic side of work: the reality of work cadences, material working conditions, productive pressures, the ever increasing
number of prescriptions constraining the productive act (safety, quality, quantity, behavioural constraints, and so on).
Secondly, Honneths new approach to work can only study subjective impacts of work organisations from a sociological perspective as
paradoxes of self-realisation.40 The psychological problem is limited to
the relation of subjects to themselves as a result of the social mediations that frame and influence these self-relations. For Honneth, the
key affect in neoliberal society is the suffering from indeterminacy,
39
I have attempted to relate their two theories of work and recognition in Work
and the Precarisation of Existence, European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 4,
2008, pp. 443463.
40
Honneth in fact comes close to the impact of work as an activity when he refers
to studies conducted at the Institute in Frankfurt, highlighting the rupture between
performance (Leistung) as engagement of the worker in the activity and performance
as mere success measured by productive and economic targets. Implicit in these studies is the normative significance of the correlation between the workers active engagement in the task and the recognition he or she receives. See the two studies by Stephan
Voswinkel and Gabriele Wagner in this volume as well as H. Kocyba, Was leistet
das Leistungsprinzip?, ed. R. Zwengel Gesellschaftliche Perspektiven: Arbeit und
Gerechtigkeit, Essen, Klartext Verlag, 2007, pp. 163177, as well as H. Kocyba and
S. Voswinkel, Die Kritik des Leistungsprinzip im Wandel. in eds. K. Drge, K. Marrs
and W. Menz Rckkehr der Leistungsfrage, Berlin, Sigma, 2008, pp. 2137. For a synthesis of the research of the Frankfurt sociologists of work and a comparison with
Honneth and Dejourss own theories of recognition and work, see E. Renault,
Reconnaissance et travail, Travailler, Vol. 18, 2007, pp. 117135.
172
which arises from the fact that the great push for individualisation
which characterises modernity and indeed represented a revolutionary force, has become a productive factor, used by managements and
organisations to increase productivity, flexibility, and to dismantle the
old, rigid structures, which offered some forms of legal and institutional protection for subjects. As a result of the exploitation for economic purposes of this increased individualism, the search for
individual self-exploration and self-definition, the pressure to constantly self-present in the best possible light, to ensure ones employability, and the resources of intimate relations, are put under extreme
pressure.
Such a diagnosis is certainly very convincing, but it deals only with
the pathologies that arise from the relation between the individual and
the broad social framework. If we follow Dejours, the subjective
impacts of the new economic arrangements are not limited to problems of self-definition from a social perspective. In order to be able to
look precisely at the way in which new forms of management and
organisation of the work processes affect subjects, it is important to put
the light precisely on those interactions, which require us to descend
from too general a perspective, and enter the hidden abode of production. To mention just one, especially striking, example highlighted by
Dejours, the immense spread of fear and anxiety in current workplaces
means that the suffering of others is less and less perceptible to the
subjects, and that, as a result, there is less and less compunction to do
bad things to others. Brutal retrenchment, increased surveillance,
destruction of solidarity, blackmail of different forms, form the reality
of contemporary work. The psychological impact of this is immense
and can be felt in the broad social sphere, well beyond the workplace.
Yet it cannot be properly uncovered unless one seriously focuses on the
subject in concrete work situations.
What is the link between the definition of autonomy proposed here
and expression? Since the key idea is the utter dependency (physical,
psychological and intellectual) of the subject at work, it is clear that
expression here cannot be the unattainable ideal of a worker in full
command of the entire mode of production. The psychological detour
Dejours suggests leads to a more low-key version of expression. The
crucial conceptual link is provided by the category of meaning.
The possibility for the subject to integrate meaningfully the working
activity in his or her subjective economy, despite the challenges the
activity necessarily represents, can be described as the capacity to
become minimally the subject of ones own activity. When that is realised, the subject can sense that he or she is the actual subject of work:
she or he can see herself in it. The activity is not necessarily a perfectly
adequate development of all of the subjects skills, and the product
(or services rendered) might not be perfect mirrors of those subjective
resources. But within the activity, the subject can retain his or her sense
of self. As vague as this might sound at first glance, Dejours detailed
approach to work in fact shows to what extent the conditions for this
to happen are in fact varied and precise.
4.Cooperation
The same remark that was made about autonomy within the activity
can be made at the outset about autonomy in the sense of the free
cooperation of independent agents: there might well be a minimalist
account of cooperation, one in particular that focuses on its importance for the psychic economies of working subjects, which would be
radically different from an unrealistic, maximalist understanding of
cooperation, understood as external, pre-capitalist exchange between
autarchic producers.
Again, Dejours makes substantial propositions in this sense and
helps to defend a certain version of cooperation as a norm to critically
analyse contemporary work, with a view in particular to its general
social and political significance.
In order to retrieve the normative importance of cooperation, Imust
briefly introduce Dejours own account of recognition as it relates to
the working process. As we have seen, the first decisive element in
Dejourss analysis of work was to take into account the gap between
the prescriptive and the effective in the productive process. The second
crucial discovery relates to the structural importance of recognition.
As the chapter published in this volume shows very well, recognition
is one of the key factors to determine the ultimate meaning of suffering in work. Given that suffering always threatens to sever the link
between subjective identity and the subjects activity, the role of recognition, in allowing for a meaningful articulation between the two,
is decisive:
The symbolic recompense accorded through recognition comes from
the production of the meaning which it confers on the work experience.
This is the meaning of suffering in work: as we have seen, it originates in
174
and is consubstantial with every work situation, insofar as it is above all
a confrontation with systemic and technical constraints.41
Recognition here is first and foremost the recognition of the subjects

productive performance, of his contribution not to the division of
labour in general but to the specific division of labour within the production process, the recognition of this concrete Leistung. One of the
key preconditions for this recognition is the existence of a group, in
which the judgement over the actual realisation of the task is effectively
produced. This, however, points precisely to the normative importance
of cooperation.
In Dejours, cooperation is distinguished from coordination as the
normative from the instrumental. All work requires a coordination of
action, even for the mythical autarchic artisan. Yet technical constraints are not sufficient to bring about on their own the actual coordinating of subjects actions. This is because, once again, working
subjects are not machines, but human subjects. They confront the
resistance of the real, and the affront that this resistance represents to
all the prescriptions governing production. Even in the most mechanised and rationalised work processes, the human factor remains
indispensable because no machine can demonstrate the same level of
inventiveness and creativity, the same range of adaptability, as the
human agent. This is true even for the most trivial of tasks and for the
most rationalised forms of working processes. However, in order for
the coordination of human efforts to be operative, a minimum basis of
trust is necessary.42 This stems from the fact that this joining of efforts
demands precisely to go beyond the prescribed, since the prescribed
demonstrates its limits very quickly. This overlooking of the prescribed,
however, is dangerous. By definition, it means breaking the established
rules.43 In dysfunctional workplaces, when the hierarchy is too punitive or the working relations are too degraded, workers cannot take the
risk of going beyond the prescribed. But then it is the production that
suffers.
Cooperation designates the normative supplement to the coordination of productive acts, a supplement that is, according to Dejours,
indispensable for production to occur. However, cooperation is not
Dejours, From psychopathology to psychodynamics of work, in this volume.
See Dejours, in this volume, p.xxx, as well as Sennett, The Corrosion of Character,
pp. 6475 and pp. 140142.
43
Dejours, Le Facteur Humain, pp. 5262.
41
42
just an indispensable aspect of work simply from the point of view of

productive efficacy. It is also essential to working agents because only
through cooperation can the recognition of the subjects concrete contribution to the organisation of work be granted. And as was said earlier, this recognition of the subjects doing is essential to the
psychological dimension of work. One of the most important ways in
which a subject can give meaning to his or her work is by having his or
her concrete contribution to the work process recognised, that is, epistemically and normatively acknowledged. And this occurs through
cooperation (as opposed to merely technical coordination). Put in the
negative: the dismantling of work collectives, via the systematic competition organised between co-workers and productive units, projectbased production and generalised outsourcing, all of this impacts on
subjects at work not just because it weakens structures and institutions
that once offered material (legal, institutional, financial) protection,
but also because all these changes rob the working agents of one of the
essential ways through which they could construe the meaning of their
activity by having their skill and engagement valued by the only people
who could truly understand what those are really about.
Once again, we should note that these arguments are in fact quite
close to arguments that Honneth himself makes. In particular, his
redefinition of work adds new dimensions to recognition through
work, that is, to the recognition of individual status that he defined in
The Struggle for Recognition as the third sphere of recognition. Honneth
now finds in Hegel, beyond the demand for fair pay, the demand for
the recognition of the subjects productive contribution:
Hegel was convinced that the moral presuppositions of the capitalist
organisation of work required that the individuals work not only be
remunerated with an income that secured a livelihood, but also retain a
form in which it remained recognisable as a contribution to the common
good on the basis of the skills it entails.44
This is very close to the recognition Dejours talks about in From the
Psychopathology to the Psychodynamics of Work. The key difference,
however, is the one already noted. Honneth interprets the phenomenon and the norms it entails in social-theoretical terms, in terms of the
relationship between subjectivity and its social environment. The skills
of the working subject, the minimal complexity of the productive task,
Honneth, Recognition and Work, p. 231.
44
176
are means for an end: ways for the subject to make a valid contribution
to the general division of labour. From this perspective, cooperation
has no inherent normative role to play. In Dejours model on the other
hand, the recognition of the activity is in and of itself a source of subjective validation (or suffering when it is lacking): the subject demands
to be recognised for his or her activity, for the precise contribution
to a productive task, and this is structurally dependent on extant
cooperation.
Indeed, we could also point out that this Dejourian take on cooperation is quite close to what Hegel and Durkheim had in view in their
respective references to the division of labour in society. When Hegel
writes that the working subject takes place in the division of labour
durch Bildung und Geschicklichkeit, through education and talent,45
the second term refers unmistakably to the concrete exercise of skills
that demand recognition qua skills. We can see in this term an anticipation of Dejours insistence on practical intelligence as subjective
skill that is both instrumentally demanded for the success of production and normatively in need of recognition. Later on, in the section on
the corporation, Hegel states explicitly that the subject gives himself
or herself reality, qua subject, by particularising his or her activity in
embracing a particular profession, in joining a specific productive area
of society. Once again, it is through the exercise of concrete skills,
through the development of a specific type of practical intelligence,
through Ttigkeit, Flei und Geschicklichkeit, through his activity,
diligence and skill,46 that a subject becomes a full subject. The corporation, then, is defined not just through the general division of labour,
in mere functional terms, but also through concrete types of activities.
To say it differently, the normative significance of the division of labour
is not just social but also technical. But the technical division of labour
is premised on cooperation.
This concrete, practical, sense of recognition one achieves through
ones activity in a professional collective is even more explicitly
expressed in Durkheim. Indeed, it appears most expressly in the
very quote Honneth uses in his article. According to Durkheim,
G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, #199, trans, H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 233. The reference to a professional culture, in
the technical sense of the term (a culture arising from shared skills and techniques), as
the ground of the corporation, is more explicitly developed in Hegels Iena writings.
46
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, #207, p. 238.
45
the meaning of work that the worker is able to formulate, depends on

him or her not losing sight of those co-operating with him, of him
acting upon them and being acted upon by them. In this case, he
knows that his movements are tending in a certain direction, towards
a goal that he can conceive of more or less distinctly. He feels that he is
of use Thenceforth, however specialized, however uniform this
activity may be, it is that of an intelligent being, for he knows that his
activity has a meaning.47 The meaning of work stems from the opportunity for the worker to see his or her function within the social whole,
but this in turn occurs through immediate cooperation, through reciprocal interaction (acting upon/being acted upon) with those closest to
him or her.
This relates to a fundamental dimension of Durkheims social ontology. Durkheim always speaks of the social bond in a concrete, physical
sense. It is the contact, in the literal, physical sense of the term, between
social agents, that secures their interdependence and binds together
individual actions that otherwise risk undermining themselves and
each other. In his book on the division of labour in society, it is clear
that the predominant form of contact Durkheim entrusts with creating
social bonds and thus with repelling the deleterious effects of anomie,
is the contact through cooperation in the technical division of labour.
The very quote that Honneth refers to insists on the concreteness of the
social task that ensures social integration. The proximity in question is
the proximity of people who work together, who are brought together
by technique and production.48
In other words, it is possible to argue that for both Hegel and
Durkheim, the sense of general social usefulness is in fact already
grounded in a more specific sense, something we could call, professional usefulness. Or in terms of recognition: social esteem is anchored
in professional esteem. The third sphere of recognition is indeed the
recognition of Leistung, but with of Leistung taken in its concrete, productive, sense. And that specific sense of social service, which provides
Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, p. 308.

We might add that although Marx discusses cooperation in the sense of Dejours
coordination, that is in a mere functional sense, some normative elements also
appear, as when he writes that apart from the power that arises from the fusion of
many forces into a single force, mere social contact begets in most industries a rivalry
and a stimulation of animal spirits, which heightens the efficiency of each individual
worker, Capital I, p. 443.
47
48
178
meaning to the activity, can be realized only in the professional community, via the judgement of the peers, that is, through cooperation.
5. Work and Politics
The problem of politicisation is the final great objection to the norms
of expression and cooperation. Even if it were true that those norms
are, as Dejours argues, essential psychological dimensions for working
subjects, this does not automatically make them norms that would be
appropriate for a more general social criticism and for concrete political demands. Indeed, how could one base a concrete political discourse
on the heterogeneity of individual pathologies and the highly specific
problems arising in particular work places and industries?
On this point, however, we must note that Honneths rejection of the
norms of the craftsman for their impossible universalisation is surprising, given the thrust of The Struggle for Recognition. In that book,
Honneth had argued precisely that the true leverage for social critique
and for positive political claims was in fact to be sought in the structural conditions that are necessary to enable subjects to develop positive forms of self-relation. Indeed, the argument then was decidedly
anti-Habermassian: the fact that normative demands cannot be directly
universalised does not speak against their normative value. It is precisely the work of social movements, under conditions described
precisely in chapter seven of the book, to develop the practical and
normative arguments that transform the normative claims arising
from the experiences of injustice and disrespect, often known only
implicitly in the sense of violated expectations, into explicit, normatively valid practical claims.49
We might ask why the same process of universalisation through the
specific cultural and political work of social movements could not also
apply to the norms of work. The fact that such social movements might
be weak or, in some cases, barely survive is no argument against their
possibility or indeed their desirability.50 Indeed, Dejours has shown in
49
For a substantial development of this argument, see Emmanuel Renault,
L exprience de linjustice, Paris, La Dcouverte, 2004.
50
In fact, in some North-European countries, norms of autonomy at work, in a
sense close to what we have described here with the help of Dejourss psychodynamics,
are very much part and parcel of the compromise between employers and employee
organizations, see D. Coats, Quality of Work and a New Politics of the Quality of Life.
A Progressive Agenda for the Workplace, Per Capita Research Paper, 2008.
the case of the French public sphere how the inability of the organised
labour movement post-1968 to look beyond the sole questions of
employment and to insist on the importance of working conditions
and autonomy at work, had been a historical failure for which todays
workers were paying the price.51 The pessimism with which we must
view any practical proposal to radically alter the organisation of workplaces and working conditions today is not an argument against the
denunciation of their deleterious effects. In any case, it is only if one
keeps in view all that work can do to subjects inasmuch as they are
engaged in working activities, that one can do justice to the suffering
these inflict on them.
Souffrance en France, pp. 4145.
51
Chapter seven
Three Normative Models of Work

Nicholas H. Smith
One of the distinctive features of the post-Hegelian tradition of social
philosophy is the connection it forges between normative criticism
and historical understanding. For some philosophers who place themselves in this tradition, the main consequence of making this connection is to alert us to the historical contingency of the norms on which
normative criticism is based: historical understanding brings to light
the plurality of values and the possibility that the norms we now adhere
to could have been otherwise.1 But historicism, in the sense of moral
relativism, is not the only lesson that can be learnt from taking the link
between normative criticism and historical understanding seriously
indeed, it is not the lesson that most philosophers in the post-Hegelian
tradition want to teach. For in addition to showing that norms are subject to change, historical understanding reveals that norms have historical power. That is to say, norms are historically effective, they have
social reality, and the social philosopher should be aware of this when
targeting her normative criticism. Philosophically well-targeted normative criticism will be rationally grounded criticism that draws on
norms that are historically effective, that have a hold on people in the
here and now, and that can therefore motivate or drive social change.
In addition to being effective, well-targeted normative criticism will be
necessary, in the ordinary sense of being directed where it is most
needed. It will be directed not just at any normative deficit, as measured against historically effective norms, but at deficits that really
matter to people, that impact on them negatively in serious ways.
Historical understanding can help to diagnose the main social pathologies from which people suffer. Normative criticism mediated by
historical understanding both looks backward at the emergence of historically effective norms, and forwards towards emancipation from the
1
See for example Richard Rorty, Objectivism, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical
Papers, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
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nicholas h. smith
defining pathologies of the times. This, at least, is what normative

criticism does at its best, on the post-Hegelian view.
The normative models of work I shall discuss in this chapter are
frameworks for normative criticism in this post-Hegelian sense. They
claim to identify certain core norms that have at once helped to shape
what work has actually become today, at least in advanced economies,
and that have the potential to transform this world in a progressive
manner. They are thus normative models in the double sense that they
claim to identify the historically effective core norms of work, the
norms that have been effective in constituting it historically, in making
it what it is; while also claiming to provide orientation for normative
criticism of work aimed at genuine emancipation, at making it what
it should be. In the latter role, the models claim to be responsive to
the distinctive needs of the times and to suggest paths for possible
recovery.
I will suggest that the post-Hegelian tradition presents us with three
contrasting normative models of work, in the sense just introduced.
According to the first model I shall identify, which I shall call the
instrumental model, the core norms of work are those of means-ends
rationality. In this model, the modern world of work is constitutively a
matter of deploying the most effective means to bring about given
ends. The ends for which working is the means do not themselves
come from the working, they are not internal to work activity: they
derive first and foremost from the material conditions of human existence and the natural necessity of securing them. The rational kernel of
modern work, the core norm that has shaped its development, is on
this view instrumental reason, and this very same normative core, in
the shape of advanced technology and more efficient, time-saving production, can help to liberate it. The second model, by contrast, takes
the core norms of work to be internal to working activity. Rather than
work gaining its normativity, so to speak, from something external to
it, from ends to which the work is a contingent means, on this second
view the core norms of work are expressions of values or meanings
that are immanent to working practices themselves. The expressive
model of work, as I shall call it, regards the actual world of work to be
constituted historically by work-specific norms, norms which working
subjects themselves have invoked and mobilised around in the course
of their struggles for emancipation. According to the third model,
the core norms of work, in the double constitutive-transformative
sense we are dealing with here, have to do neither with instrumental
three normative models of work183
rationality nor authentic self-expression. Rather they concern norms

that relate either to individual achievement or contribution through
work (in the form of esteem) or to the conditions that must in place
for individuals to participate in the exchange of services by which market societies reproduce themselves (in the form of mutual respect).
Following Honneth, I shall call this the recognition model.
I want to look at each of these models in a bit more detail, but before
doing so, I should say something about the anxieties around work
which provide the backdrop to the contemporary philosophical discussion. As we have seen, part of the task of a normative model of work
is to provide a framework for understanding the pathologies of work
and the malaises surrounding it. This is because such an understanding is a pre-requisite of well-targeted normative criticism, in the dual
sense of effective and necessary criticism distinguished above. Put otherwise, the appropriateness of a normative model of work will depend
in part on its responsiveness to the dominant social pathologies and
malaises of work. Let me offer a few observations, then, about where
contemporary anxieties around work seem primarily to lie.
The Malaise over Work
The widely used expression work-life balanceor rather imbalancenicely captures one field of anxiety that characterises the
Zeitgeist around work. There would seem to be little doubt that many
people are troubled by the amount of time they spend at work, or that
others spend at it, compared to the non-work aspects of their lives.
And this is often associated with a perception that the value of work is
exaggerated, either by the individuals who allow their lives to be swallowed up by work, or by the society at large which encourages, and
perhaps even forces, people to lead such work-obsessed lives. This
socio-cultural exaggeration of the value of work might fit an ideology
of economic growth and continuously improving performance within
companies and institutions, but only at the cost of those values that can
only be found in life outside work, and the overall balance between the
values of work and non-work.
We can make the nature of this anxiety a little more precise if
we distinguish two ways in which the value of work might be conceived. On the one hand, if the value of work is conceived purely along
instrumental lines, that is, in terms of the income it generates, then the
184
nicholas h. smith
excessive value attached to work really amounts to an over-estimation

of something that work is just the means for: namely, the power to
purchase goods and ultimately the pleasure of consuming them. The
work-life imbalance then appears as the mark of a society bent on
excessive accumulation, consumption and hedonistic enjoymenta
symptom of affluenza, as one social commentator has put it.2 But the
malaise over the work-life imbalance appears in a different light if we
conceive of work not just as an instrumental good whose meaning and
fulfilment lies in some future enjoyment, but as an intrinsic good
whose satisfactions derive from the activity itself. For what is then in
the balance is not the sheer pain of work and the pleasure of life, nor an
amoral thirst for consumption and the wholesome goods of family life,
community engagement, self-cultivation, and so forth, which are sacrificed in the frenzy to get on with work; but rather two competing sets
of broadly speaking moral demands: the life-good of work and
other life goods.3 If our interpretation is based on the latter conception, then the malaise over the work-life imbalance can be seen to arise
from a kind of normative conflict within the sphere of recognisable life
goods, above all those of working life and family life. That is a quite
different interpretation to one which construes the work-life imbalance as an irrational prioritisation of means over ends, or as a victory
for hedonism in its battle with morality.4
If popular consciousness of the first malaise (about the work-life
imbalance) focuses on the quantity of time spent at work (and the
ever-diminishing amount of time spent outside work), the second
malaise has to do with the quality of time spent working. The
worry here is that the quality of working experience has generally
deteriorated.5 To the extent that work has become experientially
2
See Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss, Affluenza, Crows Nest, Allen and
Unwin, 2005.
3
On the notion of life-goods I am deploying here, see Charles Taylor, Sources of
the Self, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
4
Influential statements of the view that the motivation for overwork has mutated
from a work-ethic of diligence and sacrifice to an amoral desire for consumption
include Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, New York, Norton, 1978, and
Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, London, Heinemann, 1979.
For an interesting discussion of these views see Russell Muirhead, Just Work,
Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2004.
5
On the long-term decline of the quality of work under capitalism, see Harry
Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth
Century, New York, The Monthly Review Press, 1974.
impoverished, so that it no longer provides the kind of satisfaction it

once provided and is capable of providing, the designers of jobs, and
the broader culture from which job-design draws its norms, can be
said to diminish the value of work.6 The malaise around the degradation of work has several facets. A common view is that the potentially
rich and challenging experience of work has been flattened out by
mind-numbing new technologies.7 Certain jobs that previously
involved the subtle exercise of arduously obtained skills have been
reduced to a few routine, child-proof operations of a computer. The
so-called dumbing-down of work features prominently in public perceptions of the deterioration of work experience. At the same time, and
in apparent contradiction to this, an even more prominent feature concerns the rise in stress suffered at work.8 Work certainly seems to be
more stressful than it used to be, and both the stress suffered directly at
work, and its social consequences for life outside work, contributes in
great measure to the malaise around work. Another contributing factor is the perceived decline in levels of sociability, cooperativeness,
trust and loyalty at work: what Richard Sennett calls the social deficits
of the new workplace.9 When combined with anxieties about the worklife imbalancethat is, the amount of time given over to workwe
arrive at a widespread image of work as nasty, brutish and long.10
The third malaise can hardly be separated from the work-life balance or the qualitative deterioration of work experience, but it deserves
a special heading. It relates to changes in the balance of power at work.
There is no doubt that the so-called liberalization or deregulation of
work, the decline of trade union power, together with changes in the
6
See John B. Murphy and David Pyke, Humane Work and the Challenges of
Job Design, in eds. S. A. Cortright and M. J. Naughton, Rethinking the Purpose
of Business, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.
7
See, for example, Barbara Garson, The Electronic Sweatshop, Harmondsworth,
Penguin, 1989, and Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, New York, Norton,
1998.
8
This seems to be especially true of the French debate, which has a sharper focus
on suffering at work (especially in the wake of the shocking spate of work-related
suicides in that country in recent years). See Christophe Dejours, Souffrance en France,
Paris, Seuil, 1998; and Christophe Dejours et Florence Bgue, Suicide et travail, Paris,
Presses universitaires de France, 2009.
9
See Richard Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism, New Haven, Yale
University Press, 2006.
10
The Observer, 1998, as cited by Frances Green, Demanding Work: The Paradox
of Job Quality in the Affluent Economy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006,
p. xvi.
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nicholas h. smith
decision-making structures of employing institutions, has wrenched

power from the grips of workers.11 Workers are now more likely to be
(and to feel) subjects of the decisions that fundamentally affect them
than to be authors of those decisions. Rather than being confident participants in the processes of institutional will-formation, so to speak,
they are more likely to be anxious observers. The fundamental worry is
not just that the pendulum of power at work has swung decisively away
from workers, but alsoand perhaps more significantlythat accountability for that power has diminished. A particularly important and
egregious consequence of this is to heighten the sense of insecurity
amongst workers. This insecurity is compounded by a perception that
the transfer of power away from them is inevitable, that there is nothing (short of economic suicide) that can be done about it. Retention
of a decent job, or access to better quality work, appears in the lap of
the gods.
The work-life imbalance, deterioration in the quality of work, and a
shift in the balance of power which reduces autonomy and accountability, are three malaises around work that trouble advanced industrial
societies. These are not the only anxieties about work that we encounterfor example, there is consternation about the fate of the work
ethic which I mentioned only in passing when discussing the worklife balance. But more significantly, it is of course an empirically contestable (and contested) matter whether the anxieties I have been
describing are accurate representations of social and economic reality.
After all, commonly voiced worries about the work-life imbalance,
backed up by countless attitude surveys, sit alongside statistics indicating the persistence of large-scale under-employment (that is, of people
having too little rather than too much work-time), even before the
recession precipitated by the financial crisis of 2008 set in.12 Concerns
about the degradation of work in advanced economies, backed up by
formidable research in historical sociology and by recent psychological studies, have to be read alongside the results of surveys that document enduringly high levels of satisfaction with the quality of work in
those very societies.13 Anxieties about the ubiquity of precarious work,
11
For an overview of these developments, see Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The
New Spirit of Capitalism, London, Verso, 2005; and Serge Paugam, Le salari de la
prcarit, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2000.
12
See David Dooley and Joann Prause, The Social Costs of Underemployment,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004
13
A sophisticated example of the more optimistic outlook on work satisfaction is
Green, Demanding Work.
now taken for granted by many sociologists, sit alongside surveys

reporting low levels of fear of job loss and statistics indicating no substantial shortening of job tenures.14 And while the sense of powerlessness in face of the liberalisation of work surely is real, it is not as if it is
going unchallenged. To take just two examples, think of the hundreds
of thousands of French citizens who rallied against the first-employment contract bill in spring 2006, or the tens of thousands who protested against the Australian governments neo-liberal industrial
relations laws prior to the election of 2007 (resulting in the defeat of
the government and the overturning of the hated IR laws).
The social sciences thus send mixed messages about the nature and
extent of the malaise around work. But assuming, not without some
evidence, that the three malaises just sketched do have some basis in
reality, even if only as widely held anxieties, we can ask how the normative models of work that have been developed in post-Hegelian
thought relate to them. We can consider the hermeneutic validity of
these modelstheir validity as frameworks for self-interpretation and
social diagnosisin a context shaped partly by such general anxieties
around work. For as we have seen, hermeneutic validity in this sense is
an important aspect of the kind of validity to which these normative
models of work aspire.
The Instrumental Model
Let us turn now to the first of our models, the instrumental model.
Recall that a normative model of work is instrumental if it takes the
core norms of work to be those of instrumental reason. This means, on
the one hand, that the historical development of the world of work is to
be understood in terms of its increasing accordance with those norms.
The norm of efficient production has guided the development of work,
according to this model, to the extent that it is now constitutive, as a
core norm, of contemporary working practices. To say that means-ends
efficiency or instrumental reason provides the core norm of work is
also to say that other norms, especially moral and ethical ones, do not
On the one side (emphasising the prevalence of job insecurity or precariousness) see for example Arne L. Kalleberg, Precarious Work, Insecure Workers:
Employment Relations in Transition, American Sociological Review, Vol 74, No. 1,
February 2009, 122. On the other side, drawing attention to steady levels of job duration, see Kevin Doogan, New Capitalism? The Transformation of Work, Cambridge,
Polity, 2009.
14
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nicholas h. smith
have this guiding, regulating feature. On the other hand, the instrumental character of the core norms of work means that instrumental
reason can be called upon for purposes of critique, since more efficient
production can better meet those non-moral, non-ethical needs that
human beings have on account of their physical existence. Furthermore,
more efficient technology may also relieve people of the burdens of
participating in the system of production, understood as the means by
which the material, pre-ethical needs of a population are satisfied.
The instrumental model thus combines the following ideas that
define its normative character. First, it construes work as the kind of
activity humans must undertake merely to survive as natural beings.
The ultimate end at stake here, the reproduction of mere life or continuation of natural organic being, is not itself taken to be a moral or
ethical purpose, though of course it provides the material condition
for the realisation of such purposes. Second, the worth or good of work
lies primarily in its role in producing and allowing for the consumption of goods and services that raise the quality of this natural life.
Work is thus conceived as an instrumental rather than an intrinsic
good. And third, work-activity that has production as its end and is
guided by the norm of instrumental reason must be distinguished
from the kind of activity in which distinctively human moral and ethical capacities are exercised, in which intrinsically valuable goods are
enjoyed, andin the truly moral casesunconditional, categorical
worth experienced.
This set of ideas about the normativity of work, which goes back to
Aristotles distinction between poieisis and praxis, is widely subscribed
to in the post-Hegelian tradition, but Arendts and Habermass formulations of it in the mid-twentieth century are perhaps the most familiar
and consequential.15 Arendt distinguished action from both work
The instrumental model of work in post-Hegelian thought is developed by way of
various interpretations of Aristotles distinction between poieisis and praxis. As a
reminder, poiesis, or production, is the making or bringing about of something useful,
and is governed by the norm of technical or instrumental reason (techne). For Aristotle,
the value of poieisis lies solely in the thing made or brought about, the end for which
work-activity is the means. The work-activity itself, abstracted from the product, has
no value. This contrasts with praxis, which is action guided by the norms of moral
reason (phronesis). Good praxis, as opposed to good poiesis, is its own end, worthwhile
for its own sake, and so an intrinsic good. Praxis, but not poiesis, is an excellence of the
agent; it perfects the agent in the sense of contributing to the agents full self-realisation
as a moral being. For extended discussion of Aristotles distinction and its influence,
see James B. Murphy, A Natural Law of Human Labor, American Journal of
Jurisprudence, 71, 1994, 7195, and by the same author, The Moral Economy of Labour,
New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1993.
15
and labour precisely to bring out the moral and ethical normative
specificity of action in contrast to the utilitarian world of work and the
brute organic sphere of labour.16 Both working and labouring, in
Arendts sense, have only instrumental value, the difference being that
the value created by labour is used up almost immediately (in order
to keep the labourer alive) whereas work is done for the sake of useful
things that endure.17 It is only with action, or rather speech and action,
that we insert ourselves into the human world.18 As is well-known,
Habermas articulates a similar thought when he distinguishes labour,
again understood as instrumental action, or action properly guided by
the norms of instrumental reason, from interaction or communicative action, which is properly guided by the norms of reaching an
understanding.19
Arendts distinction between action, work and labour, and
Habermass distinction between labour and interaction, provide a conceptual framework for a normative model of work of the instrumental
type. But they also have the effect of radicalising the instrumental
model in a problematic way. For up to now, I have presented the instrumental model as a thesis about the core norms of work. The core norms
of work, according to this model, are instrumental. But the Arendt/
Habermas thesis we are looking at now suggests that the norms of
work are solely instrumental. Work and labour are subject to the norms
of instrumental reason, and only those norms, by definition. This is
problematic because it invites the question: granted that work is of
instrumental value, why does that exclude the possibility that it is of
intrinsic value? What compels us to conceive of work as only instrumentally valuable, as subject exclusively to the norms of instrumental
reason?
James B. Murphy has pointed out that Aristotle could not countenance a conception of work as both intrinsically and instrumentally
valuable because of his commitment to a metaphysical distinction
between immanent and transitive activities.20 Transitive activities,
16
Action alone is the exclusive prerogative of man, Hannah Arendt, The Human
Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958, p. 22.
17
ibid., p. 99.
18
ibid., p. 176. Arendt continues: This insertion [into the human world] is not
forced upon us by necessity, like labour, and it is not prompted by utility, like work
(ibid., p. 177).
19
See Jrgen Habermas, Labour and Interaction: Remarks on Hegels Jena
Philosophy of Mind, in Habermas, Theory and Practice, London, Heinemann, 1974.
20
John B. Murphy, A Natural Law of Human Labor, 73.
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nicholas h. smith
suchas making things, are only completed upon the completion of the
object external to them. In and of themselves they are incomplete. It is
the nature of immanent activities, such as contemplation or experiencing joy, on the other hand, to be complete in themselves. As these kinds
of activity were mutually exclusive, Aristotle concluded that work, as a
transitive activity, could at best only have instrumental value.
While this metaphysical style of thinking is alien to Arendt and
Habermas, nonetheless a similar type of consideration leads them artificially to exclude the possibility of non-instrumental norms applying
to work. If we just consider Habermass position, we can see that it rests
on premises that make the idea of work as both an instrumental and an
intrinsic good, or as subject to both non-moral and moral norms, seem
spooky. For this idea suggests an intrinsic normative content to a kind
of activity that can be specified independently of our intersubjective,
and more precisely linguistic, constitution. Work as instrumental
action may enable us to cope with the contingencies of nature better,
but it does not transcend the contingency of the natural world. Only
the norms embedded in linguistic interaction manage that.21 From this
perspective, a more than instrumental conception of the value and
normativity of work can seem to represent an inadmissible regression
to an enchanted world.
But a more formidable obstacle to a conception of work as possessing both instrumental and intrinsic value arises from the central role
attributed to instrumental reason in the diagnoses of the times of the
first generation Frankfurt School, which Habermas sought to refine.
The central thought here is that the pathologies of the modern world
arise from the domination of instrumental reason, a thought which is
by no means unique to the Frankfurt School but which is most explicitly and systematically taken up there. On this conception, instrumental reason is the essence of the scientific-technological-industrial
complex that reifies and imprisons us.22 Accordingly, critical theory is
by definition the critique of instrumental reason. While Habermas
was able to extricate himself from the idea that instrumental reason as
such was intrinsically bad, it is not surprising that he found it difficult
21
What raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we know: language, Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy Shapiro, London,
Heinemann, 1972, p. 314 (Postscript).
22
See T. W. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, tr. J. Cumming,
New York, Herder and Herder, 1972 [1947].
to see anything intrinsically good about it, or about the main kind of
social activity governed by itnamely, work.23
This consideration is just as telling in Arendts case, for whom
labour and work are not just distinct from action, but threats to it.
This at any rate is the diagnostic position taken up in The Human
Condition. Arendts position is well-knownand widely embraced
for its affirmation of plurality and its critique of the modern tendency
toward homogeneity. But what is the archetype of the sameness that
threatens to engulf us? The labour gang.24 For Arendt, the labour
gang exemplifies the qualitatively undifferentiated, nature-like (indeed
herd-likeonly more menacing) unity of collective labour. This
unity extinguishes all awareness of individuality and identity, such
that all those values which derive from labouring, beyond its obvious function in the life process, are entirely social and essentially
not different from the additional pleasure derived from eating and
drinking in company, or in other words, no different from the mere
organic satisfactions of non-human animals.25 There is no true plurality in labouring, merely the multiplication of specimens which are
fundamentally all alike because they are what they are as mere living
organisms.26 Admittedly, labouring is not working, in Arendts
technical sense, but even the activity of work as distinct from labour
cannot set up a true realm of plurality in which men qua men can
appear.27
In a revealing footnote, Arendt cuts through what she rather aloofly
calls theories and academic discussions of work that attribute a more
than instrumental value to it by invoking a survey, conducted in 1955,
showing that a large majority of workers, if asked why does man
work? answer simply in order to be able to live or to make money.28
This is presented as rough empirical confirmation of the instrumental
model of work Arendt advocates, according to which the normative
content of work lies solely and simply in its instrumental value. But
the surveys available to us today suggest the matter is much more
23
See Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. T. McCarthy, Boston,
Beacon Press, 1984.
24
Arendt, The Human Condition, pp. 213214.
25
Ibid., p. 213.
26
ibid., p. 212.
27
ibid.
28
ibid., pp. 127128, note 75.
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nicholas h. smith
complex.29 These show that work matters to people for a wide range of
reasons, and not just reasons of an instrumental type, according to
which the good of work lies in the means it provides to satisfy ends
independent of it. There are goods that are specific to work activity,
and which can only be enjoyed by taking part in that activity, which
also go some way to explaining why people work.30 Instrumental reason alone does not provide an adequate answer. This also holds if we
raise that question not just at the micro level, at the level of individual
motivation, but at the macro level of socio-economic forces. To consider the world of work as a labour market determined solely by norms
of efficiency and instrumental rationality, or indeed as a norm-free
zone of optimally coordinated action-consequences, is to ignore the
ethical decisions, and so the ethical reasons counting for and against
them, that shape economic policies and institutions.31 Decisions of a
more than purely instrumental kind are also at play when the social
division of labour is modelled practically on the technical division of
labour.32 Moral and ethical norms, not just norms of instrumental reason, are operative here too, and contribute to the melange of social
forces that any adequate explanation of why people work would have
to take into account.
If the instrumental model radicalised in the manner of Arendt and
Habermas gives a simplified account of why people work, it also seems
limited as a framework for understanding the contemporary malaise
around work. It is confined to an interpretation of the work-life imbalance as a conflict between intrinsic life-goods and merely instrumental
values, and cannot make sense of the possibility that a conflict between
intrinsically valuable life-goods is involved. It also makes it difficult to
see how the quality of work can become a serious source of disappointed normative expectations. And although it places great weight
on the values of autonomy and responsibility, it does not anticipate
that work would become a key site of anxiety around them.
29
See for example, Shaun Wilson, The Struggle over Work, London, Routledge,
2004.
30
See Robert E. Lane, The Market Experience, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1991.
31
This point is convincingly argued by Russell Keat in his contribution to this
volume.
32
See John B. Murphy, The Moral Economy of Labour, and William J. Booth,
Households: on the Moral Architecture of the Economy, Ithaca, Cornell University
Press, 1993.

The Expressive Model
Whereas the instrumental model takes the core normativity of work to

lie in its effectiveness as a means to bring about ends whose value is
independent of the work (and thus contingent to it), the expressive
model takes the core norms of work to be internal to working activity,
to be expressions of values or meanings that are immanent to working
activities themselves. The term expression serves to highlight this
internal relation between working activity and the norms that apply to
it, between the being of the good and the doing of it.33
There are, however, various forms of expressivism, and various levels at which the expressive relation can hold, which should be distinguished, even if expressive theories of work typically bring them
together. First, there is what we might call existential expressivism,
which focuses on the ontological significance of work. The fundamental normativity of work, on this view, arises from the special position
work holds in the self-expression of being, or as is more common in
expressive theories, the self-expression of life. Marcuses early existential analysis of work, which claims to lay out an ontological concept of
work that is prior to and presupposed by ontic conceptions (especially
as deployed in economics) illustrates the former approach,34 whereas
the notion of work as the self-expression of life is perhaps most vividly
present in Marxs famous analysis of alienation.35 The thought that
work carries ontological significance, and that life is the fundamental
norm that work (at its best) gives expression to, can also be found
today in Dejours psychodynamic approach to work.36
33
For an attempt at spelling out in more detail this meaning of expression,
see Nicholas H. Smith, Expressivism in Brandom and Taylor, in eds. James Chase,
Edwin Mares, Jack Reynolds and James Williams, Postanalytic and Metacontinental:
Crossing Philosophical Divides, London, Continuum, pp. 145156.
34
See Herbert Marcuse, On the Philosophical Foundation of the Concept of
Labor in Economics, Telos, 16, Summer 1973 [1933], 937.
35
See Karl Marx, Excerpts from James Mills Elements of Political Economy [1844]
and Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, in Marx, Early Writings, London,
Penguin, 1974.
36
In addition to Dejours contribution to this volume, see Dejours, Subjectivity,
Work, and Action, Critical Horizons, 7, pp. 4562; Christophe Dejours and JeanPhilippe Deranty, The Centrality of Work, Critical Horizons, 11, 2, 2010, 167181;
and Jean-Philippe Deranty, Work as Transcendental Experience: Implications of
Dejours Psychodynamcs for Contemporary Social Theory and Philosophy, Critical
Horizons, 11, 2, 2010, 183225.
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nicholas h. smith
Second, and more commonly, expressivism contains an anthropological thesis about the role of work in the development of human
capacities. This thesis can be presented transcendentally, as if working
(in some suitably abstract sense) were a condition of the possibility of
human, rational powers, or teleologically, such that working activity
functions as the medium in which human flourishing or self-realisation
at both the individual and species level takes place. The prototype
for the former type of argument is the dialectic of self-consciousness
in Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit.37 According to this argument, it
is through working that slave-consciousness, relative to masterconsciousness, rises to the universal through externalisation and
objectification of its powers, such that the externalisation and objectification of subjective powers in working is revealed as a structural feature of human subjectivity in general.38 Marxs manuscripts of 1844
and comments on James Mill are classic sources of the latter type of
argument.39 In more recent formulations of the anthropological dimension of work, the emphasis may lie in the role of work in maintaining
psychic integrity,40 in securing the positive self-relations (such as selfrespect and self-esteem) needed for a good life,41 or in the basic human
goods that work provides.42 But whether the argument is presented
transcendentally (work as a condition of human subjectivity) or teleologically (work as a vehicle of human self-realisation), the crucial
point for our purposes is that the normativity of work has to do with
the role of work in giving expression to, and facilitating the development of, distinctively human capacities.
The norms at issue at the first two levelsnamely the self-expression
of life or being, and the formation and development of distinctive
human capacitiesare supposed to apply to human beings generally.
But the norms that working brings to expression may have a more
local character. That is to say, there may be goods that are specific to
particular working practices in the sense that they can only be enjoyed
37
See G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1977 [1807].
38
See especially ibid., paragraphs 195 and 196.
39
See especially Marxs account of alienation from the species being in the
Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts of 1844.
40
As in Dejours psychodynamic model (see note 36 above)
41
As in Axel Honneth, Struggle for Recognition, tr. Joel Anderson, Cambridge,
Polity, 1995.
42
As in John B. Murphys neo-Aristotelian account in The Moral Economy of Labor
and in Robert E. Lanes account of work in The Market Experience.
by those participating in those practices. Such goods are internal to the

practice. Thus at this level we are not concerned with universal norms,
or norms that have a claim to unrestricted validity. But the normativity
at issue here is no less real or objective for that, and the goods at stake
no less genuine. The fact that working practices createor more precisely, give expression tospecific goods by no means compromises
their validity. It is just that enjoyment of the good is restricted to those
who participate in the working practice, precisely because participation (of the right kind) is the expression of the good. For example, agricultural practice gives expression to goods that are specific and internal
to it, as does handicraft, engineering, nursing, teaching and so on. The
realisation and promotion of these goods is guided by practice-specific
norms which are internal but of course by no means arbitrary.
Expressivism at this level, which for want of a better term we might call
practice-internal, goes back to Aristotle, and neo-Aristotelians like
MacIntyre have given it renewed currency.43
The expressive model of work, whether taken at the ontological,
anthropological or practice-internal level, regards the actual world of
work to be constituted historically by work-specific norms, norms
which working subjects themselves have invoked and mobilised
around in the course of their struggles for emancipation. The key difference between it and the instrumental model can be put as follows.
If work is an indispensible vehicle for the development of human
capacities, and development of those capacities is either a condition of
human flourishing or a constitutive feature of it, then work itself must
be conceived as integral to a flourishing human life, or a good life.
The expressivist, therefore, is committed to a normative conception of
work according to which work has intrinsic and not just instrumental
value. Furthermore, if particular working activities may be regarded as
43
See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, second edition, Notre Dame, University of
Notre Dame Press, 1984, from which these examples are also taken. MacIntyre himself
though is not an expressivist about modern work, since (following Polanyi) he takes
the core norms of modern work, mediated as it is by the labour market, to be instrumental (and so not concerned with internal goods). For attempts at expanding
MacIntyres account of practices to cover the contemporary world of work and labour
markets (and thus extracting what I am calling an expressivist model of work from his
writings), see Keith Breen, Work and Emancipatory Practice: Towards a Recovery of
Human Beings Productive Capacities, Res Publica, 14,1, 2007, 381414; and Russell
Keat, Ethics, Market and MacIntyre, in eds. K Knight and P. Blackledge, Revolutionary
Aristotlelianism: Ethics, Resistance and Utopia, Stuttgart, Lucius and Lucius, 2008,
pp. 243257.
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nicholas h. smith
expressive of goods that can only be realised and enjoyed internal to

those particular practices, then a more than instrumental significance
needs to be attached to them. Although those practices may also be a
source of instrumental value, or goods that can also be enjoyed and
realised externally to those practices, nonetheless the core norms
which make up those activities are considered, on the expressive
model, to be those internally generated, practice-specific norms.
Now the main point of a normative model of work, in the sense we
are discussing here, is to provide a framework for understanding the
most salient normative deficits of actual work and a well-grounded
sense of how those deficits can be corrected. So subscribers to the
expressivist model do not claim that all actual work is conducive to
flourishing or self-realisation, or for that matter expressive and constitutive of internal goods. I have already mentioned Marx as a paradigm
figure in the expressivist tradition, and clearly the point of his expressivism, at least in his early writings, is to frame fundamental criticism
of alienated labour and to ground hope for a more human world in
which alienated labour would disappear. Contemporary expressivists
also intend their normative model of work to provide a sound foothold
for the criticism of actually existing work. Their expressivist models
include a critical conception of work, to use Honneths formulation.44
Yet such a critical conception faces formidable challenges. Indeed,
Honneth himself has come to see these challenges as insurmountable
and he has subsequently abandoned this model in favour of an alternative approach. We will look at this alternative, third model in the next
section. But first, let us briefly look at the reasons he has given for
rejecting the critical conception of work of his earlier expressivism.
According to the critical conception of work originally defended by
Honneth, an undistorted act of work, one in which its normative
content is fulfilled, is a unified activity, autonomously planned and
carried out by the working subject.45 In another formulation, he
describes it as a self-contained, self-directed work procedure which
embodied the workers knowledge.46 It is noticeable how thinmodest but non-defeatist, one might saythis normative model of work is,
Axel Honneth, Work and Instrumental Action: On the Normative Basis of
Critical Theory, in Honneth, The Fragmented World of the Social, Albany, SUNY Press,
1995, pp. 1549, 17 (n. 1).
45
ibid., p. 18.
46
ibid., p. 22.
44
in the context of the history of expressivism. There are no references to

the self-expression of life, for instance, or the realisation of a speciesbeing, or self-formation through the externalisation of subjective
powers at the individual or collective level. Nevertheless, this deserves
to be called an expressivist model because it posits that working activity that accords with its norm gives proper expression to the workers
singular practical intelligence and her underlying autonomy. It provides a norm, over and above efficiency and instrumental rationality,
which fits the exercise of productive capacities by indicating, at a very
general level, the proper shape of the expression of those powers.
Furthermore, this is not an abstract norm that has no historical force
and so no place in a normative model of work in the sense that concerns us, since it can plausibly be argued that workers actually anticipate its fulfilment and are liable to resist working practices that break
with the norm. At the time of formulating this critical conception of
work, at least, Honneth could draw on recent industrial sociology for
evidence to suggest that workers actually do resist practices that
deprive them of this basic autonomy and capacity for expression.
But no matter how modest the normative content of this critical
conception of work might seem from an expressivist perspective,
Honneth himself came to see it as an extravagant conception and an
over-reaction to the limits of the instrumental model.47 He gives two
basic reasons for rejecting his earlier approach, objections which can
be seen to apply not just to his own version of expressivism, but to the
expressive model generally. The first is that the implicit moral claims
underlying resistance to working practices that fall short of the expressive norm are not fully rational, in the sense that they lack universal
validity. As Honneth puts it: The silent protests of employees who
oppose the determination of their work activity by others lack that element of demonstrable universalisation required to make them into
justified standards of immanent criticism.48 More generally, Honneth
suggests that norms of expression or self-realisation through work can
at best possess only local, relative validity, the kind of validity that conceptions of the good can have, as distinct from moral norms which are
universally valid. The second reason Honneth gives for abandoning his
47
Axel Honneth, Work and Recognition: A Redefinition, in eds., H.-C. Schmidt
am Busch and C. Zurn, The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives, pp. 223239, p. 226.
48
ibid, p. 229.
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nicholas h. smith
earlier expressivist conception is that it is no longer plausible to suppose that working activity has a proper shape for which the selfdirected exercise of productive powers is exemplary. Put bluntly, this is
because most work today is concerned not so much with the production of objects but with the delivery of services. As soon as one has to
deliver a service, all sorts of considerations come into play, such as
responding to variations in customer demand and adapting to fluid
technological and social environments, which the model of autonomous self-expression, or the craftsman ideal, is hardly well suited for.
There is also just too much variation in the kind of work that has to be
done to make one model of working activity normatively appropriate.
As Honneth puts it, given the multiplicity of socially necessary work
activities, it seems impossible and absurd to claim that their autochthonic, internal structures demand that they be organized in one specific way.49 In lacking both a rational grounding and a firm foothold in
the actual world of societal labour, the critical conception of work, and
by implication expressivism more generally, is shown to be inadequate
as a normative model of work, Honneth now argues.
Honneth is surely write to note that aspirations for meaningful work
fit into conceptions of the good that are not shared by everyone, and
that craft-like production of objects forms only a small part of the contemporary world of work. Still, it may be that these points call only for
an amendment of the expressive model, including Honneths own early
version of it, rather than wholesale rejection. For in response to the
first point, one could argue that conceptions of the good are unavoidable when it comes to the organisation of work, and that the unavoidable choice between one form of work organization (say, one that
generates and equitably distributes meaningful work) and another
(say, one that sacrifices the quality of work to other considerations) is
one that can be made with more or less justification, depending on the
strength of the ethical reasons behind it.50 The mere fact that the aspiration for meaningful work finds expression in non-universalisable conceptions of the good does not deprive that aspiration of rational status.
This is all the more evident in Honneths own version of expressivism,
with its critical conception of work, since the basic norm it draws
ibid.
See Russell Keats contribution to this volume, and his Choosing between
Capitalisms: Habermas, Ethics and Politics (available on-line at http://www
.russellkeat.net).
49
50
upon is autonomy. Assuming that the capacity to express ones autonomy in the work one does is a good (rather than a right), clearly it is
not one which is just a matter of esoteric wishes or caprice, on a rational
par with any other conception. It has a good claim to be part of a good
life. It is even arguable that the demand for autonomy is the rational
claim par excellence, the claim that rational agents ought to make for
their work, the claim that should trump all others as far as practical
reason is concerned. We would not consider autonomy to be such a
contingent, dispensable good in other life-contexts. But even if we
grant that heteronomy is more acceptable for the worker than, say, the
citizen, we are still left with good reasons for favouring work with certain qualities (such as some degree of autonomy) rather than others
(such as the near absence of self-directed activity).51
The expressivist model may also be able to answer Honneths second
criticism, though it may have to modify itself accordingly. Honneths
main point is that the provision of services that makes up the bulk of
working activity today does not have the structure of the externalisation of subjective powers in an object we take to be characteristic of
craft activity. The counterfactually presupposed norms of craft work
should therefore not feature in a normative model of work, in our
practically demanding sense, since they are not in fact the core norms
of contemporary work, and lack an effective history. Such a normative model would only be able to furnish external criticism, as
Honneth puts it. But what if the norms of craftsmanship were not to be
understood in such a restricted way; restricted, that is to say, to the
external expression of a subjects knowledge in an object? What if the
meaning of craftsmanship were to opened up to include work done
well for its own sake in the provision of services as well, indeed in a
potentially unlimited field of activities?52 The expressivist could then
appeal to standards or norms that are internal to working practices of
all kinds, but which are compromised, or undermined, or corrupted by
contemporary regimes of work. The expectation that one should be
able to do a good days work, or a job well done, is after all common
to very many trades and professions, if not all of them, and certainly is
For a more detailed account of the importance of autonomy in this context, and
of the difficulties approaches such as Honneths have in dealing with it, see Beate
Roessler, Meaningful Work: Arguments from Autonomy, unpublished ms.
52
As suggested in Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, New Haven, Yale University
Press, 2008.
51
200
nicholas h. smith
not limited to traditional craft work. Furthermore, it is an expectation

whose disappointment features centrally in the malaise around work
sketched above especially, it could be argued, for those who work in
service industries such a care-provision, health and education. For it is
a common complaint of such workers that their ability to do the job
well, as defined by criteria of excellence internal to the trade or profession, has suffered due to the imposition by management of alien standards and norms.53
The Recognition Model
So it is by no means settled that an expressive normative model of work
is necessarily overburdened by an obsolescent ideal of craftsmanship.
There may well be room to accommodate the ideal of craftsmanship,
re-interpreted as excellence by way of situation-specific exercises of
practical intelligence, within an expressivist normative model of work
suited to contemporary conditions. Honneth need not foreclose that
possibility. But he could still reasonably argue that there might be
a third normative model of work available to us, which is better
equipped than instrumentalism to locate the normative deficits of
work while at the same time more securely anchored in the normative basis of the actual organisation of work. Let me call this third
normative model, the one that Honneth now advocates, the recognition model of work.54
The key idea of the recognition model is that the core norms of
work are norms of recognition. But just as the expressivist idea that
the core norms of work are norms of expression admits of variation,
so the recognition model can take various forms depending on which
norm of recognition is emphasised and the level at which the salient
recognition relations are postulated. Such variation is evident in
Honneths own proposals for a recognition-theoretic approach to the
53
See for example the contributions by Pascale Molinier and Gabriele Wagner to
this volume.
54
I have discussed Honneths approach to work prior to the publication of Work
and Recognition: A Redefinition in Nicholas H. Smith, Work and the Struggle for
Recognition, European Journal of Political Theory, 8, 1, January 2009, 4660. In that
piece I emphasized the link between the recognition model and expressivism, whereas
here (partly in response to Honneths proposed redefinition) I am more concerned
with their differences.
normativity of work and in the space remaining I will briefly consider

the two main ones.55
First, there is the approach framed by the distinction between
respect and esteem which plays such an important part in the social
theory presented in Struggle for Recognition and Honneths contribution to Redistribution or Recognition?.56 According to Honneths general theory of recognition, effective human agency requires a minimal
set of practical self-relations to be in place, relations that are established in the course of an agents successful socialization. The socialization of the highly individuated members of modern societies, however,
depends on a differentiation of the sources of these practical selfrelations and in particular the separation of recognition in the form of
respect (on which the practical self-relation of self-respect depends)
from recognition in the form of esteem (on which the practical selfrelation of self-esteem depends).57 Respect, on this account, is the recognition any person is due simply on account of being a person. As
such, it provides the core norm of modern legal systems: all persons
are to be equal under the law and to enjoy the same basic legal entitlements. Esteem, on the other hand, is recognition that follows from
achievement or social contribution. It is not allocated equally and in
advance to everyone, as basic legal rights are, but distributed post hoc
in proportion to individual accomplishments and abilities. The primary social sphere in which these accomplishments and abilities are
made manifest is the production and exchange of goods and services.
55
Of course Honneth is not the only contemporary theorist of recognition, but he
is the most prominent one to have proposed a specific recognition-theoretic
approach to work. There are some theorists, most notably Nancy Fraser, who embrace
a restricted recognition paradigm, for the sake of analysing identity politics, while
rejecting a comprehensive recognition model as unsuited to the analysis of class politics, and so work. Such theorists do not have a recognition model of work in the sense
that concerns me here, so there is no need to discuss them. Elsewhere I have argued
that Fraser has a crypto-instrumentalist model of work which is indebted to Habermas
(a position which Honneth himself now seems to flirt with, as I shall suggest below).
See Nicholas H. Smith, Recognition, Culture and Economy: Honneths Debate with
Fraser, in ed., D. Petherbridge, Axel Honneth: Critical Essays with a Reply by Axel
Honneth, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2011, pp. 324344.
56
See Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, and Faser and Honneth, Redistribution
or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb, J. Ingram and
C. Wilke, London, Verso, 2003. The approach is also exemplified in Honneth, The
Social Dynamics of Disrespect: Situating Critical Theory Today, in ed., P. Dews,
Habermas: A Critical Reader, Oxford, Blackwell, 1999.
57
A third crucial source of practical self-relation (the relation of self-trust) is love,
but that is not so relevant for the normative model of work that concerns us here.
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nicholas h. smith
So while respect, in the narrow sense that contrasts with esteem, is an

important norm of work insofar as work is subject to the law, esteem
(in the specific sense of recognition for achievement) provides the core
norm of recognition in this sphere. This makes it possible for a distinctive kind of struggle for recognition to emerge here, namely one
based around the interpretation of the principle of achievement.
After all, the criteria of what counts as achievement, the means by
which different achievements and contributions are measured and
weighed relative to each other, and so on, are never purely impartial:
they are laden with cultural values and typically reflect the interests
of socially dominant groups. Members of socially stigmatised and
subordinated groups can contest prevailing interpretations of the
principle of achievement that make the kind of work they do, or the
kind of work associated with the group, appear unworthy of esteem
or perhaps even socially invisible. Without due recognition of their
achievements, the members of such groups are liable to suffer from
a debilitating lack of self-esteem, even if their equal legal status as persons is secured.
The approach to the normativity of work that focuses on esteemrecognition (or the principle of achievement) and the effect it has on
subjectivity opens up fields for further research that can consolidate its
claim to provide an adequate normative model of work in our postHegelian sense. Particularly worthy of note is the role the model can
play in guiding empirical investigation into the changing modalities of
esteem in actual work organizations. For this purpose, we require not
just a distinction between respect and esteem, but distinctions within
the concept of esteem that can map recent historical changes in the
dominant modes of recognition (and misrecognition) at work. The
distinction between recognition as appreciation and recognition as
admiration as elaborated by Stephan Voswinkel and others serves
this function well, since it is effectively a distinction between two
modalities of esteem-recognition whose tense co-existence is at least
partly responsible for changing patterns of experience of work.58
Another interesting feature of this research is the experience of moral
ambiguity around recognition it reveals: esteem-recognition at work is
not always welcome, especially when it is mobilised for the sake of the
58
See the contributions of Stephan Voswinkel and Gabriele Wagner to this
volume.
profit-maximization of the provider of work.59 This raises the question

of the ideological role of esteem-recognition, or the role that recognition of achievement plays in the reproduction of relations of domination, including the relation between employer and employee. These
issues have been explored at a conceptual level by Honneth and are
central to the empirical sociology being undertaken by Voswinkel and
his co-researchers.60
Such considerations count in favour of a normative model of work
that takes the core norms of work to be those of esteem-recognition as
encoded in the principle of achievement. But a weakness in the recognition model developed in this way appears when one considers the
basis of the normative criticism of work the model is supposed to
frame. All it seems to have to go on is challenges to the socially dominant interpretation of the achievement principle that emerge from
marginalised or subordinate groups. We have already seen that
Honneth came to reject the expressivist model of work on account of it
failing to establish a rational basis to its normative criticism of prevailing conditions of work. Mere feelings of alienation or dissatisfaction
with work did not of themselves provide a rational basis for the critique of work. And a similar problem could be seen to affect the recognition model in this esteem-based version. For merely to have the
experience of not being properly esteemed does not entitle one to the
claim that the principle of achievement should be interpreted otherwise, that is, in a way that would affirm ones subjectively apprehended
achievement. Some reason would need to be given to justify one interpretation over another. And if the interpretation of the principle of
achievement is inherently contestable, if there is no shared background
understanding of what achievement consists in, then normative criticism of work would seem to amount to a taking of sides. If normative
criticism of work is to be more than that, if it is to have rational force,
59
See Herman Kocyba, Der Preis der Anerkennung. Von der tayloristischen
Miachtung zur strategischen Instrumentalisierung der Subjektivitt der Arbeitenden,
in eds. U. Holtgrewe et al, Anerkennung und Arbeit, Konstanz, Universittsverlag
Konstanz, 2000, pp. 127140. See also Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden
Injuries of Class, New York, Knopf, 1972, for an account of the moral ambiguities of
esteem-recognition from an earlier period.
60
For the conceptual analysis, see especially Honneth, Recognition as Ideology,
in eds. B. van den Brink and D. Owen, Recognition and Power. Axel Honneth and
the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007,
pp. 323348; and Honneth, Organised Self-realisation. Paradoxes of Individuation,
European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2004, pp. 463478.
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nicholas h. smith
then some shared norms, norms that are more or less explicitly
accepted by everyone despite them having different understandings of
the principle of achievement, would need to be identified.
We can read Honneths proposed redefinition of the relation
between work and recognition as an attempt at overcoming this weakness in both the expressivist model of work and the first, esteem-based
formulation of the recognition model. According to this second version of the recognition model, the normativity of work arises from the
conditions of recognition prevailing in the modern exchange of services.61 Drawing on Hegel and Durkheim, Honneth argues that modern market economies gain their legitimacy from a norm of mutual
recognition according to which subjects mutually recognize each
other as private autonomous beings that act for each other and thereby
sustain their livelihood through the contribution of their labour to
society.62 The moral basis of the modern labour market resides in the
reciprocity of the obligation to work for ones living by satisfying others
needs, on the one hand, and the opportunity to do reasonably paid
work which involves a minimal level of self-directed skilful activity on
the other. The availability of paid work which can support a decent
standard of living is thus a rational claim for subjects who are ready to
deliver a socially useful service through their labour. Likewise, the
availability of meaningful work, of work that requires the kind of skills
that an autonomous person can be expected to possess and which
other autonomous persons can recognise as such, amounts to a rational
claim under modern market-mediated conditions of social reproduction. Put negatively, a market economy that deprives subjects of the
opportunity to do work complex enough to be commensurate with the
status of autonomous agency at a minimum wage is inconsistent with
its own normative conditions. It prevents individuals from securing
self-respectas Honneth puts it following Hegelfor themselves as
autonomous agents, even though the legitimacy of modern societies
depends crucially on its capacity to make the bases of self-respect
available to everyone.
Clearly the normative presuppositions of exchange, if they are valid
at all, hold for all acts of work insofar as they are mediated by the
labour market. The reach of their validity is not restricted, so to speak,
by particular cultural horizons of interpretation of the principle of
Honneth, Work and Recognition: A Redefinition, p. 225.
Ibid, p. 230.
61
62
achievement. In this respect it does seem to represent an advance on

the esteem-based recognition model, as well as the expressive model.
But as we saw when considering Honneths reasons for rejecting the
expressive model, his favoured recognition model must also provide a
framework for the internal or immanent criticism of the organisation
of work, not just rational criticism of it. While, in Honneths view, the
craftsman ideal that formed the normative core of the expressive model
had validity as a conception of the good, it was a merely utopian conception of work which was too weakly linked to the demands of economically organized labour.63 For this reason, it could only serve the
purposes of external criticism and so was inadequate as a normative
model in the post-Hegelian sense. The new recognition model avoids
this problem, Honneth argues, because it draws on the very norms that
the capitalist organization of work uses to legitimate itself. But in order
for this feature to represent a decisive advantage over the expressive
model, it would also need to be shown that the norms of mutual recognition are an historically effective force in this context, and more effective than the norms of expression. This latter claim, however, seems to
be undermined by the counterfactual status Honneth attributes to
these norms. As Honneth writes, the norms of mutual recognition that
provide the conditions for market-mediated exchange exist in the
peculiar form of counterfactual presuppositions and ideals.64 But if
that is the case, they would seem to be as weakly connected to the
demands of economically organised labour as the norms of expression
are. There must be some factual (and not just counterfactual) status
to these norms if they are to count as core norms of work in the
demanding sense required of a post-Hegelian normative model of
work.
Indeed, if the norms of mutual recognition really do only have a
counterfactual existence in the social exchange of services, it would
suggest that the core norms of work are of a different kind. Given that
Honneth rejects the claim that norms of expression can have that role,
we would seem to be left with the instrumentalist view that the core
norms of actual work, the historically effective norms that have shaped
it, are those of means-ends rationality. And Honneth comes close to
endorsing the instrumentalist model both when he discounts the viability of expressivist aspirations about work in the face of economic
Ibid, p. 226.
Ibid, p. 234.
63
64
206
nicholas h. smith
reality and when he suggests that it would only take a flip of perspectives (from that of social integration to system integration) to bring
out the economic naivety even of his preferred recognition model.65
Still, the recognition model, in both its esteem-based formulation
focusing on the principle of achievement and its respect-based variation focusing on the normative presuppositions of exchange, presents
an alternative to both the instrumental and the expressive normative
models of work. The advantage it shares with the expressive model
over the instrumental model is that it can address concerns about the
degradation of work, or the lack of availability of meaningful work,
which is an important element in the current malaise around work.
Itcan do this by appeal to the norm of mutual respect that forms the
moral basis of the market-mediated exchange of services. But because
it takes the normative content of work to reside in the normative conditions of the exchange of labour, rather than the activity of working
itself, it does not have the resources that are available to the expressivist
model for supporting normative criticism of the quality of work. This
kind of criticism can hardly be divorced from expressivist insights
about the intrinsic value of working activity that allows for the expression of a subjects practical intelligence in a context of cooperation.
These insights are quite compatible with the idea that work is also an
instrumental good, and that it is instrumental in bringing about intrinsic goods that have little to do with work. Indeed, I have suggested that
this is just the conceptual framework we need for making sense of
worries about the work-life imbalance. The reminder that work is not
the only good, and that it actually needs to be brought in balance with
other goods, serves as a warning against a hyper-expressivism that
would reduce the good human life to working life. This is the nightmare that propels radical instrumentalism about work, but we can
reject it without embracing the idea that the normative content of work
is exhausted by mean-ends rationality.66
ibid, pp. 236237.

Earlier drafts of this chapter were presented at the Recognition and Work con
ference at Macquarie University in 2007, the Philosophy and the Social Sciences
conference in Prague, and seminars at University College Dublin, the University of
Wales in Newport, and the University of Exeter. My thanks go to everyone who gave
me valuable feedback on these occasions.
65
66
PART THREE
WORK AND SUBJECTIVITY: TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHICAL

ANTHROPOLOGY
Chapter eight
From the Psychopathology to the

Psychodynamics of Work
Christophe Dejours
Introduction
This essay was originally published to explain the theoretical bases of
the psychodynamic analysis of work. The use of this specific designation aimed at obtaining the scientific communitys recognition of the
legitimacy and originality of a new discipline within the work sciences.
Stemming from research on the mental pathologies related to work,
the psychodynamics of work constitutes a wider field of investigation
and research than the psychopathology of work which emerged in
France in the 1950s. The broadening of the question has undoubtedly
resulted from interdisciplinary comparisons within clinical approaches
to suffering, as well as in the social sciences. This comparative effort,
organised with support from the French CNRS (National Centre for
Scientific Research), took the form of a seminar entitled Plaisir et
souffrance dans le travail (Seminaire interdisciplinaire de pathologie de
travail) (Pleasure and suffering in work [Interdisciplinary seminar on
the pathology of work]), which took place in Paris between 1986 and
1988. The papers from this seminar have had a lasting impact, as demonstrated by the number of times they have been reprinted over the
past twenty years.
The text which follows was published for the first time in 1993 as an
addendum to the second edition of an essay on the psychopathology of
work (Travail: usure mentale [Work: Mental wear and tear], first
edition 1980). As such, it explains the reasons behind the change in
designation proposed for this theoretical school and sketches out a
new conceptualisation of the work collective and cooperation around
the central idea of activit dontologique (deontic activity). But it also
suggests that there is no possibility of cooperation without the mobilisation of the workers desire and determination, both of which are
closely linked with a psychodynamics of recognition. It should be
210
christophe dejours
noted, however, that the problematic of recognition as addressed

here was developed without reference to Axel Honneths The Struggle
for Recognition,1 which was not yet known in France, and it is distinguished from Honneths approach in that it deals with the workers
contribution to the organisation of work. The recognition in question
bears exclusively on the quality of the work and its usefulness: in other
words, not on who the worker is but on what he or she does. The effects
of such recognition on identity and mental health can be quite strong.
But they are indirect. Conversely, the lack of recognition can have
extremely deleterious effects on mental health; in the text which follows, these are analysed under the heading of alienation.
This essay has provided a programmatic basis for many subsequent
studies which increasingly demonstrate the importance of the role
work plays in the individuals mental health but also in the reproduction and evolution of the social relations of gender and the evolution of
society as a whole. These studies have led to the thesis of the centrality
of work, a subject which cannot be addressed here but which was
already implicit in the text which follows.
The Psychopathology of Work in Retrospect
The psychopathology of work is the name given to a discipline inaugurated in the 1950s and 1960s by authors including (to cite the most
prominent) Louis Le Guillant, Claude Veil, Paul Sivadon, Adolfo
Fernandez-Zola and Jean Begoin. In spite of certain theoretical hesitations, quite understandable in such a formative period, the clinical
monographs published at that time referred, either implicitly or explicitly, to a causal model (which they criticised, moreover, but without
managing to escape it completely): the constraints of work could, it
was postulated, provoke psychopathological ailments. Aetiological
research on the causes and mechanisms saw work, notably industrial
work, above all as a socially generated hardship, which was harmful to
the workers mental health. Clinical research was divided between
identifying syndromes or clear cases of mental illnesses. The model
provided by occupational pathology (studied by occupational medicine and industrial toxicology) exerted a powerful influence.
1
See A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge,
Polity, 1995.
psychopathology to the psychodynamics of work211
Our own research in the 1970s, which led to the publication of

Travail: usure mentale, belonged to that tradition and benefited from
its legacy. In our understanding of the psychic relationship to work, the
organisation of work, a key concept, was conceived of as a fact, an element existing prior to the encounter between the individual and work,
a group of massive, monolithic constraints, unwavering if not inevitable and endowed with the heaviness and rigidity of mineral matter.
It is true that we were faced with the tremendous power of Fordism
and did not dare to imagine that alternatives to Taylorism could be less
rigid (in spite of early warning signs in the analysis of the process
industries). This vision of the organisation of work, as frozen as the
industrial technology plants of the time, was later to be considerably
modified, as we shall see below.
In opposition to this model of work organisation, presented as a
physical fact, we proposed one incorporating human attitudes and
behaviours, an analysis which diverged greatly from the causal psychopathological model: the workers were not passive in the face of organisational constraints; they were capable of protecting themselves from
the harmful effects on mental health and warding off the natural outcome represented by the spectre of mental illness. They suffered, but
their freedom could be exercised in the construction of individual
defence strategies (for example, repression of instincts in repetitive
tasks under time constraints) or collective defence strategies (for example, the collective defences of construction workers).2 This clinical
investigation of defensive strategies drew on the psychoanalytical
model of psychic functioning, whose economy we had managed to
interpolate between the organisation of work (as cause) and mental
illness (as effect). This was not withouttheoretical obstacles, moreover,
and if these have not been completely eliminated since then, they have
been largely overcome. While workers freedom found a place opposite
the weighty technical-organisational constraints, in the conception of
2
The major part of the initial 1980 essay was devoted to the description of the
defence strategies which workers develop to contain suffering and its effects on health,
on the one hand, and the decline in production quality on the other. Following
the publication of this work, the focus of clinical investigation shifted from mental
illnesses to research on the defence strategies. These strategies are much more specific
to the work situation and its particular constraints than mental illnesses in the strict
sense, given that the symptomatic form of the latter depends more on each workers
individual psychic structure than on the characteristics of the concrete situation
involved in psychopathological decompensation.
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christophe dejours
that time, it was l imited to inventing the means of adapting to concrete

situations. As subtle and intelligent as that freedom was, it could not
eliminate the enormous risk of alienation which was looming over a
non-too-distant horizon (in spite of yet another case of contradictory
but consistent signs, such as the production of tricks of the trade as
defensiveor offensive?strategies against fear observed in the process industries). In any case, from the time of that first phase in the
development of the psychopathology of work, we had abandoned the
idea of focusing our research on mental illnesses and turned instead to
suffering and defences against suffering, which is to say, looking at
what underlies decompensated mental illness.
In this way, without completely measuring its importance, we had
accomplished a theoretical reversal which now appears to be the very
foundation of the nascent discipline. We admitted the impasses and
failures of research on the mental pathology of work. We recognised
that most workers succeeded in warding off madness, in spite of the
pernicious constraints of work organisation. We thus turned to the
defensive strategies. And at the same time, what emerged as the central
enigma of the investigation and analysis was normality3: the normality which appeared from the outset as an unstable, inherently precarious balance between suffering and defences against suffering; but
which also appeared to be resulting from strategies which were both
complex and rigorous, and thus not as a mechanical consequence of an
accumulation of actions and reactions, stimuli or responses, but as
fundamentally intentional.
Making the field of normality into an enigma open to the freedom
of the agents will4 meant simultaneously breaking with the models
stemming from Behaviourism, Pavlovian psychology and theories
of stress. It also, and above all, meant conceiving normality as the
product of a human dynamics where intersubjective relationships
(for constructing defensive, if not offensive strategies against suffering)
are central. And it meant asserting, tacitly at first and then explicitly,
the principle of a subjective rationality of workers behaviours and
actions.
3
See C. Dejours, Chapter 1, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail,
Editions de lAOCIP, 1988, Vol. I.
4
See H. Frankfurt, Freedom of the will and the concept of a person, The Journal
of Philosophy, Vol. 68, 1971, pp. 520.
By taking normality as its subject, the psychodynamic analysis of

work opens wider perspectives which, as we shall see, no longer concern only suffering in work but also pleasure, no longer only the person but work as well, no longer only the organisation of work but the
work situations in the detail of their internal dynamics. The psychodynamics of work can no longer be considered one area of specialisation
among others. Does it attain an anthropological dimension capable of
reorganising the field of knowledge? Does it deploy methods of action
capable of shaking up the conventional practices of intervention in the
world of work?
As long as work organisation was seen as a fixed block, the analyses
produced by the psychopathology of work were condemned to remain
useless in terms of practical intervention to promote mental health at
work. Worse, they might sometimes be seen as harmful insofar as they
brought to light a tragic situation which might better have been kept
hidden. Disclosing it might have distressing, discouraging or demobilising effects which would only aggravate the suffering and ultimately
amount to twisting the knife in the wound.
The replies we could make to these objections were the following:
The truth is what counts: refusing access to the truth of the tragedy
experienced also means precluding any possibility of subsequent
action and contributing to the reinforcement of the suffering by
imprisoning it behind a veil of ignorance.
The psychopathology of work is above all an analytical (and not only
speculative) discipline, which is to say, one which produces intelligibility about human behaviours in work situations and is thus capable of demonstrating the rationality of such behaviours, even when
they seem to be the most absurd, illogical or paradoxical.
This intelligibility is brought out not only for scholars or managers;
it is also useful, potentially at least, for the workers, whose behaviours have a legitimacy which often escapes them because their
intelligence and the rationality of their actions may be in advance of
their consciousness of them, because of the very effectiveness of
their defensive strategies. Indeed, the practical aim of these strategies is to minimise suffering, but not to heal it. As a result, they often
act as a brake on reappropriation, emancipation and change.
The psychopathology of work also intends to explain the meaning
of human behaviours. But its mission is not to propose actions.
It limits itself to performing the analytical work and refers the
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christophe dejours
question of action back to the workers themselves, who have sole

authority over deliberations, choices and decisions. The psychopathology of work adopts a position which is analogous to that of psychoanalysis. The psychoanalysts work consists of drawing out the
meaning of subjective situations, but acting on reality depends on
the patients will, and the psychoanalyst should abstain from giving
any advice about that reality. This psychoanalytic position is problematic, however. Abstention can sometimes also be an admission of
powerlessness and thus goes beyond the saying that the cure is
something extra. Making change depend on the patients will means
neglecting the fact that many patients see an analyst precisely
because their will is in a sorry state. Even though they understand
the logic of their subjective situation, they are incapable of acting or
putting an end to the repetition. Whether we invoke resistance, negative therapeutic reaction or failure syndrome, there remains a trace
of dissatisfaction. And as we know, the psychoanalytical drift
towards a purely speculative analysis, devoid of any impure therapeutic intent, has spread widely, notably in France. For our part, we
refused to accept that conception of psychoanalysis and recognised
the psychopathology of works powerlessness with regard to action
as a grave limitation, or even an aporia, with the additional fear that
the lack of power over reality would inevitably lead to the disciplines
practical and therefore theoretical failure. Since then, however, the
advances made with the psychodynamic analysis of work have provided a way out of the impasse.
The psychopathology of work thus leads to the idea that the organisation of work raises a series of human problems which cannot be
reduced to questions of power. Changing the power structure in the
company would not resolve the issue of suffering and would only
lead to shifting responsibilities from one hand to another. The complexity and rationality of defensive strategies against suffering in
work cannot, in our view, be reduced to participants strategies as
these are conceptualised by organisation theory.
A minimum objective relative to the preceding objections (but one
which is maximum relative to the research effort) would consist of
obtaining recognition of the psychopathology of work as a fundamental science producing knowledge and theories in the same way
as anthropology, sociology, ethnology or even history. And it was on
this basis that the investigations and debates continued for several
years.
Twelve years later, the situation has considerably evolved. The psychopathology of work has become an original practice, in the full sense of
the word, namely as a means of intervention in work organisation
which is subject to strict methodological and ethical rules and based
on practical reasoning. The psychodynamics of work is first of all a
praxis.5 But it is not only a mode of intervention in the field; it has continued to be a knowledge-producing discipline. The 1980 essay on the
psychopathology of work was primarily centred on clinical investigation and deliberately left aside the enormous theoretical problems
which the latter raised. Giving form to this clinical experience first
implied significant theoretical breaks: with medicine, with psychiatry,
with psychoanalysis, ergonomics and the traditional psychology of
work (essentially tied to experimental psychology). But the shape of
the theoretical reconstruction was not yet fully conceivable.
What has remained from these breaks is the originality of an
approach situated outside the paradigm of the applied sciences and
this originality has consistently been confirmed ever since. The psychopathology of work was no longer an applied psychology, nor was it
a psychiatry applied to the world of work like that of Sivadon and
Amiel,6 much less a psychoanalysis applied to work situations like certain movements in psycho-sociology.
Does this mean that the investigation was totally nave and
untouched by any intellectual heritage? This was certainly not the case.
We definitely drew on the other theoretical corpuses but used them in
an essentially critical way, namely by seeking to give form to the empirical matter which, precisely, resisted interpretation by means of existing knowledge. In other words, we were trying to capture part of reality,
of what resists the heuristic power of available scientific corpuses.
And this was no longer with the intention of resolving reality in algorithms, which would be a vain effort, but in hope of bringing out an
intelligibility of work situations which would take into account the
irreductibility of that reality. Probably because it has survived that
tumultuous phase, the psychopathology of work, in the new form of
the psychodynamics of work, can now assert the primacy of research
For our use of the terms practice, praxis, practical reason, and practical wisdom,
see P. Ladriere, La sagesse pratique, Raisons Pratiques, Vol. 1, Paris, Editions de
lE.H.E.S.S., 1990, pp. 1538.
6
See P. Sivadon and R. Amiel, Psychopathologie du travail, Paris, Editions Sociales
Franaises, 1969.
5
216
christophe dejours
in the field. Conceptualisation begins in the field, with the tragedy,

the life experience; it originates in praxis and, for its very development,
strives to respect the basic lesson it draws from the clinical experience:
intelligence and ingenuity in action are ahead of the agents consciousness of them. Similarly, in the psychodynamic analysis of work, we
insist on trusting the intelligence of practice and subordinate conceptual elaboration to the primacy of praxis.7 This approach places the
psychodynamics of work within the tradition of the interpretative
sociology initiated by the Dilthey-Durkheim debate, with specific
methodological modifications and a relationship between the empirical and the theoretical which we group together under the term epistemology of the field to designate an upwards intellectual dynamics
which opposes the downwards dynamics of the applied sciences in
every respect.
The evolution of the psychopathology of work towards the psychodynamics of work is based on an essential discovery which, once
again, is nothing other than a recognition of the reality of concretesituations, namely that the relationship between the organisation of work
and the human being is not static, but rather, perpetually changing.
Otherwise stated, the apparent stability of this relationship depends on
an equilibrium open to evolution and transformationsa dynamic
equilibrium, one which constantly evolves. When this dynamics is
impeded or blocked, as sometimes happens, the situation may, contrary to what we initially believed, be considered extra-ordinary.
Experience also shows that such a blockage may be lasting. It then
leads to inefficiency in terms of production, and sooner or later results
in a crisis (that is, a break in stability).8 It is especially in such situations
that researchers in the psychodynamics of work are asked to intervene
in the field.
The organisation of work thus reveals itself to be less monolithic
than we thought. Its development can in part be freed from the systemic logic in which the apocalyptic analyses of technology9 have
7
C. Dejours, Intelligence ouvrire et organisation du travail, in ed. H. Hirata
Autour du modle Japonais production. Automatisation, nouvelles formes dorganisation
et de relations de travail, Paris, LHarmattan, 1993.
8
See C. Dejours, Contributions of the psychodynamic analysis of work situations to the study of organizational crises, Industrial and Environmental Crisis
Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1993, pp. 7789.
9
See D. Bourg, Lapproche philosophique de la technique et les discours
apocalyptiques modernes, Cahiers du MIRS-CNRS, Editions du CNAM, Vol. 1, 1990,
pp. 83109.
seemingly imprisoned it. It cannot escape completely from systemic

constraints, yet its development may also be subject to principles that
rely on practical wisdom and rational action. In order for this ideal
to be formulated, it is still necessary to have access to a rigorous analysis of the processes underlying the dynamics of the work situations.
How did such a modification of the viewpoint on action in the psychodynamic analysis of work come about? This is what we are going to
examine.
Before reviewing the stages of the debate, as seen from the inside
(that is, from the standpoint of the researchers involved), a few reservations should probably be expressed. The very evolution of scientific
debate depends on dynamics whose mechanisms partly escape the
researchers themselves. As with other workers, researchers can also
manifest intelligence (in the sense of the ability to understand) before
they are actually conscious of it.
But the discussion also shifted its focus because of outside forces.
These would include the emergence of new production techniques as
well as major social and political changes which in turn promoted the
recognition of certain schools of thought until then seen as obscure
and cut off from reality, such as the sociology of ethics.10 These factors
also presided over the choice of new fields of empirical investigation,
new areas of research which became the prerequisites for comparative
analyses. In other words, the various stages of the scientific discussion
were not just the result of greater perceptiveness or wisdom on the part
of the researchers but also an imposed displacement of the centre of
gravity of their debates.
A Fresh Look at the Organisation of Work
From the outset, the psychopathology of work of the 1970s developed
within a double dialogue: with the health sciences (through psychoanalysis), on the one hand, and with the work sciences (through ergonomics) on the other. The research which led to the 1980 essay got
underway around 1976 in the ergonomics laboratory at the National
Conservatory of Arts and Engineering (CNAM) under the direction of
Alain Wisner. Among those participating in the discussions were
10
See F.-A. Isambert, Le dsenchentement du monde. Non-sens ou renouveau du
sens, Archives des Sciences sociales de religions, Vol. 61, 1986, pp. 83103.
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christophe dejours
Wisner and Dominique Dessors for ergonomics, Alexandre Dornot,

who defended the behaviourist approach, John Kalsbeek, who drew on
experimental psychology and his experiments with the single channel,
and Bernard Doray, who had already produced major studies in the
area of the psychology of work.11
The debate with ergonomics has continued without interruption
ever since.12 At the time, the ergonomists had come out with a fundamental discovery: the existence of an unbridgeable gap between the
prescriptive task and the actual work activity.13 This gap, apparent
in even the most fragmented tasks, those considered tasks of strict
execution, must be distinguished from the more familiar one, advanced
by the sociologists, between formal and informal organisation. The
latter, in fact, emphasises the constraint-independence dichotomy, in
the context of the social agents strategies within organisations and
institutions. The analysis is essentially focused on power relationships.
Work as such does not appear as anything other than a pretext (or
lever) for the agents strategies.
In the distinction made by the ergonomists, however, the contradiction no longer lies solely in the power relationships; it appears at the
very level of technique. Whether in the operating procedures, the order
of the gestures, the involvement of the bodies or the processes of exploration and information-gathering, technique is full of contradictions.
11
See J. Kalsbeek, Etude de la surcharge informatique sur le comportement et ltat
motionnel, in C. Dejours, C. Veil and A. Wisner, Psychopathologie du travail, Paris,
Entreprise moderne ddition, 1985, pp. 167173; P. Doray, Quelques aspects historiques, sociaux et scientifiques du mouvement dit de lorganisation scientifique du travail,
considr en particulier dans ses rapports avec la physiologie du travail, Thse Facult de
Mdecine, Paris, 1975.
12
See A. Wisner, Ergonomie et psychopathologie du travail, Prvenir, Vol. 20,
1990, pp. 6573; D. Dessors and A. Laville, La signification du discours ouvrier.
Ergonomie et psychopathologie du travail : incompatibilit ou complmentarit?,
in C. Dejours, C. Veil and A. Wisner, Psychopathologie du travail, Paris, Entreprise
moderne ddition, 1985, pp. 5863; F. Daniellou, Le statut de la pratique et des connaissances dans lintervention ergonomique de conception, Texte dhabilitation
diriger des recherches, Universit Toulouse/Le Mirail, 1992; Y. Clot, Le travail entre
activit et subjectivit, Thse de philosophie Universit de Provence, 2 volumes, 1992.
13
See A. Laville and J. Duraffourg, Consquences du travail rptitif sous cadence sur
la sant des travailleurs et les accidents, Rapport N 29 du Laboratoire de Physiologie
du travail et ergonomie, CNAM, Paris, 1973. The interdisciplinary work which had as
its offshoot the psychodynamics of work in fact stemmed from the confrontation
between, on the one hand, the clinical experience of this gap and what its management implied in terms of intelligence in work as seen by the ergonomists, and, on the
other, the clinical experience of the subjective relationship to work as seen by the psychoanalysts and psychiatrists.
With ergonomics, the perfect organisation of technique and the

harmony between science and technique are over and done with.
Down to the last detail of its concrete practice, technique is the arena
of a struggle between order and disorder. And the possibility of catching this contradiction even in the secret hideout of real work activity
(which presumes a complex, sophisticated methodology)14 had considerable consequences for the subsequent practice of the ergonomic
intervention.
The psychodynamic analysis of work situations would, in turn, identify a specific dimension of the gap between prescription and reality,
namely that:
Work organisation is not strictly endured by the workers all instructions are reinterpreted and reconstructed: the real work organisation is
not the one which is dictated. This is never the case: it is impossible to
foresee everything and master everything (in advance where work is
concerned). But the distance between prescription and reality does not
always lead to the same outcome: either it is tolerated and provides creative margins of freedom or it is hunted down and the workers are afraid
of being caught red-handed. Most often, it is both at the same time: tolerated where the gain is visible, hunted down where it is interpreted as a
sign of disobedience and fraud.15
In the investigations carried out since 1980, the organisation of work

often turns out to be highly problematic. In the initial essay, we insisted
on the ignorance weighing on techno-scientific mastery in relation to
procedures in the chemical industry. In spite of considerable personal
reservations, we were forced to admit that this situation is in fact not
exceptional. It can also be found, for example, in the case of maintenance in the nuclear industry16 or in hospital work or among railway
conductors and thus in high-tech industries as well as in industries
involving serious potential risks for personal safety and security.
But unlike what we had learned in the chemical industry, where
management tacitly recognised the contradictions and flaws in tech
nical mastery, we had to admit that at present, in a large number of
Compare F. Daniellou, D. Dessors and C. Teiger, Formation lanalyse de
lactivit et rapport au travail, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail,
Editions de lAOCIP, Vol.1, 1988, pp. 7794.
15
Cited from D. Dessors and J. Schram, Le travail social. La peur au cur,
Informations Sociales, Vol. 24, 1992, pp. 8090.
16
See C. Dejours and C. Jayet, Psychopathologie du travail et organisation relle
du travail dans une industrie de process, Rapport Ministre de la Recherche et de la
Technologie, Vol. 1, Rono, 1991.
14
220
christophe dejours
situations, the flaws in technique and knowledge are obstinately denied

by many company heads.17 This denial considerably adds to the workers difficulties in their everyday activity but it also serves to legitimise
innovations in the area of structural changes in management and
administration, with serious consequences not only for production
quality and security but also for the agents mental health.18 After many
investigations in the field, it turns out that beyond the contradiction
between prescriptive and real work organisation, the former is itself
full of contradictions. Indeed, each incident or accident leads to the
drafting of new instructions or regulations, which are added to the
sum of the preceding ones. With the result that over time, the laws,
regulations, rules and instructions become more and more complicated and inevitably more and more contradictory. For anyone who
intends to respect all the instructions, it becomes impossible to work.
The very orders which are supposed to organise work sometimes wind
up disorganising it! This is something many line managers recognise
(often in off-the-record conversations but rarely in public ones).
Developing real work organisation thus implies departing from the
letter of the orders and opting for interpretations. Indeed, the bulk of
the problems subject to the psychodynamic analysis of the work situations arise precisely from the ignorance and sometimes the denial of
the concrete difficulties which the workers face because of the insurmountable imperfection of the work organisation.
How then can the adaptation between prescriptive and real work
organisation be made? And at what cost?
The real organisation of work is ultimately a compromise. But this
compromise cannot be worked out solely on the basis of technical
arguments (which would be quite simple to establish). To the extent
that interpretation is called for as well, there are inevitably many possible interpretations and thus a conflict of interpretations among the
agents. Building a compromise entails an interplay between labour and
management. Real work organisation is a product of social relations.
Butand this point is crucialthe stakes of the discussion cannot
be reduced to power relations. What is at issue in the social relations
17
See C. Dejours, Pathologie de la communication, situations de travail et espace
public: le cas du nuclaire, Raisons Pratiques, Vol. 3, Paris, Editions de lEcole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1992, pp.177201.
18
See Dejours and Jayet, Psychopathologie du travail et organisation relle du
travail dans une industrie de process.
ofwork is the elaboration of the activity (real procedures). Although

they are essential, the social dynamics, as we shall see, do not exhaust
the local dynamics of the work situation. We are far from the initial
vision of work organisation as a monolithic, static block.
Should we make a distinction between the ergonomists analysis
of activity and that of work organisation proper to the psychodynamics of work? The answer is yes, especially in relation to human
factors and cognitive ergonomics (notably the ergonomics of computer programmes and interfaces), which remain strictly at the level of
activity in order to rationalise tasks or retrieve and automate knowhow in the context of a single type of rationality: the teleological one.
The psychodynamic analysis of work, meanwhile, is interested in the
intersubjective processes which enable the subjects social management
of the interpretations of the work (thus generating new know-how,
procedures and activities) and bring out the conflicts between teleological and subjective rationality.
A New Definition of Work
This considerably modified approach to the organisation of work led
the psychodynamics of work to identify dimensions of work which
had generally been underestimated and to propose a new definition of
work itself: Work is the activity men and women carry out in order to
confront what is not already provided for by the prescriptive work
organisation.19
The Mechanical and the Human in Work
This definition brings out the fact that work cannot be reduced to its
social dimensions: the social relations surrounding it, relations
between the workers, or power relations. The prescriptive is never sufficient. When it is made so today, it becomes dehumanised, automated,
and mechanical, as was the case in the first phase of industrial development when machines replaced a number of handling activities. Robots
may displace human beings within the field of work. But each new
19
See P. Davezies, Elments pour une clarification des fondements pistmologiques dune science du travail, Communication at the French Society of
Psychology National Colloquium, 6 December 1991.
222
christophe dejours
automation brings out unpredictable, non-standardised new problems, requiring the development of new know-how, as Boehle and
Milkau have clearly demonstrated in the case of the new technologies.20 Automation inevitably generates new challenges to the activity.
In other words, a fresh look at work organisation leads to refuting
the traditional division between conception and execution. All
workinvolves conception. The resulting definition of work therefore
stressesits human dimension. Work is human by definition because it
is called upon precisely where the mechanical-technological order is
insufficient.
Creativity and Work
From this same point of view, work is the creation of what is new,
unprecedented. Adapting prescriptive work organisation requires
bringing into play initiative, inventiveness, creativity and specific
forms of intelligence close to what common sense would call ingenuity.
Boehle and Milhau speak of subjectivising activity (subjektivierendes
Handeln) to characterise this intelligence which is deployed specifically in the field of practice.21 We would speak of worker intelligence
or practical intelligence, not to say that it is proper to workers and
would only be exercised in manual tasks, but to indicate that it appears
in its purest, most typical form among workers and in practice. Our
analyses show that worker intelligence is also indispensable in socalled intellectual or scientific tasks and even in theoretical work in the
strict sense. The analysis of the specific form of intelligence required by
problems stemming from activity is closely tied to the metis (cunning
intelligence) of the Greeks described by Dtienne and Vernant,22 as
distinguished from the application (execution) of instructions, which
has more to do with themis (or what Boehle and Milkau call objectifying activities). That said, the exercise of practical intelligence raises
problems concerning the way the social, psychic and cognitive requisites of its functioning come together, an issue which has only been
sketched out so far and largely remains to be explained.
20
See F. Bhle and B. Milkau, Vom Handrad zum Bildschirm. Munich, Campus,
1991.
21
ibid.
22
See M. Detienne and J. -P. Vernant, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and
Society, Chicago University Press, 1991.

Coordination and Work
Above all, the discoveries, clever interpretations, innovations stemming from interpretations of the prescribed organisation, and the
experimentations and singular experiences of work, all have to be
coordinated. Otherwise, there is a major risk of disorder and misunderstanding among agents, which ruin the potential advantages of
worker intelligence in terms of production quality or plant safety. But
beyond coordination, there remains perhaps the most important problem of all: cooperation.
Cooperation and Work
Cooperation represents an additional level in the complexity and integration of work organisation. Unlike coordination, it entails not simply
the logical and cognitive conditions for a successful linking up of individual activities but the will of the persons involved to work together
and to collectively overcome the contradictions arising from the
organisation of work.
As a consequence of the primordial gap between prescription and
reality, cooperation is inherently impossible to define beforehand.
The form cooperation should take cannot be determined in advance.
And because the content of cooperation escapes any a priori definition, it cannot be ordered either. Cooperation depends, moreover,
on the subjects freedom and the forging of a common will. For this
reason, any attempt to dictate it results in a paradoxical command.
In the absence of cooperation, the situation is equivalent to what we
observe in work-to-rule, in other words, bringing production to a halt.
Research in the psychodynamics of work has specifically dedicated
itself to the analysis of this difficult question, which is decisive for both
the efficiency of work and the economy of suffering and pleasure
in work.
Trust and Work
Above all, cooperation requires relationships of trust between subjectstrust in colleagues, subordinates, as well as company heads
and managers. But this is not self-evident. Trust is often lacking, and
even when it exists, it remains fragile. In a world of work where the
224
christophe dejours
very idea of trust generates bemused, if not ironic reactions, assertingthat it is an essential dimension of work, quality, safety and securitymay seem like a utopian dream. Our investigations demonstrate,
however, that the need for trust is not a fantasy. Without trust, we
are faced with distrust and suspicion. Bluntly stated, trust is a battle.
Real work organisation cannot be neutral where trust is concerned:
trust or distrust, cooperation or disorderthese are the alternatives.
The mechanisms of trust have thus gradually become a major issue,
both empirically and theoretically. Analysing these mechanisms has
caused us great difficulties. It now seems possible to conclude that trust
is not a feeling and that it is not of a psycho-affective nature. It stems
mainly from deontic activity, which is to say, the elaboration of agreements, standards and rules framing the way work is performed.
Explaining the mechanisms of trust in work relationships helps us to
understand what the rules of work or the rules of the trade consist
of and how they are constructed and stabilised.23
Thus, the adaptation of work organisation entails the creation of
ethical conditions. This essential dimension introduces into the ordinary management of work organisation a part which goes beyond
technique. Work depends not just on techne, or even poiesis. It also
depends on praxis.24
Subjective Mobilisation and Work
Beyond the coordination of each subjects individual contributions to
the building of work organisation and beyond the ethical or even political conditions underlying the construction of relationships of trust
between workers, cooperation only becomes real if the latter have the
desire to cooperate (orexis). What are the conditions which bring people into the dynamics of the construction and development of work
organisation? The psychodynamic analysis of work has made progress
on this last point in recent years. The findings may be briefly summed
up as follows.
23
See D. Cru, Les rgles de mtier, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le
travail, Editions de lAOCIP, Vol. I, 1988, pp. 2950.
24
See Dejours, Pathologie de la communication, situations de travail et espace
public: le cas du nuclaire.
Subjective mobilisation in face of the challenge of work organisation

presumes:
Efforts of intelligence.
Efforts of elaboration in order to develop opinions concerning the
best way of arbitrating contradictions and settling problems of work
organisation (which are based on personal experiences of work,
interpretations of the prescriptive work organisation, each persons
individual values, moral obligations with regard to the others and to
preferences and tastes depending on personality).
Efforts to get involved in the exchange of opinions in the discussion
which should precede or accompany choices or decisions about the
organisation of work. This activity of discussion is sometimes institutionalised in the form of staff meetings, for example, in hospital
or social work or among executive management, and so on. Noninstitutionalised forms often occur in spaces supposedly reserved
for socialising and considered to be outside of work: meals, cafeteria,
breaks, changing rooms, etc.25 In other cases, there has been an
attempt to give this activity a standardised form inspired by the
Japanese model of the quality-control circle. The involvement in
and commitment to such a space of discussion constitute specific
forms of work and thus entail risks and efforts. Otherwise stated,
cooperation entails a mobilisation which should be considered as
the workers specific, irreplaceable contribution to the conception,
adaptation and management of work organisation. And this contribution depends on each subjects own desire. We have already indicated that such a mobilisation cannot be dictated. It is possible, as
todays company management models show, to formulate calls for
mobilisation or generate individual commitments with the help of
company cultures or exotic training courses (e.g., bungee jumping
or walking on burning coals). All the experiments in Human
Resources Management are specifically aimed at getting around the
impossibility of dictating cooperation.
Our investigations lead us to conclude, however, not only that it is
impossible to order the psychic mobilisation required for cooperation
25
See Dejours and Jayet, Psychopathologie du travail et organisation relle du travail dans une industrie de process.
226
christophe dejours
but that this is largely a useless consideration. The problem is exactly

the opposite: knowing how to proceed so as not to destroy the mobilisation of intelligence and personalities. In most cases where the subjects are in good health, subjective mobilisation in fact turns out to be
quite powerful. It is as if such subjects, faced with the organisation of
work, could not help putting the resources of their intelligence and
personality into action. And the reasons behind this can easily be
explained by clinical investigation and theoretical analysis.
But however spontaneous this subjective mobilisation might be, it
is extremely fragile. It depends on the dynamics between contribution
and recompense: in return for their contribution to work organisation,
the subjects expect recompense. And even before any recompense in
the strict sense, sometimes they just expect that their initiatives and
their desire to make a contribution are not systematically blockedin
other words, that they are not merely seen as underlings condemned
to obedience and passivity. If they receive no recompense for their
efforts, they wind up being apathetic, for the most part reluctantly,
because of the grave consequences on their mental health (as we shall
see below).
Recognition and Work
What does this recompense consist of? The psychodynamic analysis
suggests that the recompense expected by the subject is essentially
symbolic in nature. Its specific form, which can easily be identified
through empirical studies, is recognition. This recognition has two
dimensions:
Acknowledgement, in the sense of the recognition of the reality constituted by the subjects contribution to the organisation of work.
This first aspect of recognition comes up against considerable resistance from superiors because it also implies the recognition of the
imperfection of science and technique, the flaws in the prescriptive
work organisation and the indispensable recourse to the workers
contributions in order to make the work process function. But it
faces another source of resistance as well: the imperfections inherent in work organisation sometimes generate fear among managers
and company heads, notably when the process implies major risks,
as in the nuclear industry. In such cases, the denial of workers contributions becomes part of a collective defence strategy aimed at
combating the suffering proper to managers in dangerous industries.26 The psychodynamic analysis of work has not only permitted
clinical investigation to bring out the specific forms of collective
defence strategies used by managers to fight their own suffering on
the job; it also permits the analysis of the dynamics of group-togroup relationships (managers and workers) when communication
is hindered or distorted by the intervention of defensive strategies
against the suffering of one group or another.27
Gratitude for the workers contribution to the organisation of work.
This second aspect of recognition is only granted sparingly in most
of the situations we have studied but it exists nonetheless.
The lack of recognition is one of the recurring themes in the world of
work. It is not a marginal demand but a key issue in the psychodynamics of cooperation. It is possible to analyse the intermediate links in the
dynamics of recognition but we cannot go into all the details here.
What follows are some of the main points.
Recognition entails the rigorous construction of judgements bearing
on the work carried out. These are made by specific agents who are
directly involved in the collective management of work organisation.
(As we shall see, such judgements presume the efficient functioning of
the work collectives, notably where peer judgements are concerned). It
is possible to distinguish between the different types of judgements
constituting recognition: the judgement of usefulness, made by someone else along a vertical line, namely superiors and subordinates, but
possibly by clients, and the judgement of beauty, made on a horizontal
level, by peers, colleagues, members of the team or the larger professional group.
These judgements all have one particular feature in common: the
fact that they bear on the work accomplished, in other words, on
the doing rather than the person. But recognition of the quality of the
work carried out can also concern personality in terms of a gain in
identity. To put it differently, the symbolic recompense conferred by
recognition may become meaningful in relation to subjective expectations of self-fulfilment. But the ontological sequence is capital here:
26
See C. Dejours, Travail et sant mentale : de lenqute laction, Prvenir,
Vol. 19, 1989, pp. 319.
27
See Dejours, Contributions of the psychodynamic analysis of work situations
to the study of organizational crises.
228
christophe dejours
recognition of doing first, gratification in terms of identity

subsequently.
Several remarks are called for here:
The relationships between subjective mobilisation of personality
and intelligence on the one hand and self-fulfilment on the other
necessarily entail mediation, namely the relationship to the reality
constituted by work.
The relationship between identity and work is mediated as well: by
the others, in their judgement of recognition.
In this way, a basic triangle emerges, that of the dynamics of identity
formulated by Franois Sigaut.28
REALITY
EGO
OTHERS
In the psychodynamics of work, this triangle takes a specific form:

WORK
SUFFERING
RECOGNITION
The symbolic recompense afforded by recognition results from

the production of meaning conferred on the work experience.
This grants meaning to the suffering in work: as we have seen, the
latter originates in and is consubstantial with every work situation,
insofar as it is above all a confrontation with systemic and technical
constraints.
See F. Sigaut, Folie, rel et technologie, Techniques et culture, Vol. 15, 1990,
pp. 167179. Republished in Travailler, Vol. 12, 2004, pp. 117130.
28
The construction of the meaning of work through recognition

which gratifies the subject relative to his or her expectations of selffulfilment (construction of identity in the social sphere) can transform suffering into pleasure. This transformation through the
mediation of work is the exact opposite of the dynamics of masochism (direct eroticisation of suffering).
The problematic of identity simultaneously acquires a basic role in
the psychodynamics of work, where it replaces the reference to personality which still dominated the psychopathology of work in the
1980 essay.
Referring to identity means touching the core, the very infrastructure of mental health. Every psychological decompensation presumes a vacillation in identity or an outright identity crisis. The
dynamics of the recognition of contributions to work organisation
thus automatically engages the problematics of mental health.
Regaining identity in the intersubjective dynamics of recognition in
work essentially involves self-fulfilment in the area of social relations. The psychodynamic analysis of work leads to the conclusion
that there is no direct link between the subject of the unconscious
and the social arena. Such a relationship is always mediated by the
reference to an action on reality which the work activity mobilises.
In this respect, the psychodynamics of work confirms its distinctiveness relative to social psychology, which usually seeks out a direct
relationship between subject and society by focusing on the analysis
of small groups.
Self-fulfilment in the social domain through the psychodynamics of
recognition constitutes one of the two aspects of identity-building,
along with that occurring in the erotic economy. This dynamics
of recognition may be related to that of sublimation in psycho
analysis.29
The regaining of identity in the social arena, mediated by the
workactivity, entails the dynamics of recognition. Such recognition
implies peer judgement, however, and this is only possible if there is
a collective or community of peers. Ultimately, the collective emerges
as both the key link and the trouble spot in the intersubjective
dynamics of identity in work (in the identity triangle, the others are
29
See C. Dejours, Note sur la notion de souffrance, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et
souffrance dans le travail, Editions de lAOCIP, Vol. 2,1988, pp. 115125.
230
christophe dejours
a collective structure). In the 1980 essay, there was no explicit reference to the concept of the collective. It was only accessible to us by
virtue of collective defence strategies. In fact, the contribution of
such defensive strategies to the construction of collectives still seems
quite important. But does that allow us to assume that the collective
is essentially the outcome of a defensive dynamic? This question was
raised by Nicolas Dodier in particular.30 Since then, and notably on
the basis of Damien Crus studies,31 we have been able to identify
other specific contributions to the constitution of the collectives
which, on the contrary, stem from processes oriented towards the
search for quality and pleasure in work.
The crucial role of work rules (along with defensive strategies, which
can also be analysed as defensive rules) subsequently led to assigning
a key role to professional ethics in the building of the collectives. Lastly,
the function of language (along with language practices) has emerged
as increasingly significant; it now figures among the main research
paths to be explored. Asserting the central role of the collective and
making it a forceful concept in the psychodynamic analysis of selffulfilment, however, also means taking into account its unstable, perpetually incomplete nature as an inherent difficulty in the regaining of
identity in work.
This summary of the dynamics of recognition in work situations
suggests that cooperation is inseparable from the economics of identity and mental health in work. As already stated, the subjective mobilisation necessary for the ordinary management of work organisation
cannot be dictated. And it is useless to dictate it because it is generated
spontaneously by expectations of self-fulfilment. The practical problem confronting us is just the opposite. Most subjects in good health
hope to have the opportunity to build their identities in the social
sphere through work. This hope is so great that it gives rise, in ethical
terms, to the demand for a right to contributeto contribute to responsibilities for civic life,32 or in this case, responsibilities for the organisation of work. The practical problem, then, consists in not interrupting
See N. Dodier, La construction sociale des souffrances dans les activits quotidiennes de travail, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail, Paris, Editions
de lAOCIP Vol. 2, 1988, pp. 95114.
31
See Cru, Les rgles de mtier.
32
See P. Pharo, Politique et savoir vivre, Paris, LHarmattan, 1991.
30
the generic mobilisation of subjectivities, whether by attacking the

right to contribute or by inhibiting the dynamics of recognition.
If the dynamics of recognition is paralysed, suffering can no longer
be transformed into pleasure; it can no longer find meaning. In this
case, it can only build up and engage the subject in pathogenic dynamics ultimately leading to psychiatric or somatic decompensation. It is
possible, however, for defensive strategies (singled out from the very
beginnings of the psychopathology of work described in the 1980
essay) to intervene between suffering and illness. Thus the psychodynamic analysis of work complements the dynamic analysis of suffering
and defensive strategies with that of suffering and its transformation
into pleasure through recognition. Work goes hand in glove with suffering and recognition. In the absence of recognition, the subjects
embark on defensive strategies in order to avoid mental illness, and
this has serious consequences for work organisation, which, as several
studies have shown, then runs the risk of paralysis.33
Between recognition dynamics and defensive strategies against
suffering, work as a whole is sustained by the intersubjective relationships among the persons involved. Human behaviours of mobilisation,
demobilisation or defence are in no way the product of chance but
are organised under the primacy of what we came to characterise as
subjective rationality.
Work takes place first of all in the objective world, where it is subject
to the validating criteria of instrumental cognitive rationality: the area
of activity as such constitutes the most precise analytical level for
addressing the efficiency of the work in terms of production, productivity and quality objectives. We have seen that the contradictions
inherent in the organisation of work presuppose a space for discussion
structured like a public space and that the handling of the disparity
between prescription and reality is subject to agreements between
agents in the social sphere, namely axiological rationality. We can now
add that work not only takes place in the objective world and the social
sphere, but also in the subjective world (that of recognition). These
considerations and their subsequent development provide the basis
for the following hypothesis: in the management of any work situation,
33
See Dejours, Travail et sant mentale : de lenqute laction, and D. Dessors and
C. Jayet, Mthodologie et action en psychopathologie du travail (A propos de la souffrance des groupes de rinsertion mdico-sociale), Prvenir, Vol. 20, 1990, pp. 3143.
232
christophe dejours
it is more rational to take into account the subjective rationality of behaviours than to dismiss it in the name of teleological and axiological
rationalities.
Methodology and Action
Researchers and clinicians ask those specialising in the psychodynamics of work to explain the methodology of their investigations, whether
this involves the handling of proofs concerning the clinical data
invoked or the epistemological status of validation criteria. And it is
true that at the time the 1980 essay appeared, that methodology was
still vague. But it was elaborated in the years that followed, mainly in
response to pressure from the scientific community. In fact, it took
seven years to arrive at the first acceptable formulation, which was presented in the 1988 publication Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail
(Pleasure and suffering in work), bringing together material from the
interdisciplinary seminar on the psychodynamics of work mentioned
above. This methodology has since proven itself and for the most part,
does not seem to require major modifications. However, we shall highlight certain points which, after the fact, have turned out to be particularly difficult to handle and we shall also add several observations of a
more epistemological nature. In our view, the methodology of the psychodynamics of work is totally original. But instead of being a virtue,
this has turned out to be a problem, for theoretical and epistemological
discussion on the one hand, and its transmission to clinicians and
researchers on the other.
1. The first distinctive feature of this methodology is the absence
of questionnaires or interviews. The investigation depends above
all on the involvement of workers brought together in an ad hoc
collective. There is no individual interview. Nor are the researchersalone in facing the workers. They too always intervene as a collective, the investigation collectivea small groupwhich also
maintains functional ties with the larger collective now composed
of our laboratorys research team. This larger collective is constituted both as a resource and as a control collective, so named
in order to indicate that the confrontation between the investigation collective intervening in the field and the whole of the research
team aims at a broader analysis of the whole of the intervention
underway. Indeed, we shall see that the investigation is also an

action and that, as a result, it requires a specific space for collective
debate during the entire time it is being performed. This analytical
process operates within the debate, moreover, by bringing psychodynamic theory into play as a whole, even if this means calling it
into question.
Each investigation also changes all the researchers, those of the
investigation collective and of the control collective alike. The
methodology thus mobilises a collective of workers and a collective
of researchers. We are not yet able to explain why this setupfor all
of its unwieldiness, it must be recognisedis necessary. For the
time being, only two possibilities can be suggested:
For one thing, the investigation methodology is not a banal
means of observation or data collection. It is rather a specific
kind of work, in the sense we have already given to the concept of
work, based on open discussion between workers. Facts do not
exist in themselves; this is why they cannot be collected. They
have to be extracted from the discussion, to be constructed, and
this construction process must then be validated.34 But open discussion leads, here as in any work situation, to conflicting interpretations. And in order to be able to transfer the discussion
initiated in the field to the analytical work, the involvement of
several researchers proves indispensable.
For another, insofar as the reality of the clinical facts is not
given beforehand but proceeds from an intersubjective dynamics
mediated by language, it may be possible for the researchers collective intervention to replicate the structure of any ordinary
space for discussion in a real work situation (where space for
discussion is taken in the narrow sense of the concept, subject to
communicative rationality, as Habermas defines it).35 To the
extent that the investigation is also an action, it too requires specific ethical conditions, as with any action, namely the confrontation of the researchers opinions within a space open to debate.
The reason for this weighty methodological constraint, which
was imposed from the outset although we could not provide
See Dodier, La construction sociale des souffrances dans les activits quotidiennes de travail.
35
See J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. T. McCarthy,
Beacon Press, 1985, German Edition 1981. See also P. Ladriere and C. Gruson, Ethique
et gouvernabilit, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1992.
34
234
christophe dejours
arguments justifying it, has been suggested to us by Grard Mendel, who also called for work between collectives in the methodology he developed for socio-psychoanalysis.36 There, he stressed
the importance of introducing a rigorous economy of group-togroup relations into the socio-psychoanalytical intervention.
2. The second particularity of the investigations methodology results
from the originality of the facts to be constructed scientifically. We
already indicated that suffering, along with the principles controlling defensive strategies and the cooperation of individual contributions to work organisation, to some extent escaped both outsiders
and the subjects themselves. To put it more concisely, we can go
back to the idea that the agents intelligence is often ahead of their
consciousness of it. Intelligence has two meanings here: it designates a specific mode of exploring the work situation based on the
subjectivising experience of the work on the one hand, and the
understanding of that experience on the other, namely the elaboration of its intelligibility. The originality of the facts to be constructed
stems from the advance which the intelligence of the experience
enjoys over its intelligibility for the subject.37 The defensive strategies, which we have described elsewhere at great length, are another
source of difficulties with regard to the facts to be constructed insofar as they contribute to hiding the reality of the suffering and its
dynamic relationship with work. Hereand this second point is
capital in the methodologythe psychodynamic analysis of work
does not undertake scholarly interpretations based on the paradigm of applied sciences, even less that of expertise. Such an
approach, to borrow Alain Cottereaus excellent turn of phrase,
would have less to do with diagnosis in the strict sense than with
dia-gnosis.38 The meaning of the subjective experience of work
and suffering cannot be produced from the outside. The analysis of
the subjective dimension of work, or the objectification of subjectivity necessarily entails access to the meaning which the situation
See G. Mendel, La socit nest pas une famille, Paris, La Dcouverte, 1992.
On the concept of experience here, see the notion of subjectivising activity
in Y. Schwartz, Exprience et connaissance du travail, Paris, Editions Messidor, 1988;
and F. Bhle, and B. Milkau, Vom Handrad zum Bildschirm. Eine Untersuchung zur
sinnlichen Erfahrung im Arbeitsproze, Frankfort am Main, Campus, 1988.
38
See A. Cottereau, Plaisir et souffrance, justice et injustice sur les lieux de travail,
dans une perspective socio- historique, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le
travail, Editions de lAOCIP, Vol. 2, 1988, pp. 3782.
36
37
has for the subjects themselves. The objectification of experience

thus requires an introspective effort of collective working-through
spurred by the workers desire for re-appropriation and emancipation. Just as in the tradition of interpretive understanding the actors
are not seen as social imbeciles, in the psychodynamics of work,
the subjects are not held to be psychic imbeciles.39
Taking these two problems into consideration (the advance of
intelligence over intelligibility and defensive strategies) leads us to
define an unusual objective: collecting data which the researcher
cannot observe directly, of which subjects are not always
conscious.
3. Recourse to speech. In order to overcome this difficulty, there is no
choice but to turn to the workers own words: this is the only means
to access a reality which has not yet come into being. Provided,
however, that we recognise that in this situation words cannot simply function as a simple means of translating the subjective reality.
This could only be the case if all the facts to be collected were conscious, whereas speech functions as a means of bringing out the
intelligibility which is not yet conscious. This property of language
is related to the fact that speaking with someone is a very powerful
means of thinking, namely thinking through an experience which
is lived subjectively. Speech is the means of working-through, as
psychoanalysts have long demonstrated on the basis of Freuds
work. But this power of language is not automatic. It is possible to
speak without saying anything. Language acquires its power when
speech is addressed to others. There are thus specific intersubjective
conditions for making the power of language real. This is what linguists study under the name of pragmatics.40
But the pragmatic dimension of language is not our only methodological problem. It remains to clarify two key points: the question of the
authenticity of speech and the explanation of the intersubjective conditions that enable the construction of clinical facts and the elaboration
of the subjective experience.
See A. Coulon. Ethnomthodologie, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1987.

See J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words, Oxford University Press, 1962. On
the status and function of language in work see J. Boutet, La question de linterprtation
en linguistique, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail, Editions de
lAOCIP, Vol. I, 1988.
39
40
236
christophe dejours
The Authenticity of Speech
Suffering, as we have seen, is not directly accessible and its expression

through language comes up against the protective shield of defensive
strategies. But a second obstacle must also be taken into account:
the expression of the truth of real-life experience may compete with
the subjects strategic interests. Independent of defensive strategies, the
subjects may well have good reasons not to tell the truth, to hide it,
minimise it or, on the contrary, dramatise or even distort it in order to
serve interests of an instrumental or strategic nature. And this raises
the question of the truthfulness or authenticity of the speech addressed
to researchers.
This problem is of considerable importance with regard to the validity criteria applied to the findings of the clinical investigation. In an
attempt to get around it, the methodological principle used here is to
privilege the analysis of the request in the preliminary phase of the
investigation. In addition to the methodological reasons, there are
ethical ones making the principle of what we have termed working
on the request a central, if not decisive time of any psychodynamics of
work study. Indeed, as we shall see further on, the objectification of
the experience may well have major consequences on the relationship
to work and the collective management of work organisation, which is
to say, in terms of both the subjects future and the development of
social relations. These consequences will be assumed above all by the
subjects participating in the investigation. Thus, the researchers collective alone cannot assume the responsibility of taking such a risk
involving someone elses future. The risks and responsibilities must
first be known and willingly assumed by the subjects. This is what the
analysis of the request ensures, and once it is completed, what it guarantees. Conversely, experience shows that in the absence of a request,
we have access to neither the defensive strategies nor the suffering.
The main reason that some scientists contest the existence of the
defensive strategies we have identifiedand which they have not
found themselvesstems precisely from the fact that their entry into
the field is not backed up by the subjects own request. In this respect,
the psychodynamics of work approach might be compared to that of
ethnography and sociology.41
41
Compare commentaries on S. Bouchard, Du plaisir et de la souffrance
dtre truckeur, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail, Vol. 2, 1988,

The Request
But the request itself is not self-evident. Under what conditions can it
be considered sufficiently explicit to permit the beginning of the investigation? Does the request result from a spontaneous process or does it
have to be sought out or even provoked? This is a difficult question and
a constant subject of debate. In any case, the request requires a rigorous
effort of elaboration, or working on the request. One case has been
specifically studied in terms of its different stages, and notably the one
called the socialisation of the request, which involves its construction
as a request which is socially validated by the different company
players.42
If rigorous work on the request and the ethical principles framing it
are determinant with regard to the validity criterion of authenticity, the
overall validation of the data and their interpretation does not rely on
it alone. There are other modes of verification, notably at the time of
the two oral and written reconstitutions which conclude the investigation phase proper. Before going any further, however, it must be
stressed that this specific requirement of the psychodynamic approach
with regard to the request, undoubtedly constitutes the greatest problem for the handling of this instrument, not only from a technical
standpoint (working on the request is tricky) but above all due to the
fact that the set-up thus constituted, with its many participants, is
unwieldy and time-consuming.
The Ability to Listen
The second question we have to address here concerns the intersubjective conditions for the elaboration of the subjective experience of work. In
order for the subjects speech acts to allow the working-through of
real-life experience, it is not enough to have a mechanism of dialogue
alone, namely someone who speaks and someone who listens. Even if
there were no ambiguity about the workers request, listening would
not be enough to bring about a miraculous emergence of meaning.
This depends also on the nature of the listening. Very briefly stated,
pp. 115131 and P. Bourdieu, Introduction la socio-analyse, Actes de la recherche en
sciences sociales, Vol. 90, 1991, pp. 319.
42
See Dejours and Jayet, Psychopathologie du travail et organisation relle du travail dans une industrie de process.
238
christophe dejours
listening only produces an effect when it takes risks, in the same way
that speaking out takes risks. Listening and hearing, which means
understanding something new in what is spoken, leads to a first risk.
Above all because hearing the suffering of someone else, penetrating
the tragedy in Politzers sense of the word, is upsetting and destabilising for the researchers psychic functioning. From the very beginning
of the work on the request, the psychodynamics of work investigations
turn out to be extremely painful for the researchers. Others have had
the same experience, notably psychoanalysts and ethnologists.43
The second risk for the researchers involves their relationship with
established scientific knowledge. As we have already indicated, an
investigation only works if the entire theory of the psychodynamics of
work is constantly put to the test of reality, even if this means that it
loses its legitimacy or interest for the researchers because the real-life
situations are incompatible with its theoretical corpus. Indeed, this is
why the control collective mentioned earlier was set up.
The third risk taken by the researchers is more decisive. Willingly or
not, they commit themselves to the workers participating in the investigation. The fact that the investigation must arise from a request, as a
methodological principle, inevitably implies taking a stand in relation
to that request. Here, it is worth recalling that the request is only
acceptable when it is explicitly formulated in terms of a request for
understanding and analysing the work situation, not as a therapeutic
one. But this should not be misunderstood: while the investigation collective does not commit itself to resolving the problems raised by the
relationship to work organisation, it does, on the other hand, commit
itself to doing everything in its power to arrive at the intelligibility of
the situation. This is a weighty commitment and one which implies
significant risks, because we cannot be certain in advance of reaching
conclusions which satisfy all the validation criteria. Thus, the researchers are prey to the same anxiety they face with any scientific problem,
except that here, by contrast with other research approaches, they are
in a real situation and in real time. And the researchers success or failure is also responsible, in part, for the subjective future of the workers
who, from their own end, have taken the risk of getting involved in the
investigation. These conditions as a whole characterise what we would
call risky listening.
43
See G. Devereux, De langoisse la mthode dans les sciences du comportement,
Paris, Flammarion, 1980.
When the three risks identified here actually come into play, they
inevitably confront the research collective with an additional one
which, in our opinion, is even more imposing: in some field research,
the action engaged by the investigation often goes far beyond it, leading to circumstances in which the individual researchers are sought
out, and it is impossible for them to avoid the moral or even legal obligation to testify publicly about their scientific work. This situation
occurs when the problems the investigation raises about the contradictions inherent in the organisation of work set off debates extending
into the public sphere. The obligation to testify arises from a double
constraint. For one thing, the refusal to testify is not neutral and can
act to the advantage of certain participants and the disadvantage of
others, thus implying a lack of fairness. And for another, the debates
sometimes become polemical and certain participants resort to
manoeuvres attempting to disqualify the research group or even the
entire laboratory, or indeed, the scientific community at large. In this
case, abstention becomes untenable.
The three (and possibly four) dimensions of risky listening are
thus inseparable from the methodology of the psychodynamics of
work. This is why we have come to define the psychodynamic analysis
of work situations, above all, as we stated at the beginning of this chapter, as a practice of intervention and not simply as a classical analytical
science which produces knowledge.
This is also why the investigation methodology in the psychodynamics of work follows the action research model. Many other forms
of investigations in the human and social sciences claim to go back to
action research. But in most cases, this means that the investigation,
through its own dynamics, provokes changes in the situation studied.
In the case of the psychodynamics of work, however, the changes in
question are not simply side effects of the scientific research, to be
recorded for purposes of evaluation and validation. In the psychodynamic analysis of work, the changes which the investigation may generate engage the responsibility of the researchers collective, even
within the action itself, because what is involved is suffering.
However, the forms of this responsibility and commitment, which
are strictly governed by respect for the ethics of evidence, make the
content and nature of the researchers intervention radically different
from those of the other participants in the action underway. In any
event, risky listening ultimately appears to be the counterpart, for the
researchers, of what the request represents for the workers.
240
christophe dejours
In our view, this methodological setup provides the basis for what
might be considered an equitable relationship between the speech motivated by a request and risky listening. This economy of intersubjective
relations in the investigation methodology of the psychodynamics of
work is critical for the efficiency of the pragmatic dimension of language relative to its capacity for working-through or bringing out the
meaning of the real-life experience.
Thought and Action
A final remark to bring this section to a close: we have seen how access
to the intelligibility of the workers experience projects the researchers,
whether they like it or not, into action itself. And the same is true for
the workers. The collective working-through of the work experience,
through the investigation, transforms the workers subjective relationship to their work situation. After the investigation, whether they like
it or not, their interventions in the discussion space devoted to the
organisation of work cannot be the same as before because they do not
perceive it and think about it in the same way. Action is thus inseparable from the work of elaboration, even if the latter has only involved
thought and speech. The practice of the psychodynamics of work
investigations suggests that the theoretical locus of the action is in the
very work of thinking and there is no reason to maintain the traditional philosophical distinction between thought and action.
From Intersubjectivity to the Test of Objectification
This long digression on methodology should now enable us to address
several epistemological questions more succinctly. These issues, raised
by the shift from the psychopathology of work to the psychodynamics
of work, must be examined if we want to determine the possible role of
the new discipline within the scientific domain. Even if some authors
consider this a futile task,44 we feel it is unavoidable. However incomplete and awkward it might be, the debate is introduced here to indicate the main lines of research which exchanges with researchers in
44
See J. -C. Passeron, Le raisonnement sociologique. Lespace non popprien du raisonnement naturel, Paris, Nathan, 1991.
theoretical sociology have suggested to us over the past few years. The
psychodynamic analysis, as we have already indicated, cannot lead to
the observation or revelation of pre-existing occurrences. The investigation brings out a reality by the very process of interpreting speech.
Researchers and philosophers have constructed an entire tradition
around the questions raised by the recourse to interpretation and the
role of interpretation in scientific work. The psychodynamics of work
is a discipline which makes use of the technique of interpretation with
the methods described above. As such, it comes under the epistemology of the historico-hermeneutic sciences, which Habermas distinguishes from the empirico-analytical (ie. experimental) sciences.45 The
fact of referring to the Habermassian conception, however, requires us
to raise another question, even if we cannot discuss it here, namely
whether the psychodynamics of work does not also belong to the critical sciences, to the extent that, like psychoanalysis, it is basically aimed
at an effort of reappropriation and emancipation based on the critique
of the distortions of communicative action.46
Notwithstanding Gadamers warnings about the opposition between
truth and method and his intention to create a philosophical hermeneutics rather than constituting the bases of a methodology for the
social sciences,47 we would be tempted to think that the work carried
out in recent years on methodology in the psychodynamics of work
helps to demonstrate the possibility of building a hermeneutical
method in the narrow sense of the term.48 The methodology of the
psychodynamics of work gives a possible form to the application
criteria which Gadamer considers capital for establishing the hermeneutical stance and approach. A systematic epistemological discussion
concerning the relations between the psychodynamics of work and the
hermeneutic approach would lead us to consider a dimension which is
generally excluded from our subject: in contrast to poiesis, which finds
a concrete form of expression in the object produced, praxis requires
45
See J. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. J. Shapiro, Beacon Press,
1972 [1968].
46
See B. Flynn, Reading Habermas Reading Freud, Human Studies, Vol. 8, 1985,
pp. 5776.
47
See H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. Marshall,
London, Continuum, 2004 [1960].
48
See J. Ladriere, Hermneutique et pistmologie, in J. Gteisch and R Kearney,
Paul Ricoeur: les mtamorphoses de la raison hermneutique, Paris, Cerf, 1991,
pp. 107126.
242
christophe dejours
an additional mediation in order to be attested and discussed, namely,

a narrative or commentary. Where a craftsperson can remain silent
and let the object produced speak for itself, the agent must speak,
because poiesis has a concrete dimension, while praxis is abstract.
Action thus requires a narrative in order to occur, as Ricoeur
explains.49 Indeed, the narrative can even take shape in a text. But the
text in turn is endowed with a life of its own which transcends its
author and produces effects which partly escape the initial intent.50 The
psychodynamics of work investigation ends with the drafting of a written text, namely a report collectively developed through the interaction between workers and researchers. This report gives concrete form
to interpretations of the subjective relationship to the organisation of
work. Some of our subsequent research bears more specifically on this
aspect of the investigation, namely the status of spoken and written
language in the work of analysis itself.
It seems to me (although this remains to be developed in greater
detail) that language functions at three levels:
It is a mediator between the workers and researchers whose intersubjective requisites we have already considered (authenticity of
speech versus risk of listening).
But it also functions as a mediator or medium between the workers
themselves, one which is both powerful and necessary to the extent
that it permits the sharing of real-life work experience among the
members of the work collective involved in the investigation. For
them, language is not only the medium of the collective elaboration
of the experiences but is also operative in the construction of the collective itself. At least this is what the investigations suggest. And this
means that the practice of the investigation amounts quite simply to
the more systematic handling, under the impetus of the researchers,
of a dynamics which emerges spontaneously in ordinary work
situations between the agents in the discussion space devoted to
the organisation of work (when this space actually exists).
From a theoretical standpoint, then, the methodological setup of
the psychodynamic analysis of work functions as a magnifying
glass which allows us to see the dynamics involved in the ordinary
49
See P. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 3 vols., trans. K. McLaughlin and J. Pellauer,
University of Chicago Press, 1990 [19831985].
50
See P. Ricoeur, Du texte laction, Paris, Seuil, 1986.
management of the organisation of work, and possibly stimulates it

as well.
Language, and notably written language (investigation report, minutes of the Committees on Health, Safety and Working Conditions
[CHSCT], activity report of the occupational medicine department,
articles in the press, etc.) echoing the terms used in the work sessions and discussions of the investigation, can be used as a tracer of
the action, as Teiger and Laville say.51 Language can then serve as a
means of objectifying the subjective experience of the work situation
studied.
The Concept of Psychodynamics
The term psychodynamic analysis belongs to psychoanalytical theory, where it designates the study of psycho-affective movements generated by the development of inter- and intrasubjective conflicts.
Psychodynamic analysis takes place at a concrete level and bears specifically on the tragedy experienced, its content and its meaning for the
person living it. In this respect, it is the opposite of metapsychology,
which studies processes, structures and balances of forces at the
abstract level of mechanisms, topical instances of the psychic apparatus and the economy of drives.
When we speak of the psychodynamic analysis of work situations,
the concept of psychodynamics is thus distorted, to the extent that,
strictly speaking, it is only applied in the context of the psychoanalysis of the cure process and the conflicts brought out through
transference.
Two initial objections raised by this situation can quickly be refuted:
The first consists in confusing the use of the term in the clinical
approach to work with that of North American psychiatry, where
psychodynamic conceptions lump together all the clinical and
theoretical approaches which are not experimentalist, behaviourist
or biological theories of mental disorders. We reject the descriptive,
nosographic use of the term psychodynamics and, on the contrary, lay claim to the rigorous application of the concept in the
sense of concrete psychology.
51
See C. Teiger and A. Laville, Expression des travailleurs sur leurs conditions de
travail, Rapport N 100 du Laboratoire dErgonomie du CNAM, 1989.
244
christophe dejours
The second consists in considering the clinical approach to work

as a form of applied psychoanalysis to be placed alongside the psychoanalytical interpretation of art and literature, psycho-sociology,
the analysis of myths and so on. From the very outset, we rejected
the applied science model for the psychodynamics of work and
sought to place it within the epistemological model of the field sciences. This statement of principle does not exhaust the differences
between psychodynamics of work and psychoanalysis, however.
Taking the theses of the psychodynamics of work to their logical
conclusion has meant that after considerable borrowing from psychoanalysis, we reversed the process, by questioning psychoanalysis
about itself on the basis of the questions raised by the clinical
approach to work.
But if there were in fact a distortion of the term psychodynamics,
what would it be? For one thing, what might be considered an excessive extension of the term to a clinical approach excessively anchored
in reality. It is true that the clinical approach to work is entirely situated
in a clinical social space surrounding the reality of the work situation;
the organisation of work constitutes, as it were, the geometric centre of
all interpretations, and these cannot in any way be freed from the constraints of instrumental rationality.
Conversely, however, the stratagems of the intelligence and the will
open up a psychic and social space such that the entire clinical experience of work also appears as the locus of movements of subversion,
encirclement and circumventing of the centripetal constraints imposed
by the reality of work. Encirclement and release vie with one other but
reality remains the universal centre of gravity of the clinical approach
to work.
By contrast, psychoanalysis is founded on a sovereign act of expelling reality to the periphery, while the psyche and the imagination are
called upon to occupy the central position. There is thus an inherent
movement opposing psychoanalytic psychodynamics and the psychodynamics of work. And yet, the clinical experience brought out by the
psychodynamic analysis of work situations persists. Is reality truly
excluded from the psychoanalytic mechanism? This question might
provide the basis for a re-examination of psychoanalysis. Indeed, the
psychoanalytic cure is impossible without the establishment of what,
in technical terms, is called the framework, namely the regularity
of the sessions, fee-for-service payment, working rules (no touching),
the psychoanalytic community (school or institution). In other words,

the psychoanalytic cure is also, and fundamentally, a form of work,
which, like any other work, implies a formalised, regulated relationship to reality as concretised in the therapeutic goal. The systematic
analysis of psychoanalytical practice in the light of the psychodynamics of work is possible and it could lead to revising the approach to
reality (the framework) both in theory and in the way the cure is
handled.
We would thus stand by the legitimacy of a strict use of the concept
of psychodynamics in the clinical approach to work and would go so
far as to deduce a problematic of identity which would be valid in the
domains of normality and pathology alike. Indeed, the clinical
approach to work suggests the outlines of a subjective rationality of
action, the analysis of which presumes that the links between the three
terms are rigorously and simultaneously maintained: suffering
workrecognition (the triangle of the psychodynamics of work). This
configuration is the counterpart of the triangle of identity and alienation proposed by Sigaut: egorealityothers. Clinical work teaches
us that it is impossible to understand questions about the emergence of
mental pathology in work if the aetiological investigation is limited to
the subjects individual history and his or her private inner life (intrasubjectivity). Nor are the psychopathological phenomena intelligible if
we refer only to relations between subjects (intersubjectivity), whether
these are hierarchical or between co-workers, as the psychology of
organisations and the psycho-sociological analysis of groups suggest.
The conflicts, suffering and pleasure emerging in the work situation
also owe their dynamics to the organisation of work and the difficulties, or even conflicts, which it occasions between subjects, within
teams and within individual subjects through the tensions it brings out
between the constraint of the work situation and that of relations in the
private sphere. As a result, the psychodynamics of work leads to reexamining the status of reality within the general economy of pleasure
and suffering, the defensive strategies and psychopathological decompensations. The struggle against madness, which is mainly of interest
to the psychodynamics of work but also to psychoanalysis, entails both
the subjects confrontation with reality and the recognition of his or
her action by others. This argument is central. Madness does not
depend on the intensity of the constraints imposed on the subject by
the work reality. Reason (or normality) does not depend on the happy
medium of these same constraints. Rather, it is when one of the three
246
christophe dejours
terms is isolated from the other two that the risk of alienation and
madness emerges. Let us go back to Sigauts analysis:
REALITY
OTHERS
EGO
Mental alienation
When the subject is cut off from reality and recognition by others, he
or she is abandoned to the solitude of the classic madness known as
mental alienation.
WORK
SUFFERING
RECOGNITION
Social alienation
When the subject maintains a relationship with reality through

his or her work but this work is not recognised by others, even if it is a
true relationship, here too, the subject is condemned to alienating solitude. Sigaut designates this situation as social alienation. This is the
case of the unrecognised scholar or genius, but also the most frequent
case of the subject whose work and contributions go unrecognised.
These circumstances too may provoke an identity crisis and plunge the
subject into the madness which is often confused with mental alienation if he or she protests and attempts to claim what is due (paranoia),
or winds up losing all self-confidence and doubting the reality he or
she faces because no one else recognises it (depression). Most of the
psychopathology of work in the narrow sense operates in the realm of

social alienation.52
REALITY
EGO
OTHERS
Cultural alienation
Last of all, when the subjects acts are recognised by others but this
recognition takes place, on both sides, in a psychic world which has
lost its ties with reality, we are, according to Sigaut, dealing with cultural alienation. This is the case of sects. But it can also be the case of
certain communities of researchers, practitioners or even political
leaders cut off from their base, or administrations cut off from reality.
Nor does cultural alienation only concern exceptional situations; it
also takes more ordinary forms which can nonetheless be extremely
serious in certain work situations. In one of our investigations, workers
or supervisors were aware of anomalies in assembly, of tasks carried
out in a slapdash way, of defective drills or measuring devices, of serious breaches of specifications or even blatant frauds in the accomplishment of certain stages of the work, which in their view called quality or
plant safety into question. The chain of authority lent a deaf ear to
these repeated warnings coming from the base.
Many incidents, notably the most serious ones, are not reported
back to management. What gets excluded is reality, while company
heads and executives debating questions of management, administration and doctrine are cut off from the reality of the work, in other
52
See A. Bensaid, Apport de la psychopathologie du travail ltude dune bouffe
dlirante ague, Archives des Maladies Professionnelles, 52, Paris, Masson, 1990,
pp. 307310; C. Dejours, Introduction clinique la psychopathologie du travail,
Archives des Maladies Professionnelles, Vol. 52, Paris, Masson, 1990, pp. 273278;
C. Dejours, T. Collot, P. Godard and P. Logeay, Syndromes psychopathologiques
conscutifs aux accidents du travail (incidences sur la reprise du travail), Le travail
humain, Vol. 49, 1986, pp. 103106.
248
christophe dejours
words, in a situation of cultural alienation. (At the same time, workers

and supervisors, whose relationship to that reality is not recognised,
are exposed to the risk of social alienation).
From this standpoint, identity is always the result of a struggle
against the three possible risks of alienation, albeit one which is never
definitively won, even in the best of cases. The psychodynamic analysis
of work situations suggests that the relationship to reality is never
directly determined. It is not natural. It always involves the mediation
of an action on that reality leading to the simultaneous discovery of:
The experience of that part of reality which, as always, resists the
control of technique and knowledge.
The possibilities, nonetheless, of action upon that reality which, by
the fact of partially conquering, harnessing or circumventing it,
attest to the creative power of the subjects imaginative thinking.
Conclusion: Work and Love
This problematic of identity and alienation is interesting above all,
relative to the question of designation raised by the evolution of our
discipline, because it shows how recognition by others can pose a
mental risk to the subject when this recognition does not entail
a judgement on what is actually done and on the relation to the real of
work, in other words, a judgement on the reality of his or her work.
This risk is not confined to the clinical field specifically investigated by
the psychodynamics of work, however; it also hangs over the clinical
experience explored by general psychopathology. The recognition
conferred by love and the interaction of feelings alone is not enough
for the child to construct his or her identity. There are many clinical
examples of fusion or excessive eroticisation of the mother-child
relationship where, through a familiar process of reciprocal idealisation, reality is excluded in favour of imagination. The subject is granted
the recognition of love but at the same time, these excesses destroy
his or her identity and generate the most serious mental illnesses
(in particular, psychoses, which are the principal form of madness or
alienation).
Similarly, some psychoanalytical cures can lead to mutual recognition between patient and analyst within a shared psychic world which
has lost its ties with reality. In the absence of a confrontation with
the test of reality and validation by its liberating effects, the double
delirium of an interminable process of interpretation and total

intelligibility leads to alienation within the analysis itself (cultural
alienation).
The psychodynamics of work enlarges the initial field of the psychopathology of work. The investigation of the pathology remains within
its scope but it is now situated within a broader problematic offering
concepts which may be used to describe both suffering and pleasure,
madness (and alienation) and normality.
Common sense tells us that work occupies a large share of life in
quantitative termseight hours a day, which amounts to a third of
daily existence. This rough figure underestimates the reality, however.
The subjective relationship to work spreads its tentacles well beyond
the space of the shop floor, the office or the company and sinks them
deep into the non-work space. Analyses of the psychodynamics of
work are instructive on this issue.53 But even more instructive are the
analyses proposed by the sociology of gender relations when these are
based on the problematics of the sexual division of labour.54 The classical separation between work and non-work has no meaning in industrial sociology and the same is true for the psychodynamics of work.
This strictly spatial separation, notwithstanding its adoption by classical sociology and psychology, is radically contradicted as soon as the
dynamics of the psychic and social processes are taken into account.
The working of the psyche cannot be divided up. Persons involved in
defensive strategies to combat suffering in work do not leave their psychic behaviour in the changing room. On the contrary, they take their
mental constraints with them and need the cooperation of family and
friends to keep their defences ready for when they return to work.
It can also be shown that the entire family economy is called upon to
help its members face the constraints of the work situation. Nor are
children spared by the dynamics of their parents relationship to work,
to the point that their own development is deeply marked by it, even in
the construction of their sexual identity.
53
See Bensaid, Apport de la psychopathologie du travail ltude dune bouffe
dlirante ague, Dejours, Introduction clinique la psychopathologie du travail, and
C. Dejours, La charge psychique de Travail, in quilibre ou Fatigue par le travail?,
Intervention aux Journes nationales de psychologie du travail, Paris, ditions ESF/
Enterprise moderne ddition, Vol. 1, 1980.
54
See H. Hirata and D. Kergoat, Rapports sociaux de sexe et psychopathologie du
travail, in ed. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail, Vol. 2, 1988, pp. 131176.
250
christophe dejours
By attempting to extend its field of investigation to normality, the

psychodynamics of work has discovered that work is not limited to a
marginal role in the construction of identity. On the contrary, the clinical experience of work leads to recognising the need for a more
demanding, systematic development of the problematics of the work
situation in general psychology. Not only is the clinical approach to
sublimation considerably enriched but it emerges as an element at least
as important as the clinical approach to erotic life for identifying the
driving forces of mental health. It may be that sublimation is not just
an optional process reserved for talented artists, creators and scientific
researchers but an essential process for constructing and sustaining
each individuals psychic economy. And this means in turn that there
is no avoiding an examination of the consequences of lasting deprivation of the right to sublimation. After the fact, it seems to us that social
inequality with regard to the symbolic benefits of sublimation for mental health is more determinant than psychic inequality with regard to
individual resources for sublimation. To cite only one example here:
the profound inequality between men and women in access to the
dynamics of recognition in work. Thus, a socially and historically constructed reality makes a brutal intrusion into the clinical approach to
sublimation, which is in fact becoming one of the most urgent questions for the psychodynamic analysis of work situations.
Taking into consideration the weight of the reality exposed by the
clinical approach to work situations does not call into question the
legitimacy of the concept of psychodynamics in the analysis of work
situations. In our view, the question arising today is just the opposite:
can general psychopathology, which, since the nineteenth century, has
been constructed at the patients bedside, in the space of the asylum or
in the private space of the face-to-face relationship, continue to do
without the clinical approach to work?
Translated from French by Miriam Rosen
Chapter nine
Care as Work: Mutual Vulnerabilities

and Discrete Knowledge
Pascale Molinier
Care is not just a disposition or an ethical attitude. First and foremost
care is a form of work, work that can be done or not, chosen to be done
or not, indeed something that a society as a whole can choose to do or
not. To provide a formal description and a theory of this work seems to
me an indispensable condition of an ethic of care that would fulfil its
goal. Such an ethic would contribute towards the recognition of the
people who perform care work in Western societies; people who in the
main are females, poor and immigrant, and often the three at once,1
without harming those who benefit from their work; that is, all of us.
This chapter will not be able to fulfil all the criteria that would enable
such a formalisation. Its ambition is restricted to the concerns of the
psychodynamics of work whose object of inquiry is not work taken in
an objective, sociological or ergonomic sense, but the processes underpinning the three powers of working, namely transforming the world,
applying intelligence objectively, and enabling the subject to form
itself. By producing goods and services the subject does not merely
transform the world but also transforms itself by working. (Working
therefore designates a major process of subjectivation, that is, creation
of subjectivity).2 The relationship to the world that develops through
care work entails specific dimensions that can be highlighted. Only a
few of these dimensions, amongst the most hidden, can be unveiled
here. It is obvious that the psychological stakes of work cannot be severed from the latters material conditions. From this point of view, this
chapter restricts itself to my research with nurses and auxiliary nurses.
1
See E. N. Glenn, From Servitude to Service Work: Historial Continuities in
the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor, Signs, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1992, pp. 143;
R. A. Hochschild, Le nouvel or du monde, Nouvelles Questions Fministes, Vol. 23,
No. 3, 2004, pp. 5974; E. Dorlin, Corps contre nature. Stratgies actuelles de la
critique fministe, LHomme et la socit, Vol. 150/151, No. 1, 2004, pp. 4768.
2
See C. Dejours, Travailler nest pas droger, Travailler, Vol. 1, 1998, pp. 512.
252
pascale molinier
These two highly feminised professions stand in hierarchical relation

to each other so they cannot be identified with each other. Their antagonisms but also their modes of cooperation would have warranted a
broader effort of contextualisation.3 For the purposes of this particular
chapter, it will be sufficient to note that in terms of the division of
labour, the main aspect of the nurses delegation of work in relation to
assistant nurses has consisted in their offloading the most ungratifying
aspects of care work, that is, the bodily care (soins) of personal hygiene
and personal comfort. This part of care work belongs to the category of
dirty work as it has been conceptualised in the 1950s by the American
sociologist Everett Hughes.4 Dirty work designates those tasks that are
seen as physically disgusting, which symbolise something degrading
or humiliating, and/or confront some of the taboo dimensions of
human existence, like the impure, the vile, the deviant,5 and to which I
would add sexuality. The professions concerned are those that collect
or deal with waste and refuse, like the cleaning work; those that entail
a relationship to the body, notably bodily detritus, and cadavers; as
well as those that involve a certain degree of instituted abuse and violence. In the social imaginary, proximity with what is normally held at
a distance is perceived as threatening to contaminate those that fulfil
those taskshowever necessary they are. The individuals fulfilling
those tasks are seen as soiled, impure, transgressive or even evil. As
Dominique Lhuillier emphasises, the notion of dirty work is heuristically useful to address the question of the division of labour inasmuch
as the latter is not just technical and social, but also moral and psychological.6 The meaning that can be attributed to this type of work is
often precarious. Narcissistic wounds resulting from these activities
are undeniable. The auxiliary nurses I organised interviews with
defined themselves in bitter terms such as shit cleaner (torche-pots/
torcher = clean someones bottom; pot = piss pot.) It is significant that
3
In France the nursing profession is predominantly female. In 2004, 87% of nurses
were female. However, this varies across different sectors: 47% of males in psychiatry;
27% in anaesthetic services; and only 1% in pediatric services. There were 740,000
assistant nurses and hospital assistants (91% and 81% female respectively). See Sabine
Bessire, La feminisation des professions de sant en France: donnes de cadrage,
Revue franaise des affaires sociales, La Documentation franaise, 2005, 1, pp.1933.
4
See E. C. Hughes, Men and Their Work, Glencoe, IL., Free Press, 1958; Good
People and Dirty Work, Social Problems, Vol. 10, 1962, pp. 311.
5
See D. Lhuillier, Le sale boulot, Travailler, Vol. 14, 2005, pp. 7398.
6
ibid. p. 73.
care as work253
care work is also stigmatised as dirty work by others as well as by

those who undertake it.
Conceptual Tensions
By care work (travail de care) I understand, following Patricia
Papermans definition, all the activities that fulfil demands characteristic of relations of dependence.7 To take care of (the other) (prendre
soin) is not to think of the other, nor to care for the other (se soucier)
either in an intellectual or even in an affective sense, it is not even necessarily to love the other: it is first and foremost to do something, to
produce a certain type of work which directly contributes to the maintenance or the preservation of the others life. It is to help or assist the
other in his or her basic needs: like eating, being clean, resting, sleeping, feeling safe, and being able to devote oneself to ones own interests.
With the latter, I understand in particular all the activities that help to
create meaning, those that relate to sublimation, in the Freudian sense
of the term, and which are therefore not directly related to basic physical needs but rather to psychological needs linked to self-fulfilment. To
be able to devote oneself to ones own interests requires a certain form
of psychological availability, a form of detachment from the time constraints arising from bodily needs, like having to think about preparing
a meal. Indeed the production of the others autonomy and identity is
at the heart of contemporary theories of domestic work (travail domestique), which emphasise its dimensions of psychological and emotional
work.8 This is the noble part of care work.
In English there are two terms to designate care (le soin): cure and
care, with the first referring to the curative aspect of care. Whereas the
cure concerns only those who are sick, care concerns every one of us,
from the beginning to the end of life. No life is possible without care.
In the perspective of the ethics of care, vulnerability and dependenceare at the core of what it is to be a human being. This means that
one and the same model of the human being can be used to designate
the person who gives care (the care giver) and the person who benefits
7
P. Paperman, Les gens vulnrables nont rien dexceptionnel, Raisons pratiques,
Vol. 16, 2005, p. 321.
8
See L. Adkins and C. Lury, Making Bodies, Making People, Making Work, in
eds. L. McKie and N. Watson, Organizing Bodies: Policy, Institutions and Work,
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, pp. 151165.
254
pascale molinier
from this workwhether or not that person is a competent adult.9

Inthis sense, competence designates a certain degree of autonomy,
always provisional and partial, and therefore does not imply that the
competent adult would be invulnerablethis would be an absurd
ideaor that he or she would have exited the state of dependence that
characterises him or her just as much as that of autonomy.
Some authors insist on maintaining the distinction between care
work with people who are unavoidably dependent, for example, the
sick or those who are invalids, as well as people who are very young
(dependency care), and care work with people in good health who
would be able to direct their self-maintenance on their own.10 Even if
it is relevant under certain aspects (in economic terms in particular, or
in terms of moral obligation), with the dualism autonomy/dependence, this distinction nonetheless risks perpetuating the fiction of a
self-constitution of personal identity, whereas in fact the successful
achievement of the latter is dependent on the work of a spouse/mother
whose self is oriented towards the others and demonstrates affection,
as Adkins and Lury put it.11
Conversely, as the English psychoanalyst Margaret Cohen notes,
respect of the most dependent of dependent peoplein her case,
giving a voice to the experience of young infants in the neonatal
intensive care section where she worksimplies recognising them
as independent human beings.12 By independent, she means comparable or similar to oneself, that is to say, from her perspective as a psychoanalyst; and recognised as a subject with his or her own subjectivity,
a psychological life and his or her own story. The default position,
given the difficulty of providing technical care (cure) without causing
suffering, is to concentrate solely on the technical difficulty while
refusing to see that the infant child is writhing with pain, without
imagining his or her distress.
In the perspective of care, the categories of dependence/autonomy
as well as the relationships between these categories must therefore
be conceptualised anew. Is it the content of tasks which defines care
9
See P. Paperman, Perspectives fministes sur la justice, Lanne sociologique,
Vol. 54, No. 2, 2004, pp. 413433.
10
See E. Feder Kittay, Dependency, Difference and Global Ethics of Longterm
Care, www.carework-network.org/
11
See Adkins and Lury, Making Bodies, Making People, Making Work.
12
See M. Cohen, Histoires de naissances et de mort, Autrement, Vol. 10, 1993,
pp. 6787.
care as work255
work? Or is it the way they are accomplished? In French there is no

appropriate term to translate the concept of care. The French word
soin is too reductive by comparison. Care is not sollicitude (solicitude) or dvouement either. The concept of care comprises a constellation of physical or mental states, as well as activities of work
relating to pregnancy, the raising and education of children, the care/
soins of people: bodily care/hygiene, and domestic work. The most
important point is that in the concept of care the material tasks are
not dissociated from the psychological work they entail. Furthermore,
care denotes the properly affective dimension that is mobilised in a
type of activity which has to be accomplished with tenderness or
sympathy. We shall come back to that. The sociologist Genevive
Cresson has suggested translating the term as health domestic
work (travail domestique de sant), which partly overcomes the difficulties of translation.13 This translation however is only partly successful. On the one hand, it manages to rehabilitate the essential part
of care and concern for the other in domestic work, as well as the psychological load (charge) associated with it. However, it is problematicon two fronts. First, the concept of health domestic work tends
to artificially dissociate domestic work from health domestic work
whereas from the perspective of care, all domestic work is health
work, beginning with sleeping in a clean bed. Second, it also tends to
dissociate domestic care work that is accomplished for free in a private
space from waged care work, whereas the concept of care overcomes
this dichotomy and allows us to analyse the similarities between
such disparate activities as those that concern house work, the care
for the sick, education, secretarial work as well as assisting work in
all its shapes and forms (for example the case of legal assistants studied
by Pierce).14
If we recall that housework has for a long time been considered as a
mindless type of work demanding no particular skills, the change in
perspective is radical: care defines both activities and the intelligence
that is mobilised in their accomplishment. The reason why this form of
intelligence and its realisations have attracted so little interest, both on
a scientific and philosophical level, mainly has to do with the fact that
13
See G. Cresson, Les parents denfants hospitaliss domicile. Leur participation
aux soins, Paris, LHarmattan, 2000.
14
See J. Pierce, Les motions dans le travail: le cas des assistants juridiques,
Travailler, Vol. 9, 2004, pp. 5172.
256
pascale molinier
it is difficult to establish a relationship with the concrete experience of

care. This is because of: (1) The invisibility of the conditions of successful care; (2) the naturalisation of care as belonging to womanhood;
(3) the emotional aspects of its discursive expression; (4) the virile
defences of decision-makers. This is what I would like to show on
the basis of several studies in the psychodynamics of work15 I have
undertaken in several hospitals with auxiliary nurses, nurses and head
nurses.16
The Invisibility of Care Work and Inconspicuous Skills
What do we learn from the psychodynamic analysis of work situations
in the health sector? In order to be efficacious, care work must not
appear as work (literally, it must efface itself as work). Its success
depends on its invisibility. Every time one has to attempt to relieve the
suffering of another person (or attempt to not add to it), the only way
to avoid that person getting tired or embarrassed, and also of sparing
oneself useless gestures and journeys, is to know how to anticipate the
request and to hide the efforts and the work that has been accomplished to reach the desired goal. This can take very banal forms, for
example putting a glass of water or a bell within the persons reach,
avoiding saying you are looking tired and instead offering a chair.
The concern for the psychological comfort of the other is always at
play in this type of skill. One attempts to avoid embarrassing the
other, shaming him or her, to respect his or her modesty, his or her
desire to be autonomous, to spare them the humiliation of dependence, and so on. But such inconspicuous skills (savoir-faire) can also
mobilise technical knowledge, like when a (good) nurse hands the surgeon the right instrument at the right time, before he had to ask
for it, or like the good secretary who prepares the right files (without
15
The psychodynamics of work studies the centrality of work in psychic functioning, in other words, the fact that work is never neutral in relation to the construction
of identity and mental health. We intervene when people request it, when they seek to
elucidate the reasons explaining why their work has become so difficult to bear they
have become ill as a result, and others fear the same fate. See C. Dejours and
P. Molinier, De la peine au travail, Autrement, No. 142, 1994, pp. 138151.
16
See P. Molinier, Prvenir la violence: linvisibilit du travail des femmes,
Travailler, Vol. 3, 1999, pp. 7386; P. Molinier, Travail et compassion dans le monde
hospitalier, Les cahiers du genre, Vol. 28, 2000, pp. 4970; and P. Molinier, Souffrance
et thorie de laction, Travailler, Vol. 7, 2001, pp. 131146.
care as work257
being asked) for the boss to use in the next meeting. Another type of
inconspicuous skill (savoir-faire discrets) is that of the cleaner who
manages to clean a table without upsetting the researchers desk.
Another example still is that of being able to avoid saying to parents
that an important event in their childs development, for example her
first steps, happened in the childcare during their absence. These skills
are inconspicuous or discreet in the sense that in order to achieve their
goals, the means used to do so must not draw the attention of those
who benefit from them and must be mobilised without expecting gratitude for it. As a result, care work becomes visible mainly when it fails,
when a smile becomes too forced or disappears from the nurses face,
when a gesture is too mechanical, when the response to a request takes
too long, when the child comes back from childcare bitten or scratched
by another or when the housewife makes the homes cleanliness a form
of domestic tyranny.
The invisibility of care work, which is intrinsic to it, and belongs to
its very essence, results in a chronic deficit of recognition. As a general
rule recognition is difficult to obtain because it has to be granted to
work that is actually accomplished (and not to its theoretical presentation in charts, protocols, job descriptions, and so on) and it relies on
two separate types of judgement:
1. First the judgement of beauty evaluates work by assessing its conformity to the rules of the trade but also its originality, that is, its
capacity to find new solutions to the problems encountered. This
judgement is delivered by peers, mostly through the symbolic forms
of integration within the collective, and through admiration.
2. The judgement of utility relates to the social, economic or tech
nical usefulness of work. It does not evaluate the means used
but verifies that the goals have been achieved. It is delivered by
those further up the hierarchy, and is materialised in the form of
the wage, qualification, promotion and the attribution of more
resources.
The dynamics of recognition rests upon the collective capacity to make
judgements of beauty and utility, with as little contradiction and as
much congruence, as possible. This implies that it is possible to regularly discuss the difficulties encountered by the team, in the internal
public space of the company or the institution, so that the prescription
can be changed in a more realistic way and made more compatible
with the demands of the task and more respectful of the meaning that
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pascale molinier
the workers attribute to their work.17 As a result, to be recognised for

what one does is not an everyday experience. It is the hope to be recognised that plays a fundamental role in the possibility of continuing to
work by being involved in what one does and not falling ill.
As care work is forced to efface itself as work and cannot be visible,
it tends to be undervalued as a way of doing and overvalued as a way of
being. Care work is generally identified with womanhood (woman-asgifted-for-the-relational), or with the feminine side in a man. It is perceived as a capacity for self-sacrifice that would be an emanation of the
feminine soul and not as a skill acquired through experience. Care
work is thus referred to in terms of moral qualities that are also gender qualities and which can therefore not be codified or rewarded.
As Danile Kergoat has shown, the social definition of a professional
competence cannot rest on a list of individual qualities.18 We cannot
develop this point at length within the scope of this chapter, but the
psychodynamics of work can show that for nurses and auxiliary nurses,
their inconspicuous, discreet skills are not perceived and represented
spontaneously in the terms of competence. For example, the nurses
in the operating theatre who are able to present the required instrument before the surgeon even asks for it, thus sparing him the effort of
having to think about it himself, first talked about their work as mindless work, just passing the instruments.
Twisted Vulnerabilities
Let us now change perspective and focus on the person benefiting
from care. This is not hard for us since we are all in that position at
one point or another, whereas we are not necessarily providers of
care. Here, there appears a strange and tenacious tendency to want
to be loved by those who serve us. We would like this part of work to
be given to us. Even the Papin sisters who killed their employers were
in this situation.19 The judge asked them: Did you like your masters?
17
See C. Dejours, Pathologies de la communication, Raisons Pratiques, Vol. 3,
Pouvoir et lgitimit, 1992, pp. 177201.
18
See D. Kergoat, F. Imbert, H. Le Doar, and D. Snotier, Les infirmires et leur
coordination 19881989, Paris, ditions Lamarre, 1992.
19
The Papin sisters were two maids who brutally murdered their employer and
her daughter in 1933, in one of Frances most famous criminal cases. A number of artists and intellectuals (Lacan, Sartre, Genet, De Beauvoir) discussed the case in their
care as work259
No, they responded, they were serving them, thats all.20 In the article
he wrote about them, Jacques Lacan thought he had discovered an
anticipation of the tragedy that was to unfold in the coldness that characterised the relationship between the masters who seem to have
strangely lacked human sympathy and the haughty indifference of
the servants.21 It was as though the presence of love would make it fine
to be served and thus to subordinate; and as though love by itself erased
the chore aspects inherent in care work. What one forces the other to
endure as a result of ones own dependence is therefore veiled by the
combined effects of inconspicuous skills and the justification of service
work by the love of the provider towards the beneficiary. The relationships between love and care work are complex. To love can be a
way to survive for the care giver. It is often believed that love comes
first, and causes the involvement in care work, whereas many situations show that the attachment to the persons cared for is only secondary, or even that this attachment creates a psychological situation
which makes the constraints even more difficult to endure. An example of this is the immigrant nurses from Southern countries who leave
their own children to come and look after children from the North: in
the absence of my own children, the best I could do was to give all my
love to this child, one of them said. Or said another: I work ten hours
a day, I do not know anyone in this area, this child gives me what
I need. All this illustrates how love is naturalised by their female
employers in the terms of the loving and warm temperament of the
women from the South.22
How can we separate care work from the love which tends to mask
it, to justify it or make it unbearable? The pragmatic knowledge of the
nurses and auxiliary nurses, their inconspicuous, discreet skills and
their naturalisation under the category of womanhood are not the only
causes of the invisibility of their work. The ambiguous status of the
writings. In 1963, Louis Le Guillant published an article in Les Temps Modernes
(Sartres journal), entitled Laffaire des soeurs Papin (Nov. 1963, p. 868913) [Added
by the editors].
20
See L. Le Guillant, Laffaire des surs Papin, Les Temps Modernes, Vol. 216,
1963, pp. 869913, p. 894.
21
J. Lacan, Motives of Paranoid Crime: The Crime of the Papin Sisters, Critical
Texts, No. 3, 1988, pp. 711, p. 7.
22
Hochschild, Le nouvel or du monde. On the ambiguity of the feelings mobilised
by waged domestic work, see also S. Esman, Faire le travail domestique chez les
autres. Transcription de linstruction au sosie suivi du commentaire, Travailler, Vol. 8,
2002, pp. 4572.
260
pascale molinier
mobilised affectivity on the one hand, and the care relation on the
other, constitute another motive of the invisibility of care, or more precisely of the difficulty to account for it publicly.
In my fieldwork research, the material is gathered in small groups of
a few people who have agreed to talk about the difficulties of their
work. A beautiful woman recounts with uneasiness that she has agreed
to the request of a sick patient in intensive care who was confined to his
bed through tubes and pipes. He had asked her if she could arrange her
hair in a way he found suited her more. Is this still care or is it already
a transgression, a kind of erotic play? How far can self-sacrifice (don de
soi or literally, to give oneself) go before losing oneself? How do the
nurses manage not to confuse everything? The erotic dimension of
their relationship is not lost on the nurse. This gesture of arranging her
hair made her uneasy. If however she did agree to fulfil the patients
desire, it is not out of love for him, but out of compassion. The nurses
often say that the main reason they can sometimes transgress the rules
is their conviction that the patients have no one else to look after them.
In this particular group of nurses, this story elicits others which once
again poses the question of the boundaries that cannot be crossed,
even out of compassion. For instance, they tell of an old man who
asked to be slipped into a short nightgown of pink lace. The nurses
agreed to put it on him, but refused to wash him in it when he also
requested this.
The knowledge of the nurses can hardly be formulated in the public sphere because this knowledge about our intimacy reveals not
only that vulnerability is the norm, but also that as vulnerable beings
we are also twisted beings: the twisted beings that have to be cared
for, and those who care for them who are no less twisted themselves.
Indeedthe title of this chapter could just as well be twisted vulnerabilities as mutual vulnerabilities. Mutual vulnerabilities is only an
approximation, partly inaccurate, to indicate that it is more apt to
think of the asymmetry characteristic of the care relation as a form of
work, one for the other, rather than as one is vulnerable, the other
not. This is because, as the psychodynamic of health work suggests,
it is not possible to take into consideration the vulnerability of the
other without mobilising ones own sensitivity, that is, without taking
the risk of being destabilised by the twisted expressions of ones own
subjectivity.
To relegate intimate bodily care into the category of dirty work,
tasks performed by the least qualified women, is therefore an easy way
care as work261
out for everyones peace of mind. Indeed, we can add that the cultural
taboo relating to the activities of touching human waste and dead bodies, as well as the discourse of those who accomplish these tasks, tends
to opportunely mask the taboo that goes even deeper relating to sexuality and the ambiguities of affectivity.
The nurses, and even more so, the auxiliary nurses, cannot describe
their work using general representations, even less can they model it
through numbers and diagrams. In order to make someone understand what they do, they have to tell a succession of twisted stories
where vulnerability is in no way synonymous with innocence, transparency or goodness. This succession of stories which the nurses
tirelessly tell each other as soon as the opportunity arises helps them
build a common ethic that cannot be separated from a community of
sensitivity. What is one to do when one keeps finding two old ladies in
the same bed every morning? Can one tolerate that a patient secretly
drinks alcohol? A dying patient prefers to smoke rather than eat
should one give him this last pleasure? Or should one give in to his
family who refuse to accept the imminence of his death and demand
that the auxiliary nurses confiscate his cigarettes and force him to eat?
Making oneself pretty, tolerating anothers sexuality (and a twisted one
at that), letting someone drink or smoke, authorising illicit pleasures
and sometimes authorising them to oneself: what these peers judge
collectively is not the transgression itself, according to the norms of
(well done) work and the good life, but rather the degree to which the
transgression belongs to the sphere of care. What orients public deliberation is not the intimate dimension of pleasure for the personperhaps the nurse did take some pleasure from the seduction of her raised
hairbut rather the highest shared goal of health work, which consists
in ensuring that the other suffers the least. Conversely, deliberation is
also what enables the nurses and auxiliary nurses to avoid giving in
without control to transgression and its ambiguities. Recognition by
their peers unfolds in the very exercise of this community of sensitivity, via the mediation of those stories that constitute it and through
which the rules of the trade are constantly elaborated. Those rules enable them to adjudicate over what belongs or does not belong to good
work.
Even though care work at first appears difficult to grasp, it is accessible through narration. Transforming it into a story does not aim for
truth or objectivity but it tends to give expression to what cannot be
expressed, namely that which resists the dominant symbolic order.
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pascale molinier
Can any of this be said publicly? There is a great risk that the attempt
to bear witness to the effects of the real upon ones own subjectivity
leads one to become ensnared in the traps of confession, in a situation
where the other is judge and censor of a subjectivity that would then be
perceived unilaterally as inappropriate or deviant. Most models of care
escape this danger because they cheat with reality by not accounting
for the sexually incorrect character of the care relation, which is anything but a marginal dimension of it, or by overlooking the disgust and
hate that care work sometimes causes towards recipients.23
Politics and Practice, Virility and Femininity
The nurses movement which emerged in France at the end of the
1980s represented an important shift in the history of this profession.
It contributed to legitimacy for the nurses, of the values associated
with their work. But their collective power of action did not reach its
goal of modifying the perception of the representatives of the state. The
encounter between them failed. The representatives of the state, after
an initial stage where they were destabilised, eventually managed to
reduce this legitimacy and the political scope of the nurses movement
by reducing it to feminine pathos. A member of the health ministers
department summed up the misunderstanding in the following terms:
It was incredible. These girls from the nurses coalition, they would
tell you in detail the problems of their everyday life! They were quite
moving and touching, but how can you negotiate with a slice of life?
Whilst on the other side: We realised that the quality of care is not
their problem. For them, things have to work without the human side
being taken into consideration. They have no clue about what a hospital is really like, our life.24 It is interesting to note that in the nurses
discourse, the quality of care and the human are identified. The
definition of care stands at the heart of the misunderstanding.
Undoubtedly the nurses strategy was not the best one; it is important to be able to change the mode of enunciation when one shifts
from the practical to the political. However, beyond their failure,
See Cohen, Histories de naissances et de mort; P. Molinier, La haine et lamour,
la bote noire du fminisme? Une critique de lthique du dvouement, Nouvelles
Questions Fministes, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2004. pp. 1225.
24
The quotes are from Kergoat, Imbert, Le Doar, and Snotier, Les infirmires et
leur coordination 19881989, pp. 107108.
23
care as work263
ifwewant to find a mode of expression more appropriate to the political expression of care, a necessary condition is to understand the
obstacles to the understanding between the politicians and the nurses
(and more broadly the care providers). Amongst these obstacles, some
are defensive.
Indeed what the two quotes above demonstrate is that the nurses
and the state (through its representatives) not only expressed themselves on different levels, but also in different registers, the virile and
the feminine respectively, which made them unable to hear each other.
By feminine and virile, I mean defensive positions that have nothing to
do with the essence of men or women, but have everything to do with
the arbitrariness of the social and sexual division of labour.25 This arbitrariness creates different experiences leading to forms of subjectivation that are not only very distinct, but also antagonistic. There is a
conflict of interest between collective defence strategies that are elaborated to support the suffering caused by care work, on the one hand,
and the collective defence strategies of politicians, managers and doctors who are mainly male. What does this refer to? Research in the
psychodynamics of work has shown that the involvement of workers is
mostly dependent on the symbolic resonance that can exist between
work and the inner space inherited from childhood, that is, on the possibility of using what they do to develop a sense of self and overcome
the suffering inherent in their psychological development. Suffering
therefore predates entrance into the world of work. Suffering is an
experience that cannot be separated from embodimentno suffering
without bodyand that can never be fully represented. As a result,
subjective suffering is always awaiting its meaning, both to allow the
subject to perform a reflexive return to its being in the world, and to
25
The thesis of a simultaneous construction of gender identities and the sexual
division of labour can be found in a number of authors. Lisa Adkins, Mobile Desire:
Aesthetics, Sexuality and the Lesbian at Work, Sexualities, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2000,
pp. 201218 in particular, following Judith Butler, insists on the mobile, or even flexible (in the neo-liberal sense) characteristics of gender identities produced by service
activities, especially in commercial activities. In contrast, my own research leads me to
emphasise rather the contribution of work to the parts of gender identities and the
sexual division of labour that are the most fixed and the least susceptible to change,
inasmuch as these parts resist change because of their defensive function. Although
I cannot develop this point further here, men (who are in the minority in a female
collective) can take on feminine defence strategies, and women virile defence strategies. For example, women doing male work (in the social sense) are not necessarily
different from men. They can well be, however, when expectations and injunctions
addressed to them are different.
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pascale molinier
direct the latter towards action on the world. This is the point where
the subject encounters work: for better, when work is such that it creates something; but also for worse, when work is an obstacle to selffulfilment, when it borders on the absurd or confronts the subject with
major psychological threats like fear. People do not all fall ill in such
deleterious but very ordinary circumstances, because they are able to
develop defence mechanisms between health and sickness. Our
research has shown that certain ways of talking, certain behaviours
and attitudes than can seem aberrant or irrational in the face of classical forms of rationality, become highly intelligible from the point of
view of the function they fulfil in allowing self-preservationwhat
could be called their pathic rationality. In contrast to what psychoanalysis teaches about individual defence mechanisms, it appears that
these odd forms of behaviour belong in fact to systems that are constructed collectively. In other words, there exist ordinary forms of
cooperation whose main purpose is a defensive one, namely to prevent
subjects from thinking about what makes them suffer at work.26
Precisely speaking, in work situations that are dangerous for physical
integrity (the building industry for example) or for psychic integrity
(in particular when one has to assume responsibility for the lives of
others, or accomplish a task that conflicts with ones moral sense),
work collectives mostly composed of men defend themselves against
fear and/or moral suffering by constructing collective defence strategies centred on:
The denial of mens vulnerabilitya real man has no fear/has no
feelings.
The disregard for the vulnerability of others.27
In other words, all those who demonstrate vulnerability, whatever
their biological sex, are excluded from the category of real men.
Whereas from the perspective of care there can only be one model of
the human beinghomo vulnerabilisthe virile defence ideology
constantly reiterates a bipartite division of human beings which
opposes them and hierarchically ranks them: man/woman, strong/
weak, autonomous/dependent, reason/unreason. Such an ideological
construct creates a dominant system of thought we can only escape
with great difficulty.
See Dejours, Pathologies de la communication.
See C. Dejours, Souffrance en France. La banalisation de linjustice sociale, Paris,
Seuil, 1998.
26
27
care as work265
If the nurses and auxiliary nurses (female or male), as in the virile

model, denied their own vulnerability and devalued that of the patients,
they would not be able to accomplish the work of care. Instead, care
providers attempt to work through the suffering caused by care work
amongst them. This suffering therefore cannot be reduced to a mechanism such as patient suffering = carers compassion. The angst generated by the others suffering, or, under a more elaborate form, the
compassionate identification, fail in a number of ways. The experience
of such failures of compassionto realise that one can no longer stand
the patient, that one hates his/her dependence, that one in fact wishes
him or her to disappear, to discover ones own indifference or cruelty
all of this is just as painful and disturbing as the experience of compassion. The most painful situations are sometimes those where the psyche
of the care worker becomes like an internal threat to her and undermines the meaning of work and its established identity features; work
is Nothing to brag about. We will come back to that point.
If nurses and auxiliary nurses simply complained or described their
naked reality, as for instance in an objective witness account, the
expression of their lived experiences would be unbearable for their
interlocutors and for themselves. In that case, there would be no transmission, no deliberation, no construction of a common ethic and a
common sensibility. This shows the added dimension of the pathetic
narratives quoted above: namely, their defensive function. In order to
make the evocation of this experience bearable, one has to distance
oneself from it, to alleviate its ability to create angst. This unburdening and detachment is made possible through the use of humour.
The pathetic narratives of nurses are in fact tragi-comic narratives. The
defensive dimension of this collective story-telling lies precisely in the
fact that nothing can be said that, in the end, one would not be able to
laugh about, even if one cries at the same time. But there is more.
Humour in this situation must serve the capacity to support ones own
vulnerability, which is in itself indispensable for care work. Against
that, it would be much more economical from the psychological point
of view to harden oneself, to cut oneself off, affectively, from the others
distress. Indeed such a hardening is highly encouraged by the concentration that is required of technical work (pricking, probing, cutting
flesh, and so on).28
28
There is a conflict between the types of subjectivity that are mobilised in the
cureand in care. The learning of a technical skill implies that one goes through phases
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pascale molinier
Self-mockery as a Way of Dealing with Defeat
Since what is targeted is truly the maintenance of personal

vulnerabilitywith its corollary, unavoidable failures of subjective
constructs, which cannot be boasted aboutone understands why
the nurses collective defence strategies mobilise a particular form
of humour, namely self-deprecating mockery. They mock themselves, poor women, as others are being mocked for their own
weaknesses. Through this medium of mockery combined with selfmockery, an entire suffering humanity is incarnated: the humanity of
sweating, snoring, limping, fearfully teeth-chattering, individuals.
Eventually, this constitutes a whole universe of common references
where vulnerability and its diverse expressions are, if not necessarily
always pleasant, at least sayable, as the very basis of any ethical demand.
The stories told by nurses and auxiliary nurses could scare anyone.
For instance, one nurse recounts the day when she cleaned a dead body
for the first time. As she started to panic, she unwittingly locked the
door through which she had attempted to flee, thereby locking herself
in with the dead body. Another nurse recounts the day when she was
looking for her broom and discovered a patient hanging in an old attic
full of aged equipment; she ran through the mess, knocking over old
drip-stands and urinals in a hellish racket. A further nurse recounted
herself walking backwards towards an open window as a huge man
came near her screaming insults and death threats. The man had been
rung earlier that day to collect his wife, a temporary contract worker in
charge of the cleaning, who had suffered a nervous breakdown upon
arriving at work that morning. In telling these stories the nurses stage
themselves in episodes where they were facing an event that temporarily terrified and paralysed them, to the extent that they lost their selfcontrol and made themselves utterly ridiculous. By contrast with the
typical stories told by interns, the stories of the nurses do not give centre stage to obscenity or sexual references. Fear and vulnerability are
of trial and error where, as in the case of the interns described by Margaret Cohen, it
is difficult not to feel persecuted by the patients or not to instrumentalise them by
forgetting that one is making them suffer. In order to fully unfold, sensibility to the
suffering of the other requires that the individual has undergone a number of phases
of learning and has become sufficiently expert to be able to distance himself/herself
from the technical act. Only in that case can care complement the cure. Moreover, a
patient who is confident and as relaxed as is possible in the circumstances is much
easier to handle.
care as work267
not denied. On the contrary they are relived and domesticated through
well-crafted stories, many times recounted and embellished throughout a career. These stories attempt to circumscribe the irruption of the
realdefined as what resists mastery through conventional means
not in order to push it outside of shared representations, but rather to
control its effects on the psyche. These stories help transmit and reiterate a culture of the craft/trade (mtier) which is nothing but a way of
living (art de vivre) with defeat. This specific ethos of the nurses craft
is all about acknowledging the limits of all things, starting with ones
own limits, in the face of death, madness, the waste produced by
human bodies, sexuality, and so on. It is also about accepting the failures of embodiment, first and foremost of ones own, notably in the
failures of ones body, for example when the nurse feels her blood curdling, her legs become weaker, disgust, uncontrollable giggles, excitement, and so on. All of this shows that even though self-mockery
coupled with mockery enables the nurses to take a certain measure of
distance and detachment, the latter is anything but indifference. Rather,
such detachment enables the acceptance and elaboration of vulnerability. However, the self-mockery that makes the experiences of care sayable within the collective of peers also makes it unacceptable outside
this narrow circle (outside recognition by the peers). The experiences
of nurses and auxiliary nurses in its authentic expression cannot be
accepted from the vantage point of the dominant (virile) positiona
subjective position which prohibits individuals from laughing at their
own weakness or from expressing any tenderness towards the twisted
individuals that we all are. These stories which constitute in fact a narrative of the experience of care are perceived as slices of life, as anecdotal and not quite serious, and paradoxically can even be taken to
represent a lack of respect towards the patients. The very health of the
staff providing care appears improper. How can you laugh about it?
The Contingency of Care
Nursing is by essence the work of women, wrote Dsire Magloire
Bourneville, who as leader of the reformist doctors at the end of the
nineteenth century was the main proponent of the introduction of
nurses into the public hospitals of Paris.29 The nurse was considered
In Le Progrs mdical, Vol.7, 1878, p. 388.
29
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pascale molinier
atthe time the main vector for the humanisation of care. The candidate
was to be young because that would ensure she would be docile and
malleable so she could be educated according to her own nature (as
a woman), and become an assistant that was tender and dedicated
towards the patients. However, the rationalisation of scientific charity through the division of labour constantly increased during the first
half of the twentieth century. Services are organised according to
pathologies, the organs to be cured, the different ages of life. Health
work becomes more and more fragmented: the distribution of basins
(urinals) and thermometers is assembly-line like, and so on. What is
asked of the nurses is only their obedience (they are considered solely
as operational staff with no power of decision) and their composure in
the face of suffering and deathnot their capacities for compassion.
In the 1970s, a new wave of the humanisation of the hospital
emerges, denouncing this organisation of work and the reification of
patients designated by their room number, the name of their pathology, or even their sick organ.30 Common rooms are abolished, psychiatric hospitals and nursing homes are reformed, and new types of
organisation are invented, like the sectors, day hospitals, long stay, palliative care, child-mother hospitalisation, and so on. New nursing
schools teach a new conception of the nurse, inspired by the AngloSaxon tradition of clinician nurses, which rests on a more holistic conception of the person. New tools and practices are introduced.31 A new
profession is invented: the auxiliary nurse. Their presence, especially
for the patients in long stay, brings an undeniable improvement of living conditions. On all these levels, progress is undeniable, but it is fragile. Today, political choices concerning the restructuring of hospitals
are made according to management and accounting principles. In
particular, the main exercise consists of counting what treatments
of pathologies are cost-effective, or not based on a conception of the
treatment that is entirely aligned with productivist models. The main
proponent of this kind of hospital management in France writes:
It is wrong to oppose quality and quantitative evaluation. Agreed, not
everything can be measured easily, but companies in the industrial sector have established quantitative measurements for the satisfaction of
their clients, rates of faults in the manufacture of electronic components,
See M. Abiven, Humaniser lhospital, Paris, Fayard, 1976.
See B. Walter, Le savoir infirmier. Construction, volution, rvolution de la pense
infirmire, Lamarre-Poinat, 1988.
30
31
care as work269
rates of error in payroll or invoicing systems. Quality can also be measured. This is exactly what the zero default in quality circles aims for32
In the hospitals case, quality indicators are rates of falls, number of

iatrogenic infections, and so oncare is never mentioned. Quality
means something different from the perspective of management principles than it does for nurses and auxiliary nurses. In the perspective of
management, care is reduced to the mention of basic human gestures, to quote an expression from the press during the 2003 heatwave.
The term basic signifies not only that the complexity of care is trivialised, but also that care and the human could be handed over to
volunteers.
Care is not rooted in human nature. It is not triggered automatically
by contact with the helplessness and dependence of others. Care is
produced by a collective effort, a culture of caring for others, which is
contingent and can disappear. As the organisation of work no longer
makes satisfactory solutions possible, new collective defence strategies
have been identified in a number of auxiliary nurse collectives. These
new strategies make the nurses sort out the patients between those
who are deemed to deserve to be treated as full persons (mainly those
who cooperate and show gratitude) and those who are to be treated as
sub-members of the human species, or even as things, because they
slow down work and make it harder without showing any gratitude:
typically, senile patients who have lost their heads, drug addicts,
alcoholics who only get what they deserve, or women the day after a
suicide attempt who are just acting. There is only a small step from
care to instituted maltreatment. Tomorrow, a hospital without care is
possible.
Contemporary reflection on care is rich and full of promises.
However, it will only fulfil this promise if it takes into consideration
the material and psychological dimensions of care work. This requires
interdisciplinary work between philosophers, sociologists and psychologists. Otherwise there is a danger that an abstract, top-down perspective will be taken which will pass moral judgement on practices
and the individuals who perform them and deem them deviant. These
individuals will find it all the more difficult to make themselves heard
as they are at the bottom of the social ladder. In that case, care would
J. Kervasdou, Lhpital, Paris, PUF, 2004, p. 109.
32
270
pascale molinier
become the good conscience of the elites. The main tasks for this interdisciplinary reflection would therefore be the following: to account for
the tensions, twists and contradictions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity; to acknowledge the impact of the organisation of work on the
capacity to provide respectful handling of patients; to analyse the
cursed share of dirty work in care workand most importantly, not
to dissociate the two; to account for the complexity of care work on a
psychological level; to uncover the forms of virility in expert discourses; and to identify the blind spot of work in political analysis,
especially of female work.33
Translated from the French by Jean-Philippe Deranty and Nicholas
H. Smith.
33
This essay was first published in French as Le care lpreuve du travail.
Vulnrabilits croises et savoir-faire discrets, in eds. Patricia Paperman and Sandra
Laugier, Le souci des autres. thique et politique du care, Paris, Editions de lEHESS,
2006, pp. 299316.
PART FOUR
WORK, RECOGNITION AND THE CHANGING FACE OF

CAPITALISM
Chapter ten
Admiration without appreciation? The paradoxes

of recognition of doubly subjectivised work1
Stephan Voswinkel
The self-understanding of bourgeois society is characterised by the fact
that it is mainly work which provides the criteria for the social recognition of subjects. This emphasis on work distinguishes bourgeois society from other forms of social life, in whichas Thorstein Veblen had
already shownit was precisely conspicuous leisure which grounded
social prestige, whilst work was seen as degrading.2 Such an attitude
towards work was a feature both of Antiquity, with its belief that work
contradicts the freedom of the citizen, and the Catholic Middle-ages,
which saw work as a punishment for the fall from grace.
As Weber has shown, the work ethic which arose with the developing bourgeois society came to prominence through the cultural impact
of Protestantism; more particularly via a secularised version of Luthers
theory of vocation, as well as the teaching of Calvin and Puritanism.
Success in professional work was a sign of divine election.3 After the
demise of religious worldviews, this work ethic is maintained through
the iron cage of the market.
However, this notion of recognition through work is very general
and undetermined from two points of view. First, it must be specified
which work and what in work is the object of recognition. And
secondly, one must specify what type of recognition is provided by
work.
1
Special recognition is due to Ursula Holtgrewe for her part in developing many
aspects of this concept and the reflections in this essay. The essay was first published in
German in Axel Honneth ed., Befreiung aus der Mndigkeit, Frankfurt/M., Campus,
2002, pp. 6592.
2
See T. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, New York, MacMillan, 1899.
3
See M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York,
Scribner, 1958 [1920].
274
stephan voswinkel
1. Recognition through which Type of Work?
If we look more closely, we realise that even in bourgeois society (and

this was already the case in Protestantism, as Weber saw) it is not work
strictly speaking which provides recognition, but rather success in
ones profession (Beruf), the wealth (Reichtum) secured through work,
and ones position (Position) in the market or the organisation. But in
the achievement society, (Leistungsgesellschaft) success, wealth and
social position must not (just) be obtained through inheritance, luck
or theft, but rather through work. At the same time though, recognition does not arise from hard work, the type of work that is simple,
exerting and dirty. Michael Walzer describes this type of work in the
following terms: This kind of work is a negative good, and it commonly carries other negative goods in its train: poverty, insecurity, illhealth, physical danger, dishonour and degradation.4
The claim of bourgeois society to confer recognition and prestige in
proportion to work has therefore always had a split meaning. Indeed,
the question of which type of work is worthy of recognition, and which
performance or achievement (Leistung) is recognised in what measure, has been and still is a matter of social negotiation and definition.
For this reason work and performance separate two values of recognition. This can be defined as a paradox ofor put more carefully a tension withinwork-based recognition. And it is this tension which
time and again has led to struggles for the recognition of work, in line
with changes in working cultures, as well as forms of institutionalisation and normative structuring of work and performance/achievement,
and the legal regulation of work. In these confrontations society also
deals with the fundamental problems of legitimation that are linked to
this split recognition.
The thesis that this chapter defends is that contemporary transformations in the world of work lead to renewed confrontations around
the definition of recognition-worthy work and performance. What is
at stake here is a new definition of the type of recognition that particular
types of work receive. This leads us to the second important qualification that needs to be made if we want to address the recognition of
work.
M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice, Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1983, p. 165.
admiration without appreciation?275

2. Which Recognition of Work?
At this stage a few reflections on the concept of recognition are needed.

Recognition can first be regarded as the medium of social integration,
through which social norms and values get transported into the
identities of subjects. Following a long social-theoretical and socialpsychological tradition, recognition is the condition of identity formation. Adam Smith first emphasised the link between external evaluation
and self-evaluation,5 then George Herbert Mead took the dialectical
reciprocal mechanism of taking the perspective of the other as fundamental for the social identity of the me and the creative response
of the ego-identity of the I.6 Cognitive and normative evaluative
dimensions are here tightly interwoven. Not only do I develop what
and who I am in the confrontation with the gaze of the other, but also
how I evaluate myself is determined in the confrontation I have with
others evaluations of me.7
The relationship between social and ego-identity is therefore conceived by Mead as a dynamic, dialectical one.8 The I can only arise
by orienting itself to others, on the basis of the me, but it also transforms this orientation by responding to normative expectations in a
specific way, by adapting or contravening them.9 The I then becomes
a moment of social transformation when it demands social recognition of its specificity and thereby attempts to change the expectations
which bring recognition when one meets them.
However, the idiosyncratic character of the I should not be conceived solely as metaphysical creativity, as a sign of the uniqueness of
5
See A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 2002 [1795].
6
See G. H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society, Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
1934.
7
See especially U. Holtgrewe, S. Voswinkel and G. Wagner, Fr eine
Anerkennungssoziologie der Arbeit. Einleitende berlegungen, in U. Holtgrewe,
S. Voswinkel and G. Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, Konstanz, 2000, pp. 926;
U. Holtgrewe, Anerkennung und Arbeit in der Dienst-Leisungs-Gesellschaft. Eine
identittstheoretische Perspektive, in eds. M. Moldaschl and G. G. Vo, Subjektivierung
von Arbeit, Mnchen/Mering, 2002, pp. 195218; S. Voswinkel, Anerkennung und
Reputation. Die Dramaturgie industrieller Beziehungen, Konstanz, 2001, p. 69;
G. Wagner, Anerkennung und Individualisierung, University of Bielefeld Dissertation,
2001, Chapter II.
8
L. Stanko, Arbeit und Identitt, in eds. D. Kahsnitz, G. Ropohl and A. Schmid,
Handbuch zur Arbeitslehre, Mnchen/Wien, 1997, p. 71.
9
Wagner, Anerkennung und Individualisierung, p. 76.
276
stephan voswinkel
the individual, but also in its turn as being in a sense a functional

requirement of social interaction and of the capacity of subjects to be
identified and made accountable. If the individual did not take over
socially defined behavioural requirements, there could be no convergence of expectations nor a common horizon of understanding. But if
the individual did not transform these expectations in a way that
allowed for the development of a consistent ego-identity, then there
would be no subject to identify and hold responsible, which is a condition of social interactions. This is all the more true for social rela
tions in which the subject is exposed to different expectations from
different others in changing situations and varied social contexts; in
other words in situations in which the subject has different mes.10
Krappmann has therefore characterised successful identity-formation
in modern conditions as balancing identity, in the sense that identity
involves a balance between the acceptance of expectations from others
and the simultaneous rejection of them as a result of the individuality
of the subject.11
But the concepts of balancing identity and dialectic of me and I
themselves already involve the idea of a successful unification of the
diverging demands that stem from the recognition of others, on the
one hand, and self-formation on the other. This process of unification
can, however, also fail. Accordingly, one could diagnose pathological
cases in which a subject obsessively striving for recognition can only
conform to the (changing) expectations of otherslike the Riesmanian
character driven from the outside12or alternatively cases in which
the subject only follows its own spontaneous impulses in autistic fashion, or constructs his self-recognition by reference to imaginary relationships, to posterity or higher beings.
Consequently it makes sense to emphasise the twofold character of
recognition and to distinguish between an aspect of limitation or
boundary-drawing on the one hand, and an aspect of making possible on the other. Since it is a condition of identity formation, recognition places limits on it, by keeping identity tied to the fulfilment of
social expectations. But recognition also makes identity formation
10
See Voswinkel, Anerkennung und Reputation, p. 72; Wagner, Anerkennung und
Individualisierung, p. 77.
11
L. Krappmann, Soziologische Dimensionen der Identitt, Stuttgart, 1969, p. 79.
12
See D. Riesman, R. Denney and N. Glazer, The Lonely Crowd, Yale University
Press, 2001 [1950].
possible since identity cannot be thought without recognition. Making

possible then means two separate things: recognition as a condition of
identity on the one hand; and even creative identities must constitute
themselves in social terms inasmuch as they strive for recognition.
The distinctive relationship between these two dimensions of recognition results from the self-formative process of the subject. This relationship is however also a characteristic feature of social relations of
recognition, in other words of culturally stabilised and often institutionalised forms of social evaluation, that are to be granted to individuals, collectives, values and ways of life. A culture of individualisation
is characterised by the fact that individual particularity is itself a reference point for social recognition and is thus normatively expected.13
Another fundamental twofold aspect of recognition concerns its
relational versus competitive dimensions. Recognition relates first of
all to shared values. It is granted for the fulfilment of expectations
resulting from an intersubjectively shared horizon of value and
thereby has a social-moral content.14 On the other hand, recognition is
also given to the capacity to assert oneself, to make things happen, for
the latter is a condition of identity. Recognition therefore refers not just
to morality but also to power.15 The link to morality characterises the
13
See A. Honneth, Organisierte Selbstverwirklichung. Paradoxien der Indi
vidualisierung, in ed. A. Honneth, Befreiung aus der Mndigkeit, Frankfurt/MNew York, Campus-Verlag, 2002, pp. 141158.
14
A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Polity,
1995.
15
Power is used here in a general sense, for instance in the sense given by Giddens,
that is, without a priori negative connotations, as the transformative capacity of
human actions. A. Giddens, Macht in den Schriften von Talcott Parsons in ed.
P. Imbusch, Macht und Herrshaft. Sozialwissenschaftliche Konzeptionen und Theorien,
Opladen, 1998, pp. 131147, p.145. The twofold referential link of recognition can first
be grounded in a functional way: it is not just that social integration is served by moral,
normatively adequate action that makes a social contribution; equally, efficient action
must be stimulated so that the capacity for action and the reliability of agents is recognised and with it the success of collective action. But the double character of recognition can also be grounded historically and empirically: recognition linked to status and
criteria of social evaluation such as fame and birth in estate societies is not at all
moral in nature, but relates rather to force and victory. (S. Neckel and J. Wolf, Die
Faszination der Amoralitt. Zur Systemtheorie der Moral, mit Seitenblicken auf ihre
Resonanzen, Prokla, Vol. 70, No. 18, 1988, pp. 5777, p. 63). And finally, from a theoretical perspective we should enlarge the dual relation of recognition with more agents.
The way in which Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit outlines the recognitive relation means that the devaluation of the slave by the master leads to the paradoxical
result that the recognition of the master by the slave loses its significance for the master
himself. In that case, however, the master can receive recognition from a third or
fourth party, and precisely for his superiority over the slave. (See T. Todorov, Abenteuer
278
stephan voswinkel
relational side of recognition, the link to power the competitive,

differentiating side.
Against the background of this twofold character of recognition,
two modalities of recognition can be distinguished:
1) First, a recognition which rests on belonging, to a group or a
community of value. This recognition functions as a kind of
payment in return (Gegenleistung) in relations of social reciprocity and expresses appreciation for the contribution of the
subject. This type of recognition has a strong link to the community and confirms the binding elements of the performance
(Leistung). It is close to the gratitude which Simmel characterised as the moral memory of humanity, as emotional reciprocity, the to and fro of service rendered and service in return
(Leistung und Gegenleistung). I call this modality of recognition
appreciation (Wrdigung). A specific nuance in such a model of
recognition is when recognition relates to a contribution which
is understood as sacrifice (of something or indeed of oneself).
2) A second type of recognition must be distinguished from the
first, namely recognition which emphasises difference. This is
the recognition granted to singularity, great achievements,
impressive success, superiority, originality. This recognition
does not presuppose proximity, indeed it often involves distance,
or in some cases a proximity of fascination through distance,
like the fan may feel towards the star. We can call this modality
of recognition admiration. Admiration corresponds to prestige,
high rank, or success on the market and is therefore a vertical
form of recognition: from bottom to top.16
An important difference between the two modalities of recognition
consists in the fact that appreciation is more morally grounded. This
makes for both its strength and its weakness compared with admiration. Appreciation can be morally demanded more so than admiration
(it is more readily the object of a valid moral claim than is success), but
appreciation also relies on corresponding moral worlds of norms
des Zusammenlebens. Versuch einer allgemeinen Anthropologie, Berlin, 1996, p. 36). In
a similar way, Popitz grounds recognition in the essential reciprocal recognition of the
powerful, a mutual recognition which grants them authority even in the eyes of the
subordinated. H. Popitz, Phnomene der Macht, Tbingen, 2nd edition, 1992, p. 198).
16
Here we could distinguish further between admiration granted to superiority
(vertical) as opposed to recognition granted to singularity (more horizontal).
(whereas success generates its own charisma, appreciation must be

based on a moral duty).17 Since in modern societies one cannot rely on
morality on its own, appreciation is often secured through law and is
fixed in rituals.
Appreciation provides an alternative form of prestige, it grants recognition to agents with little power, success or prestige. As a result,
however, it also contains an ambivalence: appreciation can potentially
express contempt as well as recognition. When it is enshrined in law
and through ritual, it counteracts the weakness arising from a mere
moral foundation and it spares subjects of having to ask for it, but it
loses its emotional-moral content and can become a mere form without substance. Even if it is morally legitimate, appreciation must still be
acquired by way of power, for the very definition of what counts as a
contribution or as sacrifice is the result of social struggle.18
Social relations of recognition are also characterised by their given
combination of admiration and appreciation. And the thesis to be
defended in this chapter is that changes in the social relations of recognition can be understood precisely as a re-combination of the recognition modes of admiration and appreciation.
3. Recognition Relations in Taylorism
We can now return to the question of how bourgeois society deals with
the tensions inherent in recognition based on work and the legitimation problems linked to it. Recognition must be based on work but
only some types of work find recognition. Work must be the precondition for recognition, but it is precisely work which differentiates the
amount of recognition an individual receives. A first step for dealing
with this problem consists in linking the life situation (that is, social
security and ones general status as a normal citizen) to normal work
relationships. Robert Castel argues that the status of work represents
the modern equivalent to forms of social security that were traditionally ensured by property.19 However, given the extent to which wage
In this caseand in this case onlycan sacrifices be a morally grounded

resource.
18
For a full delineation of admiration versus appreciation, see Voswinkel,
Anerkennung und Reputation, section B.
19
See R. Castel, From Manual Workers to Wage labourers. Transformation of the
Social Question, trans. R. Boyd, New Brunswick NJ, Transaction, 2003 [1995].
17
280
stephan voswinkel
labour is generalised, the status attached to it loses its capacity to

ground distinction and prestige. From now on, social status results
from the relative position taken in wage labour.20 The ambivalence of
recognition based on work is reproduced in this way.
Another way of dealing with this ambivalence relates back to the
different modalities of recognition and combines admiration and
appreciation in a specific way. Admiration then goes to work which
brings high prestige, which is valued as a special achievement (Leistung)
and is expressed in economic and professional success. This recognition presupposes a common horizon of valuation, but it does not relate
to belonging to a community and does not rest in the first instance on
moral norms. This form of recognition is not accessible to types of
work that are considered simple, laborious, dirty or invisible, especially those that do not count as waged work at all.
For these types of work there remains the modality of appreciation,
as the recognition of efforts, exertions, perhaps even of sacrifice. In the
case of appreciation the normal performance is also recognised, the
work of those who do their duty, without thereby aiming for success.
The failure to have this moral expectation for appreciation met is what
employees particularly expressas Hermann Kotthoff21 has shown in
particularly striking fashion, after Gouldner22when the company
fails to treat them with consideration in difficult situations or with sufficient patience when mistakes are made; when they are devalued if
their performance diminishes as they become older; when their knowledge based on experience is not recognised; or when in difficult economic situations they are treated as mere labour power and are
retrenched without regret or securing their future.
Appreciation, as a moral form of recognition based on reciprocal
interaction, usually presupposes communality and belonging. In
German work relations, it was mainly the company which ensured this
belonging. This form of appreciation undoubtedly often possessed a
vertical aspect in the sense of the care (Frsorge) that was particularly
rife in patriarchal social orders. It is precisely the reason why institutionalisations of appreciation through work committees (Betriebsrte)
See ibid., p. 284.
See H. Kotthoff, Anerkennung und sozialer Austausch. Die soziale Konstruktion
von Betriebsbrgerschaft, in eds. Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and Wagner, Anerkennung
und Arbeit, 2000, pp. 2736.
22
See A. Gouldner, Wildcat Strike, New York, Antioch, 1954.
20
21
and trade unions were so important as they made it possible to establish forms of appreciation without this sense of assistance. They established true relations of recognition instead of patriarchal company
communities (Betriebsgemeinschaft), which Kotthoff named company
citizenship (Betriebsbrgerschaft).23 And it seems plausible that with
such institutions a basis and an arena of recognition were created in
which wide-ranging demands of self-realisation and self-determination
could be developed by the employees and their representatives.
On the other hand however this form of recognition under Taylorian
conditions was alsoor even, justthe other side of the devaluation
of Taylorised work, its depreciation in terms of prestige, and the contempt towards workers in the work processes, their reduction and
objectification to the status of operatives in an optimised functional
system. We know that subjectivity, in the actual practice of the Taylorian
system, was in no way eliminated, indeed was often the condition for
the actual functioning of the work systems. But subjectivity played that
role only tacitly, not really as being recognised, or indeed only as tacitly recognised.24 Subjectivity lived in the hidden situations of companies, as Konrad Thomas25 said, or, as Volmerg, Senghaas-Knobloch
and Leithuser put it, in the lifeworld of the company,26 that is, in the
informal handing out of reciprocal consideration between foreman
and worker, but also in the creative and playful attempts at putting the
work situation in a new light. On the one hand, such recognition was
iron-clad in rituals of appreciation: for instance in twenty-fifth anniversaries of employment and company vacations. On the other hand, it
was consolidated by regulations such as work rights, by social policies
at the level of the company and the State that transformed the claim
to appreciation into a rights claim, a claim that ensured that the dimension of (selective) care was no longer present; a dimension, which
even though it might have been a guarantee of recognition, would
have still entrenched the power and authority of the company. Examples
23
See H. Kotthoff, Betriebsrte und Brgerstatus, Wandel und Kontinuitt betrieblicher Mitbestimmung, Mnchen/Mering, 1994.
24
See H. Kocyba, Der Preis der Anerkennung: Von der tayloristischen Missachtung
zur strategischen Instrumentalisierung der Subjektivitt der Arbeitenden, in eds.
Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, 2000, pp. 127140,
p. 128.
25
See K. Thomas, Die betriebliche Situation der Arbeiter, Stuttgart, 1964.
26
See B. Volmerg, E. Senghaas-Knobloch and T. Leithuser, Betriebliche Lebenswelt.
Eine Sozialpsychologie industrieller Arbeitsverhltnisse, Opladen, 1986.
282
stephan voswinkel
of such regulations are: sick leave provisions and certain rights, insurances and company bonuses linked to seniority. Such rituals and regulations were thus secured collectively, without the deep logic of
contempt (Missachtungslogik) of Taylorism being undermined by
them.
Domestic and family workif I may be allowed this shift of focus
that is unusual in mainstream sociology of workfollowed a similar
pattern. This type of work does not receive any recognition as admiration either: it is rather appreciated as a form of fulfilment of duty.
Gabriele Wagner has emphasised the gender dimension in recognitive
relations of work and has characterised it aptly as a form of recognition
based on harmonious inequality.27 This aspect is well captured in
the image of the mother who is excluded from public life and may
expect admiration through the career of her husband, but appreciation
as a mother happy to sacrifice herself, who might claim this appreciation in the rituals of Mothers day. In this particular case, there
was, other than industrial work, no possibility to counteract the patriarchal logic of appreciation through institutionalisations and regulations of recognition.
Both fields of appreciationTaylorian work and domestic and family workcorresponded to the duty ethic of work, which manifests
precisely the sacrifice aspect of work granting a right to a claim of
appreciation.
The Taylorian form of recognition can therefore be delineated in
three categories: it misrecognised work and workers through the
objectification of work processes, the reduction of working individuals to beings akin to machines,28 and in such a context the recognition
of subjectivity was only possible tacitly. Such non-recognition of work
was to some extent compensated by appreciation for contribution to
the common creation of value, although this appreciation took patriarchal forms (as in the case of care), or more cooperative or more legalised forms (such as company citizenship). This mode of recognition as
appreciation rested on the duty ethic of work, in which work was
defined as a burden rather than as self-realisation, and the honour of
work was linked precisely to supporting this burden.
Wagner, Anerkennung und Individualisierung, p. 185.
E. Senghaas-Knobloch and B. Nagler, Von der Arbeitskraft zur Berufsrolle?
Anerkennung als Herausforderung fr die industrielle Arbeitskultur im Rahmen
neuer Organisations- und Managementkonzepte, in eds. Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and
Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, 2000, pp. 101126, p. 110.
27
28
4. Transformations of Recognition Relations in Post-Taylorism and the

Subjectivisation of Work
I would now like to show the extent to which the transformation from
Taylorism to post-Taylorism (however one characterises it) represents
a crisis of the recognition relations characteristic of the former. The
recognition of work becomes socially negotiated in new forms and
debated with new terms of reference. This is in no way a linear or predetermined process.
The concept of post-Taylorism used here is purposely vague. It
points to a number of transformations that can only be summarily outlined here:
The transformation of company structures with the aim of a
decentralisation and marketisation of decisions changes the constraints and frames of action and modifies simultaneously the
action orientations.29
This goes together with the increased value put on short-term
measures of success, a short-term economy and short-term
bonds. This is encapsulated in the concept and the corporate
model of shareholder-value.30

Decentralisation of businesses and short-term economy are
accompanied by the erosion of long-term bonds between businesses and employees as well as the diminished opportunity for
career paths.31
The emergence of a new type of manager,32 who not being bound
to the firm and the company and mainly oriented to short-term
changes of position, is mainly interested in individual success that
29
See M. Moldasch and D. Sauer, Internalisierung des MarktesZur neuen
Dialektik von Kooperation und Herrschaft, in ed. H. Minssen, Begrenzte
Entgrenzungen, Berlin, 2000, pp. 205224; G. Bender, Lohnarbeit zwischen Autonomie
und Zwang, Frankfurt am Main/New York, 1997.
30
See M. Schumann, Frit die Shareholder-Value-konomie die Modernisierung
der Arbeit?, in eds. H. Hirsch-Kreinsen and H. Wolf, Arbeit, Gesellschaft, Kritik,
Berlin, 1998, pp. 1930; R. Springer, Rckkehr zum Taylorismus? Arbeitspolitik in der
Automobilindustrie am Scheideweg, Frankfurt am Main/New York, 1999.
31
See M. Faust, P. Jauch and P. Notz, Befreit und entwurzelt: Fhrungskrfte auf dem
Weg zum internen Unternehmer, Mnchen/Mering, 2000; U. Heisig and W. Littek,
Wandel von Vertrauensbeziehungen im Arbeitsproze, Soziale Welt, Vol. 46, No. 3,
1995, pp. 282304.
32
See K. Inkson, A. Heising and D. M. Rousseau, The Interim Manager: Prototype
of the 21st-Century Worker?, Human Relations, Vol. 54. No. 3, 2001, pp. 259284.
284
stephan voswinkel
can be quickly demonstrated.33 This is accompanied by the

demise of the old corporate culture.34
The shift away from the model of Taylorism is especially evident
in the new valuation of the self-organisation of employees. Processes are replaced by objectives, which means that it is left to the
employeesor expected of themto determine through which
form of work and organisation they will reach these targets.
Related to this is a reappraisal of human capital as a reserve of
productivity. Flexibility and creativity are demanded, together
with identification with the objectives of the company or the
department, which are often defined in narrow market-terms.35
The last point in particular is covered by the term subjectivisation of
work. This is a multi-dimensional concept which seems especially
appropriate to capture the difference with Taylorism, as it emphasises
as a new central phenomenon in work the subjective requirements
which in Taylorism were factually present but not represented in the
model.36 Kleemann, Matuschek and Vo in their review of the literature
which diagnoses in different ways and through different explanations
the phenomenon of the subjectivisation of work, distinguish between
six different processes and forms of application of the concept:
A subjectivised activity of work, as necessary complement to
more technical, mainly computerised work,
subjective work performances as conditions of post-Taylorian
work organisations,
33
K. Drre, Unternehmerische Globalstrategien, neue Managementkonzepte und
die Zukunft der industriellen Beziehungen, in ed. U. Kadritzke, Unternehmenskulturen
unter Druck, Berlin, 1997, pp. 1544, p. 22.
34
H. Kotthoff, Betriebsrte und betriebliche Reorganisation, Arbeit, Vol. 4, No. 4.
1995, pp. 425447, p. 443.
35
See H. -J. Braczyk and G. Schienstock, Im Lean-Expre zu einem neuen
Produktionsmodell? Lean Production in Wirtschaftsunternehmen BadenWrttembergsKonzepte, Wirkungen, Folgen, in eds. H. -J. Braczyk and G.
Schienstock, Kurswechsel in der Industrie: Lean Production in Baden-Wrttemberg,
Stuttgart/Berlin/Kln, Kohlhammer, 1996, pp. 269329; H. Kocyba and U. Vormbusch,
Partizipation als Managementstrategie, Frankfurt am Main/New York, 2000; H.
Minssen, Von der Hierarchie zum Diskurs? Die Zumutungern der Selbstregulation,
Mnchen/Mering, 1999; M. Moldaschl, konomien des Selbst. Subjektivitt in der
Unternehmergesellschaft, in eds. J. Klages and S. Timpf, Facetten der Cyberwelt,
Hamburg, 2002, pp. 2962; U. Vormbusch, Diskussion und Disziplin, Frankfurt am
Main/New York, 2002.
36
See F. Kleemann, I. Matuschek and G. Vo, Subjektivierung von Arbeit. Ein
berblick zum Stand der soziologischen Diskussion, in eds. Moldaschl and Vo,
Subjektivierung von Arbeit, pp. 53100.

subjective ways of shaping the work-life relationship,
demands on individuals to self-direct their professional
biographies,
specific demands on the shape of work relations for women,
normative subjectivisation as a result of transformations in values
of work.
In relation to the discussion conducted in this chapter, I would like

to reduce this complexity to two main themes: on the one hand,
thesubjectivisation of work designates the expectations of employees,
on the other, the demands of businesses for subjective work performances. These two dimensions might well complement each other,
but it is also highly likely that there are conflicts and dissonances
between them.
However, the shift from Taylorism to post-Taylorism is not a unified
process. Just as it would have been impossible previously to talk about
a general implementation of Taylorism, it is not possible today to talk
about a general shift away from it. Essential elements of Taylorism
remain in essential areas of the world of work and even undergo a
renaissance.37 But just as previously non-Taylorian forms of production and working cultures existed in the shadow of Fordism,38 these
elements find themselves today in the shadow of models in which they
appear dated or atypical. Relations of recognition and the legitimacy of
expectations of recognition change in similar fashion; in a field of values in which appreciation as a compensation for Taylorian misrecognition loses its legitimacy. Relations of recognition which today dominate
in social models and which have become real in not marginal areas of
the world of work are distinguished from the recognitive relations
characteristic of Taylorism in the following way.
First, the duty ethic plays hardly any role anymore. To illustrate this,
I would like to evoke an image known to all: the classical image of the
unemployed asking for work by having a sign around his neck saying:
I take any work. With this, he signals a distinctive ethic of duty, a
capacity for self-sacrifice, he considers nothing to be beneath himself.
37
See M. Schumann Frit die Shareholder-Value-konomie die Modernisierung
der Arbeit?; C. Kurz, Repetitivarbeitunbewltigt, Berlin, 1998.
38
See S. Voswinkel, S. Lcking and I. Bode, Im Schatten des Fordismus. Industrielle
Beziehungen in der Bauwirtschaft und im Gastgewerbe Deutschlands und Frankreichs,
Mnchen/Mering, 1996.
286
stephan voswinkel
In many areas of todays world of worknot all of them, notably not of

low-wages sectors nor the most recent reform ideals governing the
administration of (un)employmentsuch a way of being utterly undemanding would be today the surest way not to get work. Who would
want to employ someone for activities requiring self-activity, engagement, business initiative and creativity, who would do everything
and that means perhapsonly what theyre being told to do, because
they have no interest in a specific type of work?
This shift from an ethic of duty to an ethic of subjectivised professional self-realisation has already been well outlined by Johann
Behrens.39 In a publication that did not draw attention at the time, he
interpreted the most striking features of the social situation then, in
opposition to the thesis of an end of the work society, in the following
terms: As the work ethic of the profession (Beruf) expands, the model
of a work ethic based solely on the fulfilment of duty cannot (or can no
longer?) count on recognition. The social classes supporting the ethic
of duty such as unskilled and semi-skilled workers, as well as housewives, are thereby caught up in a dilemma. On the one hand, they are
obviously ridiculous if they present their work as self-realisation and
personal development, whilst such self-presentation in other professions is precisely a condition of employment. On the other hand, they
cannot have recourse to the honourable role of the respected victim of
duty, as in the old shape of the hard worker.40
Behrens thereby characterises the heightened recognition problem
linked to the subjectivisation of work for simple activities poor in
social prestige. When simple, normal work and normal performance is no longer valued, its chances of recognition are taken away
from it.41 If one is no longer able to offer successful performances worthy of admiration, one can no longer count on the compensatory
appreciation. Lack of recognition threatens through being overlooked.
Secondly, the recognition of simple work and normal performance is
See J. Behrens, SelbstverwirklichungOder: Vom Verblassen aller Alternativen

zur Berufsarbeit. Umfragen und Fallstudien zur Krise der Arbeit in Familie und
Erwerbsttigkeit, in eds. H. -J. Hoffmann-Nowotny and F. Gehrmann, Ansprche an
die Arbeit, Frankfurt am Main/New York, 1984, pp. 117135.
40
Behrens SelberstverwirklichungOder: Vom Verblassen aller Alternativen
zur Berufsarbeit, p. 118.
41
See S. Neckel and K. Drge, Die Verdienste und ihr Preis: Leistung in der
Marktgesellschaft, in ed. A. Honneth, Befreiung aus der Mndigkeit, pp. 93116.
39
also eroded in the mode of appreciation. Thirdly, this shift from a culture of work based on objectified functionalism to one based on the
model of the subjectivisation of work also opens up new recognition
potentials for employees. As Senghaas-Knobloch and Nagler have
argued, employees find in the new culture of work a professional role
which contains more scope for freedom, social and professional competences as well responsibilities.42 The subjectivisation of work can
therefore be experienced by the employees as a new recognition of
their capacities and competences.
The combination of all these transformations makes it necessary to
talk of the ambivalence of the subjectivisation of work, and of the paradox of the recognition of subjectivised work.
5. The Paradoxes of the Recognition of Doubly Subjectivised Work
Subjectivisation, as was shown, has two different meanings. On the one
hand, it relates to the dimension of the increased demands placed on
subjectivity, self-responsibility and self-management: direct management becomes contextual, control is transformed from a control of
procedures to one targeting results and success; concrete work processes are increasingly left to the activity of the individual. On the other
hand, subjectivisation relates to the demands placed by workers on
their work.43 They also expect to find room for self-responsibility as
well as opportunities for self-realisation, and are no longer satisfied
with receiving a salary for a docile fulfilment of tasks. One could say in
pointed fashion that workers today do not work because they have to
but because they want to.
There might well be some elective affinity between these two
dimensions of the subjectivisation of work, as Heidenreich argues.44 If
we relate these two dimensions to each other, however, some paradoxical relationships between them come to light. Behrens had also alluded
to the latter as early as 1984, when he pointed to the new emerging
Senghaas-Knobloch and Nagler, Von der Arbeitskraft zur Berufsrolle?, p. 120.

See M. Baethge, Arbeit, Vergesellschaftung, IdentittZur zunehmenden normativen Subjektivierung der Arbeit, Soziale Welt, Vol. 42, No. 1, 1991, pp. 619;
M. Behr, Regressive Gemeinschaft oder zivile Vergemeinschaftung?, Zeitschrift fr
Soziologie, Vol. 24, No. 5, 1995, pp. 325344.
44
M. Heidenreich, Die subjektive Modernisierung fortgeschrittener

Arbeitsgesellschaften, Soziale Welt, Vol. 47, No. 1, 1996, pp. 2443, p. 40.
42
43
288
stephan voswinkel
constraint consisting of opting for a form of self-presentation as virtuoso of self-realisation.45 Hermann Kocyba calls these constraints
linked to self-presentation appellative subjectivisation:
under the conditions of modern management strategies, employees having normative expectations of their work as meaningful, fulfilling activity is itself the object of normative expectations which are activated
through a number of social techniques and training methods.46
In the ambivalence of the subjectivisation of work, (genuine) claims of

recognition and expectations that people will make such claims are
indissolubly intertwined. Self-determination can just as much be
demanded in the face of restrictive working conditions as it can lead to
a paralysing abandonment of ones own demands, when subjects
attribute responsibility for them to themselves, along the lines of Im
responsible for this.
What does this double subjectivisation of workas claim and as
expectation, Anspruch and Anforderungdo to the form of recognition? Does it imply the end of the need for recognition in work, because
the individual who is striving for self-realisation in work is intrinsically motivated and needs no extrinsic motivation through recognition coming from the outside? This would contradict the Meadian
conception of the link between identity and recognition, namely that
identities are formed through confronting the recognition of others.
Meads dialectical concept starts from the assumption that subjects
strive for the recognition by others of the particular traits and idiosyncratic sense of self which make for an ego-identity. This explainsas
Klaus Drre has shownwhy self-development cannot be realised
over a long period of time without the experience of being valued by
others.
But how can we understand the recognition relations of subjectivised work? When work is no longer perceived as a burden, but rather
as self-realisation, then new conditions emerge for its recognition.
I assume that there is indeed a shift in the modality of recognition and
I argue that the subjectivisation of work brings about an erosion of the
See Behrens SelbstverwirklichungOder: Vom Verblassen aller Alternativen

zur Berufsarbeit, p. 128.
46
Kocyba, Der Preis der Anerkennung, p. 131.
45
moral resources available for appreciation, so that recognition can

from now on particularly be expected in the form of admiration.
When the subjectivating work activity appears as self-realisation,
there is no legitimate room left for recognition in the form of appreciation. Self-organisation entails self-responsibility. Being centred on the
subject, work no longer commands thankfulness or appreciation on
the part of the company. If one conceives of oneself as (self-)entrepreneur and not as employee or member of staff, then the relationship to
the employer must be defined as a business relation. To want to realise
oneself through work entails a corresponding giving up of the moral
claim to appreciation. By defining ones relationship to work as a selfrelation, and not as a contribution or even as a sacrifice, one forgoes
appreciation for it.
The attitude to work discussed here corresponds to the type of orientation to performance which Pongratz and Vo have characterised
as performance optimisation in a recent study.47 It is well encapsulated in a passage like this one:
Ive had my fun. I must really add, Ive had a lot of fun in my professional
life. For decades now, since Ive done my second qualification, my attitude has been: Ill only take jobs that I find fun. I have to say, every time
Ive applied for a new job, thats the first thing I was interested in, whats
in the job, is there any fun around it, is it interesting.48
When the workers high on performance (Leistungsoptimierer) emphasise the fun aspect of work, theyas Pongratz and Vo highlight
do not mean that it is entertaining, in the sense of the society of fun
(Spagesellschaft), but rather, they mean the kick they get out achieving high goals through their total involvement and effort. Central here
is the (positive) abnormality of work, as another employee in an
IT-business emphasises:
When my work is needed, when what I accomplish is in a certain way
unique or when Im the only one who can accomplish that, then I feel I
am needed, and that feels great. If on the other hand Im just another cog
47
See H. Pongratz and G. Vo, ArbeiterInnen und Angestellte als

rbeitskraft
A
unternehmer? Erwerbsorientierungen in entgrenzten Arbeitsformen,
Forschungsbericht an die Hans-Bckler-Stiftung, Mnchen/Chemnitz, 2002.
48
Ibid,, p. 56.
290
stephan voswinkel
in the machine, that can always be replaced, then work is not important.
Then it makes no sense.49
Such an orientation to work is clearly not solely self-centredthe

worker wants to be neededbut the use-value of work is not formulated in terms of gift or indeed of sacrifice, but rather as fun. But the
individual who is already satisfied by work can no longer have a moral
expectation to be appreciated for it. Another high performer thus
draws the consequences: () when the job or what Im actually doing
at the time is fun, if I can flourish in it, then its fine, but if I decay in it,
then I must leave.50 Exit instead of the demand for consideration is the
consequence of not giving work and therefore not being able to
demand a service in return such as appreciation.
Against such a background, the institutionalisations and regulations
of appreciation can be eroded in their legitimacy: for example, the continued payment of a salary in the case of sickness, as a mark of acknowledgement of belonging to the company and as counter-service
(Gegenleistung) rewarding the sacrifice of ones health in the service of
the business;51 the assurance of long-term activity; but also such rituals
as company celebrations or the honouring of workers by celebrating
their jubilees.
One episode makes particularly visible the meaning of rituals and
the demise of their legitimacy as symptoms of the erosion of appreciation. Sylvia Witz has been researching the normative horizons that are
at play in decisions regarding promotions in an insurance company.52
In this research, she has compared Herr Goeke, a high flyer to whom
admiration is given and who has been earmarked for higher things,
with Frau Scholz, who has the same level of expertise but is neither
noteworthy nor given particular consideration. Frau Scholz was asked
to take over the area of compulsory long term care insurance and
had trained herself in that area. This however has not improved her
chances of promotion. She is less bitter about that (there is no right to
Quoted in ibid., p. 57.

Quoted in ibid.
51
See S. Voswinkel, Anerkennung der Arbeit im Wandel. Zwischen Wrdigung
und Bewunderung, in eds. Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and Wagner, Anerkennung und
Arbeit, 2000.
52
See S. Wilz, Organisation und Geschlecht. Strukturelle Bindungen und kontingente
Kopplungen, Opladen, 2002.
49
50
advancement) than about the fact that her involvement has not been
sufficiently valued. She says:
Ive just experienced it with the business administrator. Because I am, I
mean, because I didnt have the full intent, I knew that I would not go
further in this house, but nobody cares about it. I am a bit disappointed
about it. There were two of us and normally we get a bunch of flowers
from the management, but this time we had the exam in May, the result
in July and we received the flowers in October. I nearly didnt take them.
I thought that was too stupid. I was really disappointed about that.53
Now the subject can experience recognition mainly in the mode of

admirationfor his/her performance, success, self-realisation.
Subjectivisation therefore implies recognitive relations in which the
recognition that is central is one that occurs through spaces for autonomy, and as the admiration of competence, performance and success.
At the same time, subjectivisation is requested by companies and built
into their demands. The paradox of subjectivisation is that the fulfilment of external demands presented as ones own subjective needs is
now normatively expected and possibly also understood in this way by
the subjects. Since on the other hand companies no longer provide
appreciation, because the social exchange necessary for it no longer
exists, as a result the demand for appreciation is also less raised, since
it implies the admission that one lacks self-reliance. Foras Sennett
sayseconomic flexibility is legitimated through an appeal to personal autonomy.54 To want to work independently or self-reliantly, one
cannot want to be a valued servant.
Admiration, however, is tied to success, to distinctive performance.
Performance without success, in the sense of efforts on the one hand,
or in the sense of normal, unexceptional performances, can claim to
receive appreciation but not admiration. The excellence of performances and successes must be contended for; it must be presented and
staged. The self of the self-entrepreneur55 must put itself on the market
and strive for the award of recognition. In labour markets outside the
company in particular, as well as in careers that span across organisations, reputation as a reflexive and externalised form of recognition56
Quoted in idid., p. 243.
R. Sennett, Der neue Kapitalismus, Berliner Journal fr Soziologie, Vol. 8, No. 3,
1998, pp. 305316, p. 309.
55
See G. Vo and H. J. Pongratz, Der Arbeitskraftunternehmer, Klner Zeitschrift
fr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Vol. 50, No. 1, 1998, pp. 131158, p.142.
56
Voswinkel, Anerkennung und Reputation, chapter B.3.
53
54
292
stephan voswinkel
is a central form of capital. In order to secure and increase it, the subject must deal with recognition strategically, precisely it must treat it as
a form of capital and strive to secure and increase it. Since, however,
the increased fluidity of organisations also makes it increasingly difficult to calculate which forms of subjective investment will be rewarded
in what kind of reputation, the strategic attitude towards reputation
becomes increasingly difficult. As a result, the increased importance
taken by recognition as reputation is paradoxically paralleled by its
increased insecurity for the self-entrepreneur. It seems necessary to
build multiple reputations and to avoid being trapped by the current
form of reputation. This risks making the subject into an object of
ever changing external relations, which form and if need be even transform his/her fluid self.57
One way of bringing subjects to observe their valuation and reputation through others can be called desubjectivised evaluation. This is
the organised transformation of external demands into needs of the
subject itself. The subjects are surrounded by evaluations and feedbacks, in which the permanent, total 360 observation of performance
and behaviour takes over the function of the mirror of others. The performances of co-workers and superiors is continuously submitted to
evaluation by the colleagues, superiors and subordinates, and communicated to the people concerned through individual performance profiles.58 With this management through indicators, quantitative data,
often directly related to market outcomes, are directly communicated
to the workplace as transparent constraints and serve as benchmarks
for the evaluation of action. They put a figure on the degree to which
the results of individual action correspond to the aims and requirements of the company.
What is striking about this form of evaluation is that it is not accompanied by the setting up or the demand for improvement measures.
57
G. Wagner, Berufsbiographische Aktualisierung von Anerkennungsverhltnissen.
Identitt zwischen Perspektivitt und Patchwork, in eds. Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and
Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, p. 148.
58
See U. Brckling, Totale Mobilmachung. Menschenfhrung im Qualitts- und
Selbstmanagement, in eds. U. Brckling, S. Krasmann and T. Lemke,
Gouvernementalitt der Gegenwart, Frankfurt am Main, 2000, pp. 131167, p.151; O.
Neuberger, Das 360-Feedback. Alles fragen? Alles sehen? Alles sagen?, Mnchen/
Mering, 2000; B. Runde, D. Kirschbaum and K. Wbbelmann, 360-Feedback
Hinweise fr ein best-practise-Modell, Zeitschrift fr Arbeits- und Organisation
spsychologie, Vol. 45, No. 3, 2001, pp. 146157.
It is the subjects or teams own responsibility to draw the consequences

of a negative evaluation of performance, and these consequences are
once again evaluated through a new evaluation round and new target
levels.59 Insofar as workers and teams are not congratulated or blamed
in interpersonal fashion, this is a depersonalised, automatised form of
recognition and mis-recognition. Precisely because it is desubjectivised, it demands of the evaluated workers subjective efforts of selfmanagement. But it is clear that it is impossible for the workers
concerned to please everyone. If the person tries to do so, he/she will
continuously fail in her missions, will remain criticisable and be prepared to face sanctions, which will be justified even though they are
unjust.60
We can describe these evaluations as the institution of an externally
driven social character whose subjectivity consists in feeling expectations on its own and in developing forms of self-management with
which to deal best with external expectations. Niklas Luhmann spoke
in this context of a reflexively controlled self-presentation, by which
he meant that an inner perception was necessary to steer the outer
perception, which made it possible to decide which impressions in
which context were to be achieved or avoided. I would not concur with
him however when he claims that this represents the opposite of conformism.61 It is only too obvious that what is taken into account here
are not dimensions that are relevant to individual subjects. It would be
more accurate to speak of reflexive conformism. Subjects are encouraged to conform on their own accord, subjectively, to the (anticipated) evaluations and demands of recognition of the others. As
they have the experience that they cannot fulfil all the different and
changing expectations, they are forced to position themselves in this
game, to play off different types of mirrors against each other or to
reconcile differences. Whether they manage to retain a sense of selfdetermination and are able to bring creativity into the process is an
empirical question.
For recognition relations are ultimately constituted by the sub
jects themselves, in subjective and intersubjective, situated and
59
See Vormbusch, Diskussion und Disziplin, p. 35ff; Kocyba and Vormbusch
Partizipation als Managementstrategie, p. 19ff.
60
Neuberger Das 360-Feedback. Alles fragen? Alles sehen? Alles sagen?, p. 73.
61
N. Luhmann, Reflexive Mechanismen, Soziologische Aufklrung, Vol. 1,
Opladen, 1974, pp. 92112, p. 100.
294
stephan voswinkel
c ontextualised fashion. And paradoxical relations of recognition provide no clear indications of processing by the subjects.
In summary, relations of recognition of subjectivised work can
therefore be understood as paradoxical in two senses:
When subjectivisation in the sense of self-organisation and selfrealisation in work is normatively expected by companies, it turns
into an external demand. However, since this external demand
appears as the subjects own need, no claim of recognition, in the
sense of appreciation, can derive from its fulfilment.
Recognition as admiration for success and self-realisation presupposes that one gives up the claim to appreciation for normal
performances and self-sacrifice. With this, however, recognition
becomes dependent on the contingency and fluidity of success. It
must be striven for strategically, but thereby loses its expressive
meaning as positive valuation of identities.
The erosion of the moral resources enabling subjects to receive and
demand appreciation deepens the competitive meaning of recognition. From now on, workers who only perform normal duties, those
who remain unnoticed, those that do not have success only experience
non-recognition and lack of regard, without being captured by the recognition through appreciation. As a result, they must take responsibility for their lack of recognition, precisely because they have not been
able to present a case for admiration.
6. Potential Developments for Recognition in the Context of Doubly
Subjectivised Work
The shifts in the relations of recognition, namely the erosion of appreciation and the increased significance of admiration, in no way represent a process without contradiction and conflict. To begin with,
relations of recognition are not simply the result of changed relations
of production and economic processes. Rather, they are established,
defended, transformed and culturally shaped by the subjects themselves. A change in social-economic relations, which influence the
shape of recognition relations, can trigger crises of recognition.62
62
See S. Krmmelbein, Identittskrisen als AnerkennungskrisenUmbrche von
Erwerbsarbeit und Sozialstruktur in den neuen Bundeslndern, in eds. Holtgrewe,
Voswinkel and Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, 2000, pp. 193216.
These crises can have destructive and pathological implications for

subjective identities, but can also lead to new recognition demands
which can modify, limit or undermine the transformative processes.
This is one aspect of the struggle for recognition.63 There is therefore
no unambiguous developmental logic behind the paradoxical relations
of recognition.
In conclusion, I would like to point to two contrasting potentials for
development, namely:
1. The association or coupling (Verkopplung) of recognition and success, which mainly brings into play the limiting aspect of recognition, and;
2. Self-realisation between exit and voice,64 as self-assertion or as
struggle for recognition in which the enabling dimension of recognition is articulated.
6.1 The Coupling of Recognition and Success
When subjectivisation goes together with marketisation, recognition
is directly associated with success. In this case, performance is increasingly understood as success, and the double character of performanceas expenditure and effort on the one hand, as output and
particular economic success on the otheris increasingly pushed
to the success side.65 Normal performance then receives hardly any
recognition at all. Admiration then means recognition of success
and misrecognition pertains to lack of successand that independently of other aspects of the performance principle, like effort and
professionalism.
Here it must be emphasised that admiration and appreciation do not
necessarily point to different characteristics or types of performance.
See Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition.

Exit and voice characterise two different reactions to unsatisfactory treatment by
the organisation: leaving or opposing (see A. Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty,
Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1970).
65
See S. Voswinkel, Transformation des Marktes in marktorientierten
Organisationen. Erfolgsorientiertes Entgelt in Wirtschaftsorganisationen, in ed. H.
-G. Brose, Die Reorganisation der Arbeitsgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main/New York,
2000, pp. 239274; S. Neckel, Leistung und Erfolg. Die symbolische Ordnung der
Marktgesellschaft, in eds. E. Barlsius, H. -P. Mller and S. Sigmund, Gesellschaftsbilder
im Umbruch, Opladen, 2001, pp. 245265; Neckel and Drge, Die Verdienste und ihr
Preis: Leistung in der Marktgesellschaft.
63
64
296
stephan voswinkel
Their distinction designates rather how performances and characteristics are socially defined and valued. It points therefore to the meaning
of recognition. To take one example: someone who works endlessly
without regard for their own health can well show thereby that they
sacrifice themselves for the firm, and the social world values this
exactly in this sense. Or they thereby show how resilient they are, since
nothing can overwhelm them, and the social world admires the exploits
of the Stachanows and Henneckes of capitalism.66 However, the same
sense of recognition granted by the social world also withdraws recognition in another sense, since the worker has demonstrated that he/she
was in fact overwhelmed. The worker has not applied his/her resources
in a way that was sufficiently economical and rational. He/she can
therefore not expect to be given favourable consideration, instead, he
/she has put in question the foundation of the business.
If recognitionas admirationrequires success, employees cannot
afford any mistakes; investment that is not justified by immediate success is not worth it. The changed relations of recognition thus support
in their turn the short-term economy. Recognition opportunities
become increasingly more uncertain and take more and more the
form of a market-reward which occurs ex post. For success can be
influenced by the effort of the workers only to a limited extent.67
Especially when subjectivisation is tied to marketisation, recognition
and success are intimately associated. Success on the market then
entails a tautological self-recognition. Brckling has expressed it in the
following terms: If someone has success, they have earned it; if someone does not have success, its because they did something wrong.
Empowerment and humiliation go hand in hand.68
66
In 1935 the miner Alexej Stachanow was said to have exceeded his work targets
fourteenfold. He was made into a hero by the Stalinist leadership who founded the
Stachanow-movement in order to force an increase in production. The miner Adolf
Hennecke was made into the Stachanow of the DDR in the 1950s. He managed
apparently after the manipulation and preparation of his working conditionsto
exceed his work quota by 387%. It is plausible to view the freelancers and workaholics
of the New Economy as the new Stachanowists, whose success can fail to materialise
just as much as the fame of one-day stars.
67
U. Holtgrewe,
Meinen Sie, da sagt jemand danke, wenn man geht?,
Anerkennungs- und Missachtungsverhltnisse im Prozess organisationeller
Transformation, in eds. Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit,
2000, pp. 6384, p. 64; Voswinkel, Transformation des Marktes in marktorientierten
Organisationen.
68
Brckling Totale Mobilmachung. Menschenfhrung im Qualitts- und
Selbstmanagement, p. 162.
But when one cannot make or admit to mistakes, one is forced to

build protections and avoid risk. When normal performance no longer
receives any appreciation, when recognition is only given to distinctive, successful performances, then loss of motivation can quickly
result.
An IBM project manager describes this connection in the following
way. First, she emphasises the meaning of decent, reasonable, qualityconscious work, with which she fulfils her professional demands:
What seems important to me, next to the fear (of having mistakes attributed to me), is something like a sense of responsibility. I have a strong
sense for reasonable work, what is acceptable and unacceptable, what
products should look like. For me these norms have something to do
with self-respect and dignity. They are like a need for me. Just like we
shower once a day, even if we wouldnt go bad or fall ill if we didnt do it.
Then she remembers a previous occasion where she tried to get admiration but her attempt was not met by recognition on the side of
management:
Beyond this sense of responsibility, I used to have the dream of excellence, to achieve something special, something big, something exceptional. For a while that was a strong motivation for my work. Now I find
this absurd, silly, insignificant. This desire for excellence is activated
through praise and recognition.
The desire for excellence and admiration appears after a while absurd,
because this type of work cannot be sustained in the long term:
Independent of the question whether 9 hours of work per day is a lot or
not, Ive had to realise that the situation is now almost unbearable. But I
cant see my workload substantially decreasing any time soon.69
What happens after the reckoning and disenchantment has set in? To
begin with, how can one ensure that a work performance is acceptable
and good enough over time, and what type of recognition can there be
when work is subjectivised? For businesses that no longer want to
engage in long term engagements, it can become tempting to react to a
fall in performance with early exclusion and an increase of control.
Subjectivised pressure to succeed for some; re-Taylorisation for the
others: that could be the outcome of this scenario. But then this would
be a Taylorism without recognition through appreciation.
Quoted in eds. Moldaschl and Vo, Subjektivierung von Arbeit, p. 315.
69
298
stephan voswinkel
Instead of relating to work and performance in the sense of effort

and exertion, recognition would then relate to economic success, the
utilisation of favourable circumstances, good luck, a good reputation:
in other words, more pre-, or post-modern understandings of recognition. This scenario would correspond to the diagnosis of an erosion of
the performance principle that Sighard Neckel and Neckel and Drge
have proposed.70 If such a shift in the meaning of recognition were
confirmed on a broad basis, it would signal a modification in the selfunderstanding of society, and a departure from the society of performance (Leistungsgesellschaft) in the classical sense. We might consider
this a pathological solution to the paradoxes of recognition of subjectivised work.
6.2 Self-realisation between Exit and Voice
The alternative scenario looks approximately like this: when appreciation can no longer be demanded, but admiration cannot be morally
requested, one way that suggests itself is for the subject to distance
himself/herself from the conflicting claims of recognition and to single-handedly set individual terms of reference. Producer pride, professional standards, and empathy with the clients can be read as claims for
the recognition of the use-value and quality of work. However, the
manifold and contradictory aspects of recognition relations cannot
simply be reduced to the market.71
This way of holding onto claims that are properly ones own, and of
maintaining the value of ones work and the appreciation-worthiness
of ones individual effort, can end up in a form of retreat, in inner withdrawal, exit. This would be a form of self-assertion without, and giving
up on, recognition. Subjects define the forms and contents of evaluation that are appropriate for them, seek niches in the world of the company or flee that world, with the hope of being able to realise their own
world of value in independent work. In many sectors, this might be
70
See Neckel
Leistung und Erfolg. Die symbolische Ordnung der
Marktgesellschaft; Neckel and Drge, Die Verdienste und ihr Preis: Leistung in der
Marktgesellschaft.
71
See Holtgrewe Anerkennung und Arbeit in der Dienst-Leisungs-Gesellschaft;
U. Holtgrewe and S. Voswinkel, Kundenorientierung zwischen Mythos,
Organisationsrationalitt und Eigensinn der Beschftigten, in ed. D Sauer, Dienst
Leistung(s)Arbeit. Kundernorientierung und Leistung in tertiren Organisationen.
ISF Formschungsberichte, Mnchen, 2002, pp. 99118.
possible. On the whole, however, such an attitude conflicts with the

demands and constraints of cooperation and with the market mechanisms of capitalistic societies.
This mode of insisting on ones own criteria of recognition and ones
own claims for recognition can also lead to voice. Here a significant
elementalready in Taylorismis that work requires cooperation
that, notwithstanding all the talk of self-corporation (Ich-AG),72 still
relies on reciprocity of performance and contribution, and therefore
relies on a normative culture of reciprocity. In the company as well
as in work itself, a professional lifeworld emerges with communitybuilding mechanisms. The relations of recognition and the claims of
recognition thereby introduced can hardly be reduced to the mode of
admiration. They can constitute an alternative arena of recognition for
the employees. This new arena of recognition makes it possible to handle the experiences of non-recognition and the misrecognition of
labour, effort and normal performance, as well as articulated professional standards and a professional sense of self against the restric
tionsproduced by marketisation. And on the basis of this, commonly
recognised standards can be invoked against the fear of being overwhelmed by the continued pressure to conform to expectations of
performance.
In another grievance of an IBM employee, we can read:
It is incredibly easy for management to continue to give me yet another
project, until Im totally overwhelmedeven if I was the best project
manager in the world. When a boss tells his employee: I think you
cant cope anymore, the employee should not say, No, thats not true at
all, Ill show you!, but rather, I am not overwhelmed, but I get
overwhelmed. Or even better, he should say: Yes, thats right, and so I
should be.73
This is an area for further empirical investigation. Only it can tell us

how subjects deal with the shifts and paradoxes of relations of
recognition.
Translated from the German by Jean-Philippe Deranty and Nicholas
H. Smith.
72
Literally: Me-Stock-Corporation or Me-Inc. A term of the labour-marketreform under the red-green government in Germany in early 2000s. It signified a person in self-employment as part of a scheme to help unemployed people to start-up
their own business. It also was a metaphor for self-employment as a mental virtue.
73
Quoted in Moldaschl and Vo, Subjektivierung von Arbeit, p. 321.
Chapter eleven
Exclusive focus on figures. Exclusive focus

on returns. Marketisation as a principle of
organisation and a problem of recognition1
Gabriele Wagner
So, every day you are confronted with what you are actually worth
here. And that has gone down a lot in Chemie AG. You are simply
personnel number so and so, and personal things come last. With
these harsh words, the laboratory manager Dr. Bleibtreu summed up
the consequences of a fundamental reorganisation of the Chemie
AG where he has worked for many years. The passage expresses anger
at the insult and disrespect afforded to a once proud senior employee
who, following the organisational restructuring of Chemie AG, now
finds himself in the position of an anonymous number.
In the context of the widespread discussion of business change, the
case of Herr Bleibtreu and his colleague Frau Schmidtmeier exemplifies how the consequences of the marketisation of organisations are
reconstructed as a problem of recognition. For this reason the debate
on the much discussed consequences of internal marketisation should
be expanded by a further perspective, one which makes visible the
importance of the pursuit of recognition in the mobilization of members greater compliance. The first part of my chapter (1) argues for this
conceptual expansion with reference to the discussion as it currently
stands and introduces central concepts from the recognition debate
into the analysis. The argument is thereby developed that the subjective realization of recognition relationships substantially contributes
to the way employees deal with reorganisation. The second part (2)
deals with an empirical case that exemplifies the analytical perspective
1
I am thankful to Silviana Galassi, Birgit Geissler, Veronika Tacke and Stephan
Voswinkel for clarifying discussions. This essay was first published in German in
the sterreichische Zeitschrift fr Soziologie, 33:3, 2008, 2042. Thanks are due to
the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their valuable tips and constructive
arguments.
302
gabriele wagner
exemplarily developed here. It reconstructs the massive crisis of

recognition which the companys new orientation evoked for the
highly qualified interviewees Dr. Bleibtreu and Dr. Schmidtmeier.The
interviewees fail doubly, receiving neither admiration for their professional achievement, nor experiencing recognition in the form of an
acknowledgement of their commitment and performance-vouching
contributions. In their ambivalent pursuit of recognition they become
ensnared in both an admiration and an acknowledgement trap. As a
consequence of the failed recognition aspirations, the conceptually
empty duty-ethos of the secondary virtues takes the place of the producers pride. The text finishes with a concluding summary (3).
1. Diagnoses of Organisational Change
a. The Discussion to Date
The reorganisation process which Chemie AG is undergoing is not an
isolated case. Rather, economic and organisational sociology observes
a comprehensive transformation of business enterprises. The respective relevant diagnoses, however (thus runs the argument of this
section), all contain a gap which can be filled by reference to relations
of recognition. In the course of the concentration of companies on
their core business, previously integrated areas are differentiated out
and reconfigured. Management by results, flat hierarchies, personal
responsibility, and decentralisation are elevated to central instruments
of organisational design.2 Additionally, the comprehensive orientation
towards the market increases in significance both in the internal and
external relationships of the company. The decentralised units are
positioned against one another in a competitive market relationship.
Each unit is made to orient itself towards profitability criteria. Target
agreement processes and performance-related pay are aligned with
2
See D. Sauer and V. Dhl, Die Auflsung des Unternehmens. Entwicklungstendenzen der Unternehmensreorganisation in den 90er Jahren, in Jahrbuch sozialwissenschaftliche Technikberichterstattung, ed. Institut fr Sozialwissenschaftliche
Forschung, Mnchen; Internationales Institut fr Empirische Sozialkonomie,
Stadtbergen; Institut fr Sozialforschung, Frankfurt M.; Soziologisches Forschun
gsinstitut, Gttingen; Berlin,1996, pp. 1976. See also M. Moldaschl, Internalisierung
des Marktes. Neue Unternehmensstrategie und qualifizierte Angestellte, in Jahrbuch
sozialwissenschaftliche Technikberichterstattung, 1997, pp. 197250.
exclusive focus on figures. exclusive focus on returns303

benchmarks.3 Thus the concrete everyday work of the (highly) qualified employees also changes: extensive pre-structuring of work gives
way to self-regulation and self-organisation; responsibility is delegated
or shifted downwards. As a consequence of the subjectivisation of
work and in the name of responsibility for results, the employees
of the relevant reorganised units are comprehensively bound to forms
of self-control and self-responsibility.4
The sociological analysis of the possible consequences of these
reorganisation processes has been so abundant that a few key-points
shouldsuffice here. The flexible market-centred production model5
leads to structural egoism6 within and between the departments.
It releases forces of disintegration which for their part end up producing pendulum swings between decentralisation and recentralisation.7
The sharper focus on the market as a coordinating and controlling
mechanism burdens the employees with increasing insecurities and
ever heavier workloads and demands. The consequences of internal
marketisation for processes of identity development and assertion
are dealt with under such key phrases as internal colonisation8 and
identity as commodity.9
Most of the current sociological contributions share the same analytical perspective. The focus is upon profound changes which are
observed and also analysed at the structural level or the level of system
integration. Beginning with structural changes in the market they pass
through the new structural alignment of companies and move on to
the altered structural conditions that frame membership relationships.
3
See J. Flecker, Intrapreneure, Arbeitskraftunternehmer und andere Zwitterwesen,
in Kurswechsel, 2000, pp. 2836.
4
See G. Wagner, Ein neuer Geist des Kapitalismus? Paradoxien der
Selbstverantwortung, in sterreichische Zeitschrift fr Soziologie, Vol. 32, 2007,
pp. 324.
5
K.
Drre,
Das
flexibel-marktzentrierte
Produktionsmodell
Gravitationszentrum eines neuen Kapitalismus?, in eds. K. Drre and B. Rttger, Das
neue Marktregime. Konturen eines nachfordistischen Produktionsmodells, Hamburg,
VSA, 2003 pp. 3554.
6
See C. Deutschmann, M. Faust, P. Jauch, and P. Notz ed., Vernderungen der
Rolle des Managements im Proze der reflexiver Rationalisierung, Zeitschrift fr
Soziologie, Vol. 24, 1995, 436450.
7
See H. Hirsch-Kreinsen, Dezentralisierung: Unternehmen zwischen Stabilitt
und Desintegration, Zeitschrift fr Soziologie, Vol. 24, 1995, pp. 422435.
8
See Moldaschl, Internalisierung des Marktes. Neue Unternehmensstrategie und
qualifizierte Angestellte.
9
See S. Neckel, Identitt als Ware. Die Marktwirtschaft im Sozialen,
in eds. F. Mller and M. Mller, Markt und Sinn. Dominiert der Markt unsere Werte?,
Frankfurt/Main, Campus, 1996. pp. 133145.
304
gabriele wagner
The associated consequences for the members personal identity

are discussed under the catchphrase economisation of subjectivity.
According to Kocyba,10 this diagnosis can easily be seen as a reprise of
the well-known colonisation thesis which infers the level of social
integration directly from the level of system integration. Even if the
differentiation between system and social integration is not unproblematic, Kocyba nevertheless hones in on an important point: if it
actually does come to the claimed submission of employees to economic principles, then this is a contingent result of a process which is
to be investigated at the level of social integration, and this is all the
more valid if it is shown that the submission is self-driven. Otherwise
one runs the risk of being taken in by a structural determinism.
This argument directs attention to the concept of the company
social order (betrieblichen Sozialordnung)11 which applies to the
level of social integration.12 From this perspective companies cannot
be described exclusively with concepts such as power, organisation
structures, forms of control and interests. With the concept of social
order Kotthoff and Reindl are rather emphasising that in companies
we are always dealing with norms, loyalty, expectations and attachments deriving from ones lifeworld. From a constructivist perspective,
Kieser13 further points out that formal organisation programs only
come into empirical effect through the interpretive and thus structuring activities of their members.
10
H. Kocyba, Der Preis der Anerkennung. Von der tayloristischen Missachtung
zur strategischen Instrumentalisierung der Subjektivitt der Arbeitenden, in eds.
U. Holtgrewe, S. Voswinkel and G. Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, Konstanz,
UVK, 2000, pp. 127140.
11
See H. Kotthoff, and J. Reindl, Sozialordnung und Interessenvertretung in
Klein- und Mittelbetrieben, in ed. E. Hildebrand, Betriebliche Sozialverfassung unter
Vernderungsdruck, Berlin, Edition Sigma, 1991, pp. 114129.
12
The management studies by M. Baethge, J. Denkinger and U. Kadritzke, Das
Fhrungskrfte Dilemma. Manager und industrielle Experten zwischen Unternehmen
und Lebenswelt, Frankfurt/Main, Campus, 1995, as well as those of M. Faust, P. Jauch,
and P. Notz, Befreit und entwurzelt: Fhrungskrfte auf dem Weg zum internen
Unternehmer, Mnchen, Mering, 2000, are concerned with the dimension of social
integration, but not with the recognition perspective which is advocated here.
An overview of the themes and findings of management research and the profound
changes in the self-interpretations of the highly qualified are to be found in H. Kotthoff
and A. Wagner, Die Leistungstrger. Fhrungskrfte im Wandel der Firmenkultureine
Follow-up-Studie, Berlin, 2008.
13
A. Kieser, ber die allmhliche Verfertigung der Organisation beim Reden.
Organisieren als Kommunizieren, in Industrielle Beziehungen, Vol. 5, 1998, pp. 4575.

Recognition relationships are an essential hinge between the two
levels and are likewise a central component of company social order.
They direct the employees attention to the change in organisational
programs. Moreover the change in organisational structures and the
change in recognition relationships mutually condition each other.14
Inthis sense Voswinkel shows that under the described reorganisation
conditions, the recognition of belonging in the form of appreciation is eroding.15 The recognition mode of admiration for (market)
success is now taking the place of the old order of recognition.
This chapter puts forward the thesis that both forms of recognition
are, as ever, effective in providing orientation. The contemporaneity of
these non-contemporaneous principles leads to a new risk of selfexploitation on the part of the employee which is expressed in an
extraordinary renaissance of the old duty ethosextraordinary
because the old duty ethos has been culturally devalued and no longer
has any structural foundation.
b. From Appreciation to Admiration
In the normal work relationship of the Fordist era, recognition for
belonging and the corresponding relationship of appreciation were the
dominant reference points of the old recognition order. Appreciation,
according to Voswinkel, rests on social exchange, on norms of reciprocity, as well as on structurally ensured longevity.16 Companies show
their appreciation of their members by rewarding their contributions
and achievements with moral-economic promises and by taking into
consideration moral standards that are valid in the lifeworld. According
to Kotthoff,17 the employees expect from their firm that they will be
granted a second chance in situations where they fail in an assignment,
With this, the mutual relationships between structured practice, interest-
constellations, and struggle for recognition are also shifted. For detailed treatment of
this problem field see A. Boes and K. Trinks, Theoretisch bin ich frei! Interessenhandeln
und Mitbestimmung in der IT-Industrie, Berlin, Edition Sigma, 2006.
15
See S. Voswinkel, Die Anerkennung der Arbeit im Wandel. Zwischen Wrdigung
und Bewunderung, in eds. U. Holtgrewe, S. Voswinkel and G. Wagner, Anerkennung
und Arbeit, pp. 3962; S. Voswinkel, Anerkennung und Reputation. Die Dramaturgie
industrieller Beziehungen, Konstanz, IVK-Verlag, 2001, especially pp. 55ff and 301ff.
16
See S. Voswinkel, Die Anerkennung der Arbeit im Wandel. Zwischen Wrdigung
und Bewunderung.
17
H. Kotthoff, Anerkennung und sozialer Austausch. Die soziale Konstruktion
von Betriebsbrgerschaft, in eds. Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and Wagner, Anerkennung
und Arbeit, pp. 2738, p. 31.
14
306
gabriele wagner
that older employees are not simply written off, and that in cases
of doubt, rules are not just implemented without further consideration. Alongside the more or less extensive fulfilment of such expectations, the duties of gratitude18 of the employers towards their
employees materialise in the principle of seniority, in Christmas
celebrations, in company jubilees as well as in the union-secured
continuation of payment in case of illness. The examples show that
relationships of appreciation [Wrdigungsbeziehungen] go beyond
the logic of a market-centred exchange of equivalences in favour of
an asymmetric reciprocal social exchange.19 The employees are precisely not treated as pure commodity labour-power, as personnel
number so and so (Bleibtreu). Rather they are appreciated [gewrdigt]
as belonging to a company community20 to which they contribute
as members.
Conversely the recognition mode of appreciation normatively
commits the employees to be prepared to adjust themselves to the
company and to orient their individual career plans not to short term
calculations of opportunity, but rather to the long term of the companys development. This includes the expectation that individual
employees will consider the companys interests in their private lifeplans and, when necessary, adapt their life plans to company requirements. Relationships of appreciation span a reliable horizon of
normatively-binding duties of care on the employer side and particular duties of loyalty on the employee side. The recognition mode of
appreciation creates an ideal figuration of harmonic imbalance21 in
which integration and faithfulness are exchanged for protection and
consideration.22 In this asymmetric figuration, it is not autonomy
and individualism which are rewarded with recognition, but rather
submission and a willingness to contribute.
18
See G. Simmel, Dankbarkeit. Ein soziologischer Versuch, in Schriften zur
Soziologie, Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, 1986, pp. 210220.
19
See S. Voswinkel, Reziprozitt und Anerkennung in Arbeitsbeziehungen,
in eds. Frank Adloff and Steffen Mau, Vom Geben und Nehmen. Zur Soziologie der
Reziprozitt, Frankfurt/Main, Campus, 2005, pp. 237 256.
20
See Kotthoff, Anerkennung und sozialer Austausch. Die soziale Konstruktion
von Betriebsbrgerschaft.
21
See B. van Stolk, Der Staat als Ernhrer, in ed. C. Eckart, Selbstndigkeit von
Frauen im Wohlfahrtsstaat, Stiftung Hamburger Institut fr Sozialforschung, Hamburg,
1990, pp. 2739.
22
See G. Wagner, Anerkennung und Individualisierung, Konstanz, UVK, 2004,
p. 255.

The changed organisational structures mentioned at the outset,
namely the increasing market-orientation and short-term profit targets along with the associated destabilisation of membership relationships, undermine the bases of recognition for belonging and the
corresponding relationships of acknowledgement.23 When departments are constantly restructured, hierarchies flattened, and managers
constantly exchanged, the addressee of long-term relationships of
social exchange disappears. Finally, after the third or fourth reorganisation round, the recipient of trust no longer finds the bestower of trust
to whom he/she can direct claims for the acknowledgement of his/her
loyalty and contributions. This of course does not mean that the importance of contribution and performance diminishes. On the contrary:
against the background of market-conditioned membership-relations,
the importance of a comprehensive commitment to performance
increases, whilst its reward becomes uncertain.24
In parallel to the erosion of recognition for belonging, recognition for success gains in significance. Admiration (Bewunderung) is
bestowed on short-term, achievable, visible results, and most importantly on results made visible. This requires skilful action and wellstaged impression-management in order to sell oneself and ones
successes on both the company internal job market as well as on the
external labour market. In this way the labour-power entrepreneurs25
are required to hold up their own employability and to convert it
into upwardly mobile careers.
In the recognition mode of admiration, outstanding performances,special abilities, and above all impressive results are rewarded
through commodities, services, and attention markets.26 It is the
nature of admiration that it falls upon the single individual. Individual
See Voswinkel, Anerkennung und Reputation. Die Dramaturgie industrieller

Beziehungen, p. 304.
24
See H.-G. Brose, M. Diewald and A. Goedicke, Arbeiten und Haushalten.
Wechselwirkungen zwischen betrieblichen Beschftigungspolitiken und privater
Lebensfhrung, in ed. O. Struck and C. Khler, Beschftigungsstabilitt im Wandel?
Empirische Befunde und theoretische Erklrungen fr West- und Ostdeutschland,
Mnchen, Mering, 2004, pp. 287309, p. 294; Voswinkel, Reziprozitt und
Anerkennung in Arbeitsbeziehungen, p. 251.
25
See G. G. Vo and H. J. Pongratz, Der Arbeitskraftunternehmer. Eine neue
Grundform der Ware Arbeitskraft, in Klner Zeitschrift fr Soziologie und
Sozialpsychologie, Vol. 50, 1998, pp. 131158.
26
See G. Franck, konomie der Aufmerksamkeit. Ein Entwurf, Mnchen, Carl
Hanser, 1998.
23
308
gabriele wagner
autonomy, independence and the ability to direct oneself and take

personal responsibility are explicitly recognised. This, however, also
applies to the case of the failure. Here the labour-power entrepreneur
does not have a legitimate claim to the second chance which had
been morally anchored in the appreciation relationship. Furthermore
failure is an expression of the consequence of ineffective managementof the labour-power for which the entrepreneur him/herself is
responsible.27
This transition from appreciation to admiration in the course of the
transformation of organisations underlines the reciprocal relationship
between (organisational) structures and relationships of recognition.
Reciprocal relationship does not however mean that both levels change
at the same speed or in the same sense. This is mainly because recognition relationships must first be produced by way of interpretation
before they can be effectively used. This is the filter function aspect of
recognition which now needs to be analysed.
The pursuit of both recognition for belonging and recognition for
(market) success relies on a horizon of collectively shared representations.28 Only by reference to such a common horizon of interpretation
and value can subjectively different performances, abilities, and skills,
as well as individual characteristics and particularities, be expressed in
a general, intersubjectively understandable way.29
However the aspiration for recognition is not realised in the tickingoff of normatively generalised behavioural expectations and collective
interpretations. Subjects cannot simply perform specified tasks in a
mechanical action mode, because action is constitutively based on
ones own interpretive performances. This practice of interpretation is
not just a contemplative taking note, but rather the full involvement of
an agent, who as a result is also a being involved in changing reality.30
Subjective interpretations of social recognition relationships thus
translate intersubjective ideas about what constitutes good work, recognition-worthy performances, or success worthy of admiration into
the corresponding individual practices. The concepts so translated
27
S. Voswinkel, Die Anerkennung der Arbeit im Wandel. Zwischen Wrdigung
und Bewunderung, p. 58.
28
See A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, trans J. Anderson, Cambridge,
Polity, 1995.
29
See ibid., p. 121.
30
H. Popitz, Phnomene der Macht, second enlarged edition, Tbingen, Mohr
Siebeck, 1992, p. 116.

serve prospectively as orientation points for ones own future professional action as well as retrospectively as a frame of reference for processes of self-interpretation of ones current and past professional
biography. The subjective actualisation of societys recognition relations represents an essentially regulative element which substantially
shapes the subjective mode of perceiving and dealing with the structural reorganisation measures sketched at the beginning. The ensuingdecidedly ambivalentconsequences of such a process should
now be illustrated with an empirical case.
2. The Case Study: Marketisation and the Reflexive
Organisation of Social Order
a. The Reorganisation of Chemie AGor: The Ship on High Seas
The empirical material was collated in an internationally active chemical company with its headquarters in Switzerland.31 The case study
centres on interviews with the laboratory managers Dr. Schmidtmeier
and Dr. Bleibtreu, who are responsible for the official approval of
pesticides. Schmidtmeier, a woman in her mid-thirties, has been
employed at Chemie AG for eleven years. She has a doctorate in biology and has been in charge of a small laboratory team which researches
the behaviour of certain active plant substances. Bleibtreu, a man aged
42, has already been working for 15 years as leader of a laboratory unit
which is responsible both for studies and special assignments.
At the centre of the interview is the question of how these two
highly qualified employees perceive the radical reorganisation of
their company.
Since 2004 Chemie AG has undergone a comprehensive conversion of its organisational structures which operates under the name
31
The empirical material was collated by Thomas Wex, Andreas Polster and Norbert
Huchler as part of the project Learner Research Context. The project was funded by
the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research and conducted by Joachim
Ludwig (University of Potsdam), K. R. Mller and Margit Weihrich (University of the
Bundeswehr, Munich); in collaboration with Gerd G. Vo. My thanks are due to
Joachim Ludwig for allowing me to use the collated material for this paper. I am also
grateful to colleagues from the interpretation workshop Chemiewerk for inspirational discussions on both complementary as well as mutually exclusive perspectives
on the material. In the presentation of the reorganisation measures I draw on the documentation of the case material of Norbert Huchler and Thomas Wex. Along with
these two, I am also thankful to Claudia Dreke, Andreas Polster and Micheal Weis.
310
gabriele wagner
Leadership through excellence (Project LEts go). The individual

LEts go measures aim to deal with the official approval of pesticides in
a faster, more cost-effective manner. To achieve this target, the following restructuring measures were adopted:
there was a 20 per cent reduction in staff across all departments
and hierarchical levels,
the individual departments were required to keep their cost
structures transparent and also to critically examine these in
view of a make or buy decision and where necessary to contract out studies to a third party (outsourcing),
in the target agreement processes, achieving market indices
gained in importance,
operation-related project work, flexitime systems, and strict
result orientation intended to increase the ability to react to fluctuation in demand,
two formerly separate departments, which were specialised in
studies on animals and plants respectively, were amalgamated,
office premises were reallocated according to businessmanagement efficiency criteria (compaction).
Thus the points of departure for the case at hand are the ubiquitous
focus on the market, the dramatic redundancies, and the amalgamation of two formerly separate areas. Staff who previously carried out
either plant or animal studies are, from now on, to attend to both areas.
Thus, in addition to increasing workloads, there is also a rise in
qualification requirements.
The management anticipates the attendant problems and initially
takes care to have the new strategic orientation communicated to the
staff by external moderators. A workshop is held in which long term
development and qualification projects are conceived in accordance
with requirements and then translated into planswhich, however, in
the business of daily life quickly fall victim to the urgency of
the temporary (Vordringlichkeit des Befristeten).32 The outcome of the
first to market management strategy is that other important issues,
namely, further training, group integration, integration of other study
types, get left behind (Schmidtmeier).
32
See N. Luhmann, The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Structures in Modern
Society, Social Research, Vol. 43, No. 1, 1976, pp. 130152.

On the other hand the external consultants engaged by Chemie AG
have the task of designing a new self-understanding which henceforth should realign the professional experience and actions of the
staff. In order for the meaning of the new scripts to be fixed, the staff
externally moderatedpaint the following picture: the company is
represented as a ship that is in the possession and control of the
ship-owner, namely the customer.
This is an extraordinary image. It is no longer the management, but
rather the customer who determines the course direction and makes
difficult decisions, which are (apparently) to be executed without seeking alternatives. The customer, who is introduced as an anonymous
construction in the collective singular, is thus granted enormous
powers of enforcement. Ultimately it is the ship-owner/customer who
decides whether the ship remains in operation, or is soon to be run
aground; whether it sets sail with this team, or with another one. And
there is additional drama to be found in the situation at seacertainly
meant to symbolize the turbulence on the world marketwhere one
can never know if the winds are favourable, or if the ship will get caught
in a dangerous storm which could capsize it. The image thus exhorts
the employees to perceive themselves as a community drawn together
by fate. Everyone is sitting in the same boat and must obey the allpowerful ship-owner/customer and confront the forces of nature
the market. Although it is not up to the captain to determine the route,
if the ship encounters turbulence along the way, then the captain must
be unconditionally obeyed. In the end it is only the frictionless interlinking of all the individual tasks which can ensure survival. The
reward for the unconditional surrender and the intense efforts and
commitment of the team lies in having warded off the danger and still
being left alive on deck. At the same time the picture conceals the high
profits. It remains unsaid that it is a decision of the captain/management to allow external consultants to come in and rescript the experiences and actions of the team as a product of market constraints.
At the same time the image by no means denies hierarchies: there is
the captain, the ships officers and the team. Obscuring the picture,
however, and shirking the conflict-laden discussion, is the question of
whether normative expectations and claims can be addressed. The ship
metaphor draws together promises of rescue with existential threats:
whoever makes an effort claims market leadership through excellence, and gets the better of the companys internal and external rivals,
will be able to stand their ground both in the internal organisation as
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gabriele wagner
well as in the face of world-wide competition. Thus the ship metaphor

lays the foundation for a new order of recognition: recognition in the
form of admiration is only earned by those who secure markets, conquer new ones, and serve demand both promptly and profitably.
Whoever disregards this rule, is unwilling to get fit for competition,
keep a lean profile through personnel cuts, or stay supple via outsourcing, will sink with every man and mouse in tow. All employee
expectations of arranging the restructuring processes differently,
exploiting any contingent room for manoeuvre, catering for normativeaspirations, can be quashed with an allusion to thedramatically
stagedconstraints of the market. Thus the ship metaphor also has a
micropolitical component which in the case of conflict lays down new
contextual conditions. The captain/management demands unconditional compliance and commitmentin the guise of there being no
alternative.
And with this the case structure is installed: as a consequence of
the strict market orientation, the employees are to work more, faster,
and autonomously, while the management withdraws from its responsibility for ensuring that the conditions are met which make such challenging and cumbersome work possible. The best-practise directive
of getting more products, in a shorter time, at lower prices, to marketripe approval, blanks out path dependencies, structural restrictions,
and traditionally rooted claims. On the risky ship journey it is the
arrival that really counts; the question of what sacrifices must be made
for this is at best secondary. Thus a structural conflictto be developed in the next sectionis pre-programmed.
b. The Subjective Actualisation of Admiration
The interpretation of the ships metaphor has shown that the top
management of Chemie AG are trying to establish a new order of recognition. In the context of the horizon of interpretation created by the
new organisation, recognition will henceforth only be granted for
those commitments, qualifications, and achievements that can prove
themselves on the market. However, this does not mean that the
employees adopt the new recognition order intact and immediately
implement it as the only valid guideline for their experiences and
actions. Rather, the recognition order which has been officially communicated and structurally recommended through the organisation
will only be able to effectively orient the actions of the employees once

it has been viewed through the lens of each subjective evaluation and
interpretation. For this reason a yawning gap can emerge between
the recognition order proposed by the organisation and the recognition order that is actually realised subjectively for each individual,
as will be seen in the next sections with senior staff members Bleibtreu
and Schmidtmeier.
Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu see themselves as successful leaders
and highly qualified specialists who naturally lay claim to recognition
in the form of admiration. At the beginning of the interview Bleibtreu
thus ranks himself as a top performer who takes his fate into his own
hands and has a clear vision of his professional targets and ambitions
and furthermore has people who support him in this (Bleibtreu). He
explains distinctions gained as being due in no small part to his having
anticipated during his career the new organisationaldirection of having everyone equally qualified for everything: because I was always
curious Ive been partly doing this myself from the start (Bleibtreu).
Showing full self-confidence he refers to his position as deputy plant
manager (Bleibtreu) and sketches the whole panorama of his duties,
assignments, and personnel and facility responsibilities. Capacity
overload is not in his vocabulary: The only problem which I never
really solved was devolving aspects of my work when I was given new
assignments (laughs) (Bleibtreu). Bleibtreus self-projection as a confident top performer is confirmed by the interviewer: So you are
omnipotent. Bleibtreu confirms this attribution with the lapidary
comment: I try to be (Bleibtreu).
Thus Bleibtreu orients the reconstruction of his current
and past career biography towards the recognition mode of admiration. Contrary to the new way of reading, which reserves admiration
only for marketable achievements, Bleibtreu, just like his colleague
Schmidtmeier, conceives the canon of admiration-worthy goods more
extensively. In their view they earn admiration for their specialist qualifications, leadership capacities, and their above average commitment.
Within the old order this recognition was also granted to them. Chemie
AG rewarded their dedication with promotion and granted them the
symbolic apparatus of recognition that was customary for successful
senior staff.
As the company realigns, their quest for recognition in the form
of admiration is increasingly in vain; the foundations which carry their
conception of admiration-worthy performance are beginning to totter.
Following the amalgamation of two units which housed specialists
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gabriele wagner
in animal and plant studies, their expert status is depreciated. If

everyone is supposed to be able to do everything, and studies can be
commissioned externally depending on opportunity costs, specialist qualifications become a standard expectation, which everyone
even the stigmatised cheap labour abroadcan fulfil. Thus the
prospect of being admired for limited specialist qualification is on
the wane.
In the course of the reorganisation, self-organising capacities
and personal responsibility are expected from all staff across all hierarchical strata. As a result, competencies which were previously only
attributed to management staff become a standard expectation whose
fulfilment, accordingly, is not rewarded with admiration. Admiration
is granted not to what is normal, but to what is special.
Thus Schmidtmeiers and Bleibtreus pursuit of admiration for specialist qualifications and leadership competency can now hardly find
any structural connection points. So it is not surprising that they are
henceforth denied further reward in the form of an upwardly mobile
career. Bleibtreus standing is even down-graded. In the course of the
consolidation of offices he loses his private office and must share his
workplace with a colleague. On the symbolic scale of prestige he sinks
down in full view of all.
c. In the Appreciation Trap
Bleibtreu fails in his claim to admiration as a high performer. And at
the end of the interview, little remains of his self-presentation as
omnipotent executive. The 43 year old now describes himself as old;
he is disappointed, resigned, and angry in the face of the extensive
disrespect he has experienced. In an attempt to avert the problem
of being on the receiving end of such disrespect, Bleibtreu
for his part devalues the new recognition order based on market success. He compares the new strategic direction of the company and
its strict results orientation to the methodical over-fulfilment of targetsin the centralised socialist planned economy: it reminds me of
those times, I used to have relatives over there, of 120 per cent plan
fulfilment or 150 per cent. Its actually just the same here (Bleibtreu).
The barb of his criticism is the observation that with the new directionit is not about an advanced organisation strategy, but rather the
return of centralist socialist bureaucratic principles which have historically outlived themselves. He thus devalues the new order which

has downgraded him. As a countermove Bleibtreu invokes the good
old order.
He points out that before, a job in the plant was a form of lifeinsurance, which allowed you to plan your whole life. He recounts how
pleased his mother-in-law was over his successful interview: it was
clear to her then that her daughter would be provided for (Bleibtreu).
There was no fear of losing ones post, the company took care of personal matters, for instance by asking after the wife or the sick child
(Bleibtreu). At the same time the company was a lifeworld establishment: on Fridays the managers cooked schnitzel in the laboratory with
their staff, they went bowling together and there were regular springtime hikes. In this context Bleibtreu does not lay claim to admiration
for his professional competence and leadership skills. He is rather laying claim to acknowledgement as a co-worker belonging to the
company.
The mutual social exchange of trust and integration in return for
protection and consideration belongs constitutively to the old order to
which Bleibtreu and Schmidtmeier appeal in vain. The companys
increased focus on the market and its associated orientation towards a
short term economy deprive this exchange of its structural basis.
Now the hitherto unquestioned assumptions are prised open and
long term biographical projects come under pressure: But I am confronted on a daily basis with my peoples queries: tell me, how are
things looking, Ive built a house. Will I still be with you next week?
(Bleibtreu). In the place of old securities there is a profound insecurity
which can no longer be transformed into clear safeguarding strategies. When by directive and according to a scattershot procedure,
20 per cent of the personnel across all hierarchical levels are made
redundant, the criteria according to which one could perhaps be sorted
into the league of the superfluous are not easy to recognise: the objective illegibility33 of the practical test leads to widespread insecurity
on the part of the employees: well now, are you not a bit too sure of
yourself, should not you start thinking about things too? (Bleibtreu).
As a defence strategy against such insecurity Schmidtmeier and
33
See R. Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in
the New Capitalism, New York, Norton, 1998.
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gabriele wagner
Bleibtreu once more appeal to the old order of recognition.

As a sign of recognition of their performance-vouching contributions
they expect their boss, Herr Schneidt, to protect the group and thus
fulfil his duty of care.
For once there would be some communication and he would say:
hey, Im fighting for the group. And not, Ill make another staff cut
there, we could contract out more here (Bleibtreu).
In diametrical opposition to the comprehensive success and market

orientation, Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu maintain their claim to recognition for belonging and call upon the moral-economic commitments which the company owes its employees.
Furthermore, by invoking acknowledgement claims, they manage
to express their outrage and anger at the rampant intensification of
their workload. Bleibtreu and Schmidtmeier address their expectation
to higher management, in person to their direct superior Schneidt, in
the following way:
the workload must be reduced and daily work must also be recognised.
It is not a given that these studies will be finished, they require a lot of
time (Bleibtreu).
This claim however breaks up against Schneidts leadership style.

Disregarding the daily running of the business, ignoring the com
mitment of his staff, and giving no consideration to their lifeworld
expectations and problems, are all part of this style. Due to the high
demand on his time and his frequent absence, Schidtmeier gets the
feeling that he really does not know whats going on anymore
(Schmidtmeier). Everyday business remains invisible to him. The
attempt to enlighten him on the everyday details, the toil and the effort,
runs aground because hes also lacking somewhat the deeper interest
(Schmidtmeier). This becomes clear in the way he does not get involved
in details, but brushes aside the problem at hand asking something
like have you got it under control? Staff requests to show consideration for their workloads often end with the allocation of further tasks.
At the same time it would be premature to impute the lack of consideration exclusively to lack of interest, lack of time, or general tactlessness on the part of the superior.
The blindness towards excessive workloads has strong structural
reasons which are rooted in the new regulation tools of target and
result orientation. The concentration on targets and results masks

daily business and makes it impossible to thematise issues of labourpower expenditure, exertion, and effort: Exclusive focus on figures.
Exclusive focus on returns (Bleibtreu). Behind this exclusivity there
lies a new arrangement for the performance policy. In order to
develop this problem I hearken back to a conceptual suggestion of
Voswinkel.34 First, in view of performance, a differentiation should
be made between the input and output sides. The input side can be
further subdivided into:
talent/qualification/aptitude
commitment/exertion/workload/labour expenditure
The output side comprises three dimensions, namely
the material dimension (quantity or quality)
the social dimension (problem solving, social benefits)
the economic dimension (business profit, market success)35
A management focusing exclusively on results places the economic
dimension in a central position and is indifferent to all other dimensions of performance. Recognition in the mode of admiration is linked
to market success: the process of delivering the performance takes a
backseat, along with time and effort, duration of the work effort, stress,
and commitment.36 Even the quality of a product or its social meaning
are only conditionally important, namely when the product has been
successfully placed on the market. It is only in retrospect that the
decision-makers can ascertain whether or not the product is a market
success and thus whether commitment and contribution to performance are worthy of recognition. After all, the market only evaluates
performances ex post. Thus the laboratory managers Bleibtreu and
Schmidtmeier are left with the problem of having to make decisions on
34
See S. Voswinkel, Leistung und AnerkennungSind Zielvereinbarungen eine
Lsung?, in eds. U.-M. Hagebrauck et al. Handbuch Betriebsklima, Mnchen, Mering,
2003, pp. 179196; S. Voswinkel, Die Organisation der Vermarktlichung von
OrganisationenDas Beispiel erfolgsbezogenen Entgelts, in eds. W. Jger and
U. Schimank Organisationsgesellschaft. Facetten und Perspektiven. Wiesbaden, Vs,
2004, pp. 287312.
35
Voswinkel, Leistung und AnerkennungSind Zielvereinbarungen eine
Lsung?, p. 180.
36
See S. Neckel and K. Drge, Die Verdienst und ihr Preis. Leistung in der
Marktgesellschaft, in ed. A. Honneth, Befreiung aus der Mndigkeit. Paradoxien des
gegenwrtigen Kapitalismus. Frankfurt/Main, Campus, 2002, pp. 93116, p. 99.
318
gabriele wagner
the investment of time and work today on the basis of what they will
only find out tomorrow.37 In this organisationally prescribed anticipation of uncertainties the input and output dimensions of performance
diverge. Or put differently: one might well show commitment, put
ones qualifications and working hours at the service of the common
cause, but if the result of the work is not rewarded by the market, then
all the effort has simply failed, and is therefore not given recognition.38
Thus in the performance based concept of Management by Results
the whole input side, including expert qualifications and acknowledgement of contributions, is systematically disregarded.
Bleibtreu sharply criticises the limitations of this concept:
So when I think now what percentage of my working day I use to get
the daily business running, in order to ensure that my plants are really
growing, its a percentage rate that, on some days, lies between 60, 70, 80
per cent. Sometimes its almost 100 per cent. But its only the strategic
aims which are seen. () No one sees anymore how much work goes
into it. () Daily work is no longer acknowledged (Bleibtreu).
The standard of reference for his outrage and disappointment is

acknowledgement (for which he now waits in vain) of contributions
and sacrifices made in the name of performance.
These passages show that in the face of imminent experiences
of disqualification and excessive demands, at least the remains and
residue of the old moral economic order are called to attention. The
recourse to acknowledgement claims lends the employees protest
a voice and protects them from experiences of disqualificationthis,
at least, is how it appears at first sight.
With this appeal, Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu bring the problem on
themselves of appealing to a recognition order which in the course of
the companys reorientation has lost its structural foundations and has
been culturally devalued. But Bleibtreu is also aware of this problem, as
he describes himself as an old romantic who is hanging on to sentimentalities. However, it must remain an open question how humiliating it is for highly qualified personnel no longer to self-confidently
37
See U. Holtgrewe, Meinen Sie, da sagt jemand danke, wenn man geht?
Anerkennungs- und Miachtungsverhltnisse im Proze organisationeller Trans
formation, in eds. Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit,
pp. 6384.
38
See Neckel and Drge, Die Verdienst und ihr Preis. Leistung in der
Marktgesellschaft.

insist on recognition for success, but rather to call for the acknowledgement of its victims and thus to make a claim which is normallymade by less qualified self-sacrificing housewives and dutiful
workhorses.39 Furthermore, according to the new recognition order,
insisting on the acknowledgement of ones commitment to sacrifice
and thus presenting oneself as a victim deserving of pity is a sign of a
lack of success40: high-potential performers who believe in themselves
and their resilience do not in general contravene the rules that allow
one to orchestrate the kind of omnipotence that attracts esteem.
Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu put themselves in an acknowledgement trap of their own making: they pay for (fruitless) protest with
self-humiliation. To solve this problem they change track again and lay
claim to recognition in the form of admirationwithout however
relinquishing their claim to acknowledgement.
d. In the Admiration Trap
But here too they become entangled in the conflict situation between
old recognition of good scientific work, which they try to rescue
in vain, and new economically oriented recognition for quickly realised market success. They criticise the new order while at the same
time following it. This is due, on the one hand, to their position in
the hierarchical structure. As laboratory managers they are responsiblefor carrying out the studies and, at the same time, according to the
stipulations of the LEts-go project, they are supposed to reduce costs
and vouch for reaching the benchmarks. This interface function
drives them into the structural conflict of having to shoulder the
contradictions between sale and science. On the other hand, the
contradictionbetween complaining about the new recognition order
and simultaneously complying can also be explained in the recognition perspective.
In the course of the company restructuring, the deadlines for laboratory studies and scientific expertise are no longer set according to
pure scientific criteria, but rather follow the moving target of getting
the product as quickly as possible onto the marketplace. The required
J. Behrens, Selbstverwichlung, in eds. H-J. Hoffmann-Nowotny and
F. Gehmann, Ansprche an die Arbeit, Frankfurt/Main, Campus, 1984, 117135, p.
122.
40
See S. Voswinkel, Anerkennung und Reputation. Die Dramaturgie industrieller
Beziehungen, p. 319.
39
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gabriele wagner
speed gain can only be reached by lowering the standards. Both

Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu report that, previously, quality standards
approached those of a dissertation and enough time was allowed for
this. From this it can be concluded that for Schmidtmeier
and Bleibtreu the central point of reference for the recognition of work
is, or rather was, the professional standards of good scientific work. By
contrast, the new reference criterion for the recognition of good work
is an extra-scientific, business management one which is mainly
focused on sales volume. There are not any more deadlines
in that sense. The deadline is really ASAPas soon as possible
(Bleibtreu).
The decisive thing is that this criterion is conceptually underdefined. While the quality criteria of good scientific laboratory work
were more or less capable of answering the question, how good is
good enough?, the mixed criteriascientifically speaking: as good
as is necessary for approval; financially speaking: out on the market as
quickly and as cost-effectively as possibleelude a clear-cut definition.
With this an element of inner disquiet comes into play which risks
developing into a new form of self-exploitation. Whoever receives recognition today for rapid results should be even faster tomorrow, should
indeedas a boss of the company surveyed puts itset tougher milestones. Behind this lies a power phenomenon resting on recognition,
which Paris41 referred to as politics of praise: the organisations official communication on recognition for strong performance entails the
duty of continuing to prove oneself worthy of the current praise in the
futureprincipally through further increases in performance. Resting
on ones laurels tends to be replaced by a continual demand to develop.
Accordingly, as Paris observes,
the implicit, keep it up! resonating in all praise fixes at the same time a
performance level, which henceforth may not be fallen short of. ()
Praise, in a manner of speaking, obstructs the return to mediocrity and
installs the extraordinary effort as the new normality.42
This new risk of self-exploitation and the new ambiguities outlined

here help to answer the question of why Bleibtreu and Schmidtmeier,
despite their heavy burdens, do not enter into a struggle for the
See R. Paris, Die Politik des Lobs, in Paris, Stachel und Speer. Machtstudien,
Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp,1998, pp. 152195.
42
ibid., p.160.
41

r ecognition of reasonable workloads, but rather tenaciously attempt to
meet all demands, however contradictory and strenuous they may be.
Withholding performance reserves and jamming on the brakes could
only be achieved by the highly qualified at the price of incurring the
disrespect of the new management in their very own fieldthe field of
good specialised workand thereby adversely deviating from the new
recognition order. Even though Bleibtreu and Schmidtmeier criticise
the new recognition standard of good work, they nonetheless submit
to the market-centred aspect of the new recognition order. They do not
manage to take an indifferent stance towards the new order. This
becomes clear when bothlike it or notrealise that it makes sense to
stop imposing the traditional standard of exactitude. They are thus
obliged as scientists to lower their criteria for good work and with this
to throw overboard a central referenceonce valid on both the personal and company levelfor the recognition of good work. With the
retraction of their own professional standards, they decrease their selfrespect. At the same time they must answer for their work to the licensing authorities and endure the rebuke of the authority official: how on
earth could you get like that (Bleibtreu).
Following the market-centred results orientation, the highly
qualified specialists Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu are compelled themselves to disregard relevant dimensions of the recognition of good
work: with ever increasing tempo and ever decreasing personnel they
barely manage to achieve still good work results. A specific tension
arises at this point from the fact that management demands personal
responsibility for the shaping of the work process and responsibility is
increasingly self-ascribed by the employees. Schmidtmeier calls attention to this conflict between the lack of structural support for this attribution and the symbolic representation of the employees as personally
responsible agents. She worries that:
well drive something into the wall, that perhaps a product wont be
registered because of us. Or that well hand in faulty products, which
perhaps sometime later will come to light. And then of course there is
the question what will happen then will you yourself be the fall guy?
(Schmidtmeier)
There are two sides to personal responsibility: on the one hand the
autonomy that is materially supported, of being able to take decisions
and push them through, and on the other hand the ascription of
responsibility onto the decision maker for the consequences of the
decision. In the company surveyed, the two sides are out of balance.
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gabriele wagner
Appointments, deadlines, targets, resources are preset. If, however,

the market success fails to materialise, Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu,
by virtue of their positioning as personally responsible project leaders, have failed and are to blame for their failure. Failure, however, in
the world of highly qualified personnel who are self-reliant and take
personal responsibility, is associated with deep contempt and leads to
the penetrating shame of the failure. The pursuit of recognition
therefore traps the laboratory managers Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu
in an endless engagement which is perhaps capable of deflecting failure. Chemie AGs flexible market-centred restructuring43 is not only
based on structural constraints, but is grounded also in the damaged
self-esteem of its employees. The potentially inferior personnel attempt
to evade the threat of humiliation by obeying the corresponding
framework of norms and appraisal. This however leads to them becoming entangled in an obligation to prove their questionable quality rating and to accept the shame-provoking new order as the guiding
principle of their experience and action. With this, Schmidtmeier and
Bleibtreu are stuck in an admiration trap of their own making.
3. Conclusion and Prospects: the Renaissance of the Duty Ethos
The reorganisation of Chemie AG operates on two levels. First, the
transition is introduced at the level of concrete restructuring measures.
The internal marketisation described in the scholarly literature does
not however imply a levelling of the difference between organisation
and market in favour of the latter. Individual restructuring measures
are rather more about the organisation of marketisation, which
follows well-known organisation principles.44 Management defines
what market success is: within the scope of agreements about targets,
the path to success is staked out and, with the setting of benchmarks,
success is even written in advance. Second, on the meta-level of organisational self-description, management also tries to make the employees sense-making an object of restructuration. To put it bluntly,
one could say that the management relies not just on silent coercive
43
See Drre, Das flexibel-marktzentrierte ProduktionsmodellGravitationszentrum eines neuen Kapitalismus?
44
S. Voswinkel, Die Organisation der Vermarktlichung von OrganisationenDas
Beispiel erfolgsbezogenen Entgelts, in eds. W. Jger and U. Schimank, Organisa
tionsgesellschaft. Facetten und Perspektiven, p. 306.

relations or the power of system integration; it also tries through the
ship metaphor to transform the perception and evaluation modes of
the employees in line with the companys new direction.45 The quintessence of the new scripts prescribed by management can be described
in Webers terms as follows: Weber portrays the pure consociation
(Vergesellschaftung) through exchange in the market as the a-ethical
(anethische) institution per se, since the masterless slaves cannot
meaningfully interpret the market order into which they have been
thrown. It is truer than ever that these impersonal forms of rule can by
no means be ethically regulated.46
The ship metaphor is part of a concept population whose centre is
occupied by the pervasive semantic figure of inevitable market constraints.47 In this semantic field the market takes on the role of an
omnipotent subject which acts as a compelling, unstoppable external force to which the only possible response is adjustment.48 In this
context Flecker advocates the idea that these semantics target a dissolution of boundaries between requirements and exploitation.49
Protest is nipped in the bud because the semantic figure of a constraining force makes market domination anonymous. In the face of severe
structural constraints the question of legitimation can hardly be asked
meaningfully.50
Contrary to a version of the colonisation thesis which moves too
quickly and too directly from the level of system integration to that of
social integration, this chapter has shown that Schmidtmeier and
Bleibtreu do not seamlessly carry out the process of marketisation on
themselves. Nor do they simply accept the interpretation of the management according to which the market is an a-ethical (anethische)
institution per se, against which the top-management themselves are
45
See Kieser, ber die allmhliche Verfertigung der Organisation beim Reden.
Organisieren als Kommunizieren, Industrielle Beziehungen, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1998,
pp. 4575.
46
See M. Weber, Economy and Society: an Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Berkeley
CA, University of California Press, 1978.
47
R. Stichweh, Semantik und Sozialstruktur. Zur Logik einersystemtheoretischen
Unterscheidung, Soziale Systeme, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2000, pp. 237250, p. 247.
48
H. Tyrell, Singular oder Pluraleinleitende Bemerkungen zu Globalisierung
und Weltgesellschaft, in Zeitschrift fr Soziologie, Sonderheft, Weltgesellschaft:
Theoretische Zugnge und empirische Problemlagen, 2005, pp. 150, pp. 21, 30.
49
Flecker, Intrapreneure, Arbeitskraftunternehmer und andere Zwitterwesen,
p. 32.
50
See Drre, Das flexibel-marktzentrierte ProduktionsmodellGravitationszentrum eines neuen Kapitalismus?, p. 28.
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gabriele wagner
equally powerless. They see very well that the new direction of the
company is a consequence of management decisions. Furthermore the
difference between market and organisation is and remains clear to
them. This knowledge leads them to demand that all remaining room
for manoeuvre be explored. In the name of the old order they address
normative expectations to the management. Its responsibility does not
remain invisible.
However, in so doing, Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu become caught
up in the muddled conglomerate of old and new claims to recognition
and thus paradoxically, on the level of social integration, prepare the
way for colonisation. The attempt to secure recognition in the mode
of admiration leads, under the conditions of the new order, to the risk
of a recognition-driven self-exploitation. This is not least because
admiration for individually attributable success in the final instance
refers the subjects back to themselves, and this also holds in the case of
failure. The attribution problem in the recognition mode of appreciation is different. Although from a sociological perspective it can be
observed that the new performance policy and its attendant instruments, with their market-centred focus on results, structurally preprograms the failure of the acknowledgement claim, the interviewees
Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu deal with the structural conflict in an
intensely personal manner. The normative expectations they address
to their superior Schneidt have to do with the appreciation or acknowledgement they are due, which remains a powerful mode of recognition
capable of providing personal orientation. This personal attribution of
responsibility abstracts from the structural context in which Schneidt
is positioned. In their narratives he appears as a cool executive organ of
the new thought. Whether Schneidt as a person is a driven highachiever without consideration for others, or whether he is himself
driven by upper management (or a mixture of both), cannot be determined on the basis of the material. On the other hand the perspective
of recognition enables us to systematically reconstruct the expectations and claims which Bleibtreu and Schmidtmeier direct at the attribution figure Schneidt. Their conventional way of attributing
responsibility, which focuses on persons and not on market structures
conceived as anonymous, is grounded in the recognition mode of
appreciation, which rewards integration and loyalty with protection
and consideration.
For highly qualified employees however this is a problematic mode
of recognition. After all in this particular mode of recognition it is not

autonomy and independent thinking, but rather submission and faithful fulfilment of duty, which are considered worthy of recognition.
Following the normative subjectivisation of work51 and the associated
increase in demand for self-reliance and autonomy, we can surmise
that highly qualified staff in particular, such as Bleibtreu and
Schmidtmeier, will try to balance the asymmetry in the recognition
mode of acknowledgement with the recognition mode of admiration.
Or put another way: against the background of radical reorganisation and internal marketisation processes with the accompanying
insecuritiesincluding those concerning professional biographies
they claim their rights to the acknowledgement of their performancevouching contributions and to the admiration of their highly qualified
work and scientific expertise. Thus instead of the companys structural
demand for comprehensive market and results orientation, Bleibtreu
and Schmidtmeier attempt to place the figure of the highly qualified
staff member who does want to work independently and contribute
their share, but should not be held fully responsible for market risks.
But this bricolage of acknowledgement and admiration is itself condemned to failure.
Their losing battle for recognition aims at a pluralisation of the content and reference points of recognition. In spite of the increasing pressure towards marketisation, they attempt to assert their professional
identity as experts in their field, for within relations of pluralisticrecog
nition one can fail in terms of market targets whilst still being successful as a specialised scientist. The management on the other hand offers
admiration for (market) success without acknowledgement or any
long term binding commitment linked to affiliation. This is to be read
from the implementation of regulation tools such as target and results
orientation which are systematically blind to the aspect of appreciation
of daily work and the routines that ensure the maintenance of performance. The new recognition order which the company is trying to put
into effect leads to a one-sidedness of recognition and a systematic
shortage of recognition opportunities. As a consequence of this onesidedness the company casts off its Simmelian duties of gratitude and
the normative obligations related to the model of consideration.52
51
See M. Baethge, Arbeit, Vergesellschaftung, Identitt. Zur zunehmenden normativen Subjektivierung der Arbeit, Soziale Welt, Vol. 42, 1991, pp. 619.
52
See A. W. Gouldner, Wildcat Strike. A Study in Worker Management Relationships,
New York, Harper & Row, 1965.
326
gabriele wagner
Within the new recognition order the employees are positioned as

labour-power entrepreneurs who sell their labour-power and who, as
entrepreneurs of their own labour-power, are the only ones to whom
the risks of success and failure are to be assigned.53
None of this leaves the interviewees untouched. In contrast
to the companys orchestrated culture of strong valuation for topperformance on the world market, there is not a single passage to be
found in the two interviews where the highly qualified Bleibtreu or
Schmidtmeier report with producers pride on the contents, results,
or special quality of their work. Consequently, in their own horizon
of perception, all possible reference points disappear which could
anchor an aspiration for the recognition and admiration of outstanding specialist achievements. The producers pride falls behind the
empty competence of the rat-race participant who wonders at the fact
that somehow one still manages to do everything: At least the shops
running. Theres a few rough spots here and there. What remains is
having to deal with ones disappointment, resignation, and the reversion to the culturally devalued duty ethos of the secondary virtues.
The highly qualified working Spartans54 grit their teeth and get down
to work: well, were working at perhaps 120 per cent capacity, but
theres not a peep out of anyone (Bleibtreu). The economisation of
subjectivity is therefore not only an expression of the harsh structural
constraints or the consequence of a semantically suggested bedazzlement. It also expresses the paradoxical effect of failing struggles for
recognitionthis not least because it is in fact not a struggle for
recognition, but rather a struggle against the subjective experience
of devalorisation, the insecurity of ones position within the new constellation, and the individual experience of suffering. In this context it
is only a question that can be answered empirically whether a new
legitimation regime will develop that makesvisible the collective reference points of individual suffering and can thereby make it possible
to organise struggles for recognition within a contemporary setting.
Translated from the German by Jean-Philippe Deranty and Nicholas
H. Smith.
53
Voswinkel, Die Anerkennung der Arbeit im Wandel. Zwischen Wrdigung und
Bewunderung, p. 57.
54
See M. Behr, Ostdeutsche Arbeitsspartaner, Die politische Meinung, No. 369,
2000, pp. 2738.
Chapter twelve
A Critical Assessment of Orthodox Economic

Conceptions of Work
Dale Tweedie
When economists argue that the organisation of work must change
due to economic constraints or goals, what concepts of work, and
of the role of work in peoples lives, are implicit in these arguments?
And what effects do these concepts of work have on how we view the
desirability or otherwise of contemporary working life? This chapter
addresses these questions, in three parts.
Part 1 distinguishes two dimensions of work: the resources work
provides, either directly or via a wage; and the act of work, or working,
which refers to the experience of performing a given task in a particular physical and social environment. This chapter focuses on economic
analysis of the act of work: what is work to economists besides that by
which people earn an income?
Part 2 reconstructs three orthodox (neoclassical) economic
responses to this issue. As economists such as David Spencer and Ugo
Pagano have shown, there are substantial variations in how the act of
work is constructed within the orthodox economic tradition.1 Early
orthodox economic models provide more or less substantive analyses
of how the act of work directly affects the labour supply and improves
or undermines human welfare. By contrast, more contemporary orthodox models either exclude these aspects of work entirely or consider
them only indirectly, by presuming that peoples different subjective
experiences of work are adequately reflected in observable differences
in wages.
1
See U. Pagano, Work and Welfare in Economic Theory, Oxford, Basil Blackwell,
1985; D. Spencer, Loves Labors Lost? The Disutility of Work and Work Avoidance in
the Economic Analysis of Labor Supply, Review of Social Economy, Vol. 61, No. 2,
2003; D. Spencer, Deconstructing the Labour Supply Curve, Metroeconomica,
Vol. 55, No. 4, 2004; D. Spencer, From Pain to Opportunity Cost: The Eclipse of
the Quality of Work as a Factor in Economic Theory, History of Political Economy,
Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004.
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Part 3 evaluates orthodox economic models of work in light of two

recent theoretically informed diagnoses of pathologies in contemporary working life: those offered by Christophe Dejours and Richard
Sennett. The pathologies Dejours and Sennett diagnose are invisible to,
or marginalised by, contemporary economic theories, yet these pathologies are also attributed to the individualistic and competitive forms of
work organisation that many economists advocate. Due to their more
substantive model of the act of work, earlier orthodox economic theories are in fact better placed to analyse these contemporary trends in
work than what is now the economic orthodoxy. Conversely, a reexamination of these earlier models reveals that Dejours and Sennetts
diagnoses can develop concerns about work organisation which have
been historicallyalthough not currentlypart of the economic
mainstream.
1. Work in Two Dimensions
Work provides the material conditions of life, yet clearly this is not all
that work provides.2 While many types of work provide similar material rewards, not all work is equally fulfilling: some work is more interesting, better respected, or contributes more to society than others,
which is in turn reflected in peoples overall job satisfaction. The same
point can be made negatively, since empirical research in both economics and psychology indicates that the suffering people often experience during long-term unemployment is not well explained by the
loss of income alone.3 This research does not show that work is a necessary component of the good life, but it does show that the contribution
2
Note that work and labour will be used interchangeably in this chapter, since
they do not denote distinct meanings in economics in the way they do for Hannah
Arendt, for instance. See H. Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1958.
3
For example, Clark and Oswald show substantial differences in reported wellbeing across a range of categories for unemployed as against employed, in A. E. Oswald
and A. J. Clark, Unhappiness and Unemployment, The Economic Journal, Vol. 108,
1994. Theodossiou notes similar differences, and emphasises the significant differences in subjective well-being between unemployed and low-paid employment, which
suggests the significance of work as the key explanatory variable rather than income.
See I. Theodossiou, The Effects of Low-Pay and Unemployment on Psychological
Well-Being: A Logistic Regression Approach, Journal of Health Economics, Vol. 17,
1998. Johada provides a more comprehensive theoretical approach to the numerous
ways unemployment undermines welfare beyond income effects, in M. Johada,
Employment and Unemployment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982.
orthodox economic conceptions of work329
work can make to human life cannot be adequately explained by the

resources work provides alone.
To better explain economic conceptions of work, it is useful to draw
a broad distinction between the resources work provides, typically a
wage, and what will be termed the act of work, or working. The act of
work designates peoples particular experience of work, which includes
their task, their affective response to that task, and the physical and
social environment in which they work. While the resource dimension
of work foregrounds issues of distributive justice, especially whether
people deserve the resources their work provides, the act of work foregrounds the desirability or otherwise of the conditions under which
people work.
In focusing on the act of work in economic theory then, I leave to
one side many significant issues as to the adequacy of economic models of wage determination. Instead, three issues in how the act of work
is modeled in orthodox economics are considered below. The first is
the extent to which workers are motivated by the experience of work
relative to wages, and the possible tension between these two motivations. For instance, if a change in how work is organised increases productivity and wages while undermining working conditions, how do
economists model the overall results, and desirability, of such a change?
Secondly, to the extent that the act of work is included in economic
analysis, how are the strikingly diverse experiences which working
entails conceptualised? As John Kenneth Galbraith evocatively
observed, the word work designates acts that are pleasurable, engaging and well-respected, and acts that are painful, mundane, and humiliating, as well as everything in between.4 Consequently, any generalised
concept of working must incorporate experiences that vary not only in
degree (for example, more or less pleasurable), but also in kind (for
example, pain versus pleasure, well-respected versus humiliating, and
so on).
Thirdly, to what extent, if at all, do economic models incorporate
the capacity of work to shape human capacities and skills over time?
That is, if it is granted that peoples talents and personalities develop
differently depending on their physical and social environments, then
the influence of working conditions on workers is not limited to the
4
See J. K. Galbraith, The Economics of Innocent Fraud, Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Co, 2004, pp. 1720.
330
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pleasure or pain these conditions cause at any given time. Rather, over
time, the work people do and the environment in which they work will
also influence the capacities and skills they have, and so the kind of life
they can live, or indeed the types of people they become. Adam Smiths
well-known critique of the nascent industrial working conditions he
observed was based on just this point.5 Smith worried that the mundane and repetitive working conditions brought on by the division of
labour in factory production were not just unpleasant, but could also
undermine the workers mental and social capacities, and so their ability to interact in meaningful and fulfilling ways with others. From this
perspective, even work that is well-remunerated and relatively painless
may be deleterious to human welfare if it repressesor fails to
developthe capacities that are necessary to live a rich and fulfilling
human life.
2. Economic Analysis of Work: Three Models
This section outlines three economic models of work, which are drawn
predominately from orthodox (neoclassical) economic explanations of
labour supply. A full economic analysis of labour supply must address
three issues: the source of available labourers (that is, population size
and growth); how people allocate their available time between labour
and other activities (that is, work versus leisure); and how labour time
is distributed between different possible tasks or industries (for example, mining versus accountancy).6 The latter two issues in particular
require at least a minimal response to the questions raised in Part 1,
since these issues require a direct account of what motivates people to
work, and at least an indirect account of how the choice to work or not
work makes a person better or worse off overall.
Of course, there are limits to how substantive a model of work it is
reasonable to expect economists to provide here, in so far as the aim of
their analysis is to explain movements in labour supply rather than to
provide a comprehensive account of what work really is. However,
drawing on Spencer and Pagano, I argue that there has been a progressive marginalisation of the act of work in orthodox economic theory
5
See A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Vol. 2, London, J. M. Dent and Sons, 1954,
pp. 263264.
6
See G. Becker, Economic Theory, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1971, p. 160.
over time.7 It is the consequences of this retreat, especially relative to

the growing influence of economic ideas on work organisation over
recent decades, which will be explored in Part 3.
To show changes in economic thinking over time, the following
models of work are given in broadly temporal order, with Model A
drawn from early orthodox economic theory, and Models B and C
characteristic of more contemporary positions. It should be noted
though that for reasons of brevity these models are indicative rather
than exhaustive.8
Model AThe Pleasure and Pain of Work
The defining feature of this model of work is a substantive account of
how the act of work influences both labour supply and human welfare.
The model is termed substantive in so far as it identifies the circumstances under which the act of work is pleasurable or painful, and then
explains how these circumstances affect worker motivation and wellbeing. As David Spencer has shown, this approach is exemplified by
William Stanley Jevons and Alfred Marshall.9
Jevons is one of three economists generally credited with developing
the characteristic techniques of neoclassical economic analysis.10 His
analysis of labour supply follows an explicitly utilitarian framework,
where work is essentially a painful sacrifice endured for the pleasures
of consuming the goods that work provides. Yet Jevons also identifies
two distinct types of pleasure that work may produce. The first is the
generic pleasure of bodily action, which, in small doses, is almost
7
See Pagano, Work and Welfare in Economic Theory; Spencer, Loves Labors
Lost?; Spencer, Deconstructing the Labour Supply Curve; Spencer, From Pain to
Opportunity Cost.
8
One especially notable omission is the comparatively recent development of
personnel economics. For a discussion of this strand of neo-classical thought, as
well as alternative economic approaches to labour theory such as institutionalism,
see C. MacMillan, Internal Labour Markets, Institutionalism and Personnel
Economics, Annual Conference of History of Economic Thought Society of Australia,
Victoria, 2006; D. Spencer, The Political Economy of Work, Routledge, 2008.
9
See for instance Spencer, Loves Labors Lost?; and Spencer From Pain to
Opportunity Cost.
10
See M. Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1988, p. 294. What exactly defines neoclassical analysis is a subject
of debate not entered into here. For further discussion see: T. Aspromourgos, On
the Origins of the Term Neoclassical, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 10, 1986;
M. Zafirovski, How Neo-Classical Is Neoclassical Economics? With Special
Reference to Value Theory, History of Economics Review, Vol. 29, 1999.
332
dale tweedie
merged in the pleasures of occupation and exercise.11 The second is a

more intellectual pleasure derived from being engaged in an inherently interesting task. The first type of pleasure is brief and transient,
being limited by bodily fatigue, while the second type of pleasure may
continue indefinitely, since success of labour only excites to new exertions, the work itself being of an interesting and stimulating nature.12
Jevons constructs a three stage model of the common (bodily) work
experience. Work is painful to begin with, because there is an inevitable bodily resistance to beginning a difficult or demanding task. Work
then becomes briefly pleasurable in the physical sense outlined above,
as the worker adjusts to his or her task, and finds pleasure in the movement of limbs and in the release of pent up energy. Yet after just a short
time, work becomes painful once more, but this time pain is experienced as fatigue, which becomes progressively more intense the longer
work continues.
On Jevons model, work for most people is pleasurable for a time,
but it is painful overall and at the margin, which is to say, in the final
period of work. As Spencer notes, a key feature of Jevons model is that
the hours people work (that is, labour supply) are jointly determined
by the pleasures of consuming the products of work and the pleasure
or pain experienced by the worker at work.13 In particular, towards the
end of the working day, whether or not workers choose to work another
hour depends on whether the pleasure from additional consumption
will exceed the pain from additional labour. It follows that changes in
the pleasure or pain of working can affect the number of hours they
work, by changing the point at which the pleasures derived from additional hours are outweighed by the pains.
To illustrate this point, consider a change in working conditions
which makes all hours of labour more pleasurable or less painful, such
as better facilities at work or more collegial working relationships. This
change would improve the welfare of workers directly by decreasing
the pain they experience at work at any given time. However, although
Jevons does not clearly spell this out, it could also increase labour supply by decreasing the pain-cost of additional labour hours, thereby
allowing longer working hours to be exchanged for the same amount
11
Jevons is citing Jennings here. See W. S. Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy,
New York, Augustus M Kelley, 1965, [1871], p. 172.
12
Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, p. 182.
13
See Spencer, Deconstructing the Labour Supply Curve, p. 449.
of consumption. Thus, as Spencer also notes, Jevons model of work

can provide a case for improving working conditions on two grounds:
the direct improvement to worker welfare, and the increase in labour
supply that can (possibly) result.14
Alfred Marshall was the leading orthodox economist of his day, with
his major works published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.15 His analysis of labour supply adopts the basic template
from Jevons: work is painful at first, then pleasurable for a time, and
then declines towards pain at the end of the working day.16 Consequently,
Marshall also represents both worker welfare and labour supply as
jointly determined by wages and the pain or pleasure experienced by
the worker at work.
Yet Marshall also diverges from Jevons on two significant points,
which alters Marshalls overall conception of the role of work in human
life. First, Marshall rejects that work is generally painful overall, especially once it is recognised that what economists term leisure can also
be a painful experience: the deleterious effects of long-term unemployment on human welfare again illustrate this point. Secondly, while
Jevons ignores the potential of the act of work to shape a persons character,17 Marshall takes this as a fundamental, if not primary, economic
feature of work. He spells this point out clearly in his definition of economicson page one of The Principles of Economicswhere he writes
that economics
is on the one side a study of wealth; and on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man. For mans character has been moulded
by his every-day work, and the material resources which he thereby procures, more than by any other influence unless it be that of religious ideals.For the business by which a person earns his livelihood generally
fills his thoughts during by far the greater part of those hours in which
his mind is at its best; during them his character is being formed by the
way in which he uses his faculties in his work, by the thoughts and feelings which it suggests, and by his relations to his associates in work, his
employers or his employees18 [emphasis added].
See ibid., p. 451.
See T. Parsons, Wants and Activities in Marshall, Quarterly Journal of Economics,
Vol. 46, 1931, p. 101; S. Pressman, Fifty Major Economists, New York, Routledge, 1999.
16
See A. Marshall, Principles of Economics, eighth edition, London, MacMillan &
Co, 1961, p. 118.
17
This follows from Jevons definition of economics as satisfying given wants.
See the definition of economics in Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, p. 267.
18
Marshall, Principles of Economics, p. 1.
14
15
334
dale tweedie
Marshalls definition builds into economic analysis the distinction

introduced in Part 1, between work as a means to resources on one
hand and the act or task of work on the other. Here the resourcecreating dimension of work is identified with the economic study of
wealth creation, while the act of work includes both the experience
of work at any timewhich includes the task, affective response to
task, and the physical and social environmentand the effect of this
experience on the workers character over time.
What gives this dual perspective on work a critical edge is the conception of the good life to which Marshall connects it, where he maintains that a constitutive feature of a fulfilling life is the opportunity to
develop ones skills and capacities. For instance, Marshall writes in The
Principles of Economics that the fullness of life lies in the development
and activity of as many and as high faculties as possible,19 and elsewhere that there has always been a substratum of agreement that
social good lies mainly in that healthful exercise and development of
faculties which yields happiness without pall, because it sustains selfrespect and is sustained by hope.20
This concept of the good life owes more to Aristotle than to an economic utilitarianism, because it depicts the good life as attained via the
development of fundamental human faculties, rather than through the
satisfaction of existing preferences or desires.21
The critical perspective on work which results from the above ideas
can be reconstructed as three linked claims. These are: (1) the development of ones capacities through action is at least partly constitutive of
the full human life; (2) work provides an opportunity for capacity
development; and (3) that work occupies the greater part of those
hours in which [the workers] mind is at its best. Given thesethreeprem
ises, work has a constitutive role in the full human life because work is
demonstrably that domain in which most people have the greatest
opportunity to develop human capacitieswhich is to say, as a matter of fact rather than by necessity. It is this contingent notion of
the centrality of work that Marshall has in mind when he writes in
ibid., p. 112.
In The Old Generation of Economists and The New, cited in Robin C. O.
Matthews, Marshall and the Labour Market, in ed. John K. Whitaker, Centenary
Essays on Alfred Marshall, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 27.
21
For further discussion of incorporating this kind of Aristotelian approach
to labour into economic theory, see J. Murphy, The Moral Economy of Labour,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993.
19
20
On the Future of the Working Class that work in its best sense,
the healthy energetic exercise of faculties, is the aim of life, is life
itself.22
Model BThe Opportunity Cost of Work
While Jevons and Marshall arrive at very different conceptions of
the significance of work overall, both economists adopt substantive
models of the act of work by explaining labour supply and worker
welfare through the specific pleasures and pains of the work experience. However, according to Lionel Robbins, such substantive models
of work were almost universally rejected by 1930, in favour of an
opportunity cost approach to labour supply. On an opportunity cost
model, work always has costs, but these costs are not identified with, or
derived from, the (painful) experiences of labouring. Rather, the costs
of work are ultimately to be regarded as being the pull of foregone
leisure or foregone present income,23 which is to say, as the leisure
time or alternative income that workers must always sacrifice to devote
some of their limited time to work.
The main insight behind the opportunity cost approach is that
devoting time to work always requires a sacrifice of some other valued
activity, provided it is (fairly uncontroversially) assumed that a person
has many desired activities and only so much available time. For example, Jevons thought that intellectual work such as engineering was
unusual in potentially providing sustained pleasure, due to the inherently interesting nature of the task. Yet the opportunity cost doctrine
emphasises that even where his or her work is pleasurable, the engineer must always sacrifice other valuable uses of his or her time to
work, for example, time with friends or family. Hence, working has at
least some cost to the engineer irrespective of whether the experience
is in itself pleasurable or painful.
What is controversial is that analysing work as a sacrifice of opportunity costs alone excludes consideration of how different working
conditions may affect the welfare of workers at work, and in turn affect
A. Marshall, The Future of the Working Classes, in eds. T. Raffaelli, E. Biagini,

and R. McWilliams Tullberg, Alfred Marshalls Lectures to Women, Aldershot, Edward
Elgar, 1995, p. 168.
23
L. Robbins, On a Certain Ambiguity in the Concept of Stationary Equilibrium,
The Economic Journal, Vol. 40, No. 158, 1930, p. 208.
22
336
dale tweedie
labour supply.24 Pagano demonstrates this point with an example of a

worker on an eight-hour day in Smiths famous pin-factory. From an
opportunity cost perspective, it makes no difference whether the
worker straightens pins for eight hours, or if the worker has the presumably more interesting option of rotating around several different
tasks or responsibilities. In either case the opportunity costs remain
the same, because the same amount of leisure time is sacrificed irrespective of the uses towards which work time is put. This conceptual
exclusion of the act of work from economic analysis is reflected in
Frank Knights remark that, from an opportunity cost perspective,
labour is really the sacrifice of some desirable alternative use of ones
time and strength. If there is no alternative there is no sacrifice.25 What
Pagano draws out is in effect a corollary of this position: if there is no
change in alternatives, there is no change in sacrifice.
It is important to note though that Knightand other opportunity
cost theoristsneed not deny that working is in reality a pleasurable
or painful experience. Rather, an analysis of work costs as solely opportunity costs denies that the pleasure or pain of working is relevant
for economic analysis. Knight makes this point explicit in writing
that whether labour is experienced as pleasurable or painful is from
a (scientific) economic perspective a matter of indifference.26
Elsewhere, he writes in a similar vein that
For scientific purposes it simply does not matter what the physical
attributes or psychical accompaniments of the labour may be, or whether
labourers know or feel at all, so long as they in fact respond to the incentives in a uniform way. All such notions as irksomeness belong in a later
stage of the discussion, the whys of the whys.27
Knights position here is that the basic patterns of labour supply can be
determined without introducing the pleasures or pains of working into
the analysis, because people always need incentives to compensate
them for the opportunity cost of work. Consequently, peoples choice
to work or not work at any time can be modelled as a relationship
24
See Pagano, Work and Welfare in Economic Theory, pp. 113114. See also
I. Steedman, Welfare Economics and Robinson Crusoe the Producer, Metroeconomica,
Vol. 51, 2000.
25
F. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, New York, Harper Torchbook, 1965, p. 63.
26
ibid., p. 68.
27
F. Knight, A Suggestion for Simplifying the Statement of the General Theory of
Price, The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 36, No. 3, 1928, p. 357.
between the incentives work provides and the opportunities that work
costs. However, what Paganos response reveals is that the incentives
and costs in Knights analysis can only be of a particular kind: wage
and leisure opportunities rather than changes in the conditions under
which wages are earned.
Model CCompensation and Commodities
The opportunity cost model retains Jevons conception of labour as
essentially a cost borne for consumption, but it reinterprets that cost as
due to lost opportunities rather than the painful experience of the act
of work. Yet if what Knight terms the inner experiences of labour are
indeed a matter of indifference, then some important features of
labour supply seem inexplicable. For instance, how can the relatively
high wages required to induce people to work in especially demanding, dangerous or unpleasant conditions, such as on an offshore oil
rig, be adequately explained without some reference to the particular experience of this kind of work, such as the loneliness, cold, and
physical exertion? Or contra-wise, how can the relatively low wages
people accept for work which offers unique opportunities for selfdevelopment or self-expression, such as casual academic labour, be
explained without reference to how this work is experienced as especially satisfying in itself?
Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize winning economist and developer of
the human capital approach to labour supply,28 responds to these
questions by modeling work as producing two distinct types of income
or reward: (1) money wages; and (2) commodities such as satisfaction, which enter preference functions directly, and which he alternativelyterms psychic income.29 Psychic income captures the utility or
disutility that people are assumed to derive directly from the act of
work, and explains why some people accept lower wages for work that
they find more intrinsically satisfying over higher paid alternatives.
Beckers example is of a college graduate who chooses to enter the ministry when that person would have earned substantially more over
their lifetime working in business.30 Their lost wages are offset by the
See Pressman, Fifty Major Economists, pp. 185188.

G. Becker, A Theory of the Allocation of Time, Economic Journal, Vol. 75, 1965,
p. 498; Becker, Economic Theory, p. 170.
30
Becker, Economic Theory, p. 166.
28
29
338
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psychic income the graduate presumably receives from ministering

to the needs of others, or otherwise put, by an equivalently valued
commodity of satisfaction which working produces.
Unlike in Model B, Beckers model does not represent the pleasure
or pain people derive from work as a matter of indifference, because
these experiences have a clear explanatory role in how wages are determined, and in what motivates workers to move between different professions. However, in common with Model B, and in contrast to Model
A, Beckers model makes no attempt to explain the specific circumstances under which work is pleasurable or painful, or when the act of
work will develop or repress human skills and capacities.31 Instead,
Becker claims that differences between the psychic income from different forms of work can be sufficiently measured via differences in
wages, while whether work is pleasant or irksome cannot even be
ascertained from observed behaviour and is thus a meaningless,
although frequently discussed, question.32
Beckers position then is that there must be satisfactions or costs
derived from the act of work because this is the only way that certain
observed differences in wages and behaviour can rationally be
explained. However, it is not up to economists to explain either the
substance or source of these experiences, which is to say, whether work
is pleasurable or painful overall, or what would tend to make one form
of work pleasurable rather than painful. Rather, economists need only
to observe the consequences of such experiences for the efficient allocation of labour.
Beckers stance is augmented by an analysis of labour markets
where workers are modelled as seeking work that maximises their
totalincome (that is, wages plus psychic income). Given a competitive
labour market, a relatively high supply of workers seeking more satisfying work will tend to push money wages for these positions down,
while a relatively low supply of workers seeking less satisfying or more
painful work will tend to push money wages for these positions up.
All other things being equal then, money wages in competitive markets are held to adjust so as to penalise people with relatively satisfying work with lower wages, and to compensate people for enduring
31
Note that Becker does analyse when workers will invest in further education to
improve their market wage. However, this is a separate issue to the one considered
here.
32
ibid., p. 170.
relatively more painful work with higher wages.33 Beckers model of

work thus not only suggests that there is no scientific basis to a substantive model of labour, but also that there is no real need for such a
model since market wages can adjust to take different experiences of
work into account.
3. A Constructive Response: Work, Recognition, and the Craft Instinct
This section sets out a constructive response to the economic models
of work outlined in Part 2. It first sketches out two alternative noneconomic approaches to work, as elaborated by Christophe Dejours
and Richard Sennett. It is then shown that while these approaches
reveal problems in contemporary orthodox economic models of work,
they can in fact develop key themes from earlier economic analysis.
Dejours: Resistance and Recognition
Christophe Dejours is a consulting psychoanalyst, who has developeda model of work from his efforts in clinically diagnosing workrelated pathologies. Dejours definition of work centres precisely on
the act of work as a source of injuries and pathologies. He writes
that for the clinician, work is not above all the wage relation or
employment but working, which is to say, the way the personality is
involved in confronting a task that is subject to constraints (material
and social).34
Dejours concept of work differs from economic models first of all in
using a psychological rather than an economically rational model of
the working human agent, which follows from his aim to understand
real human pathologies rather than ideally efficient choices. A second
difference is that for Dejours, the constraints the worker faces are not
relatively abstract opportunity costs, but are rather all the concrete
ways the physical and social world resists the workers efforts to control
it: machines that break down, strategies that fail, and colleagues that
undermine or resist their plans.
Although Becker states that this is relative to differences in worker opportunity,
talent and education. See ibid., pp. 177183.
34
C. Dejours, Subjectivity, Work, and Action, in eds. J.-P. Deranty, D. Petherbridge,
J. Rundell, and R. Sinnerbrink, Recognition, Work, Politics: New Directions in French
Critical Theory, Leiden, Brill, 2007, p. 72.
33
340
dale tweedie
If to work is to confront a world that resists ones efforts, then

working is always experienced as an encounter with the limits of ones
powers to act in the world, which Dejours insists is a deeply felt experience. He writes:
The real world resists. It confronts the subject with failure, which gives
rise to a feeling of powerlessness, indeed, irritation and anger, or alternately disappointment or discouragement. The real manifests itself to the
subject in the form of an unpleasant surprise.35
The experience described here is not equivalent to Jevons analysis of

work as essentially painful, because, as Jean-Philippe Deranty explains,
it is set within a very different model of the subject.36 On Dejours
model of the subject, the resistance of the world to ones efforts is in
fact a constitutive moment in practical identity: human subjects know
themselves in part through their experience of a world that limits their
actions. Following on from this perspective, the experience Dejours
describes above has the potential to become both self-revealing and
self-developing, because if the inevitable experience of encountering
ones limits in action are met and managed, then the worker may
emerge strengthened and affirmed by the experience.
Work as pain is in a sense comparable to Jevonsit is something injurious and to be avoidedonly where the worker feels
incapable of coping with the inevitable constraints and resistance of
working life. The different possible effects of the resistance of the
world encountered in work can be illustrated by the phenomena of
workplace stress and anxiety. At low levels, and in a sufficiently
supportive work environment, these experiences may accompany
the healthy development of a persons skills or capacities through progressively more challenging work. Yet, the same phenomena may
become injurious or pathological, leading to extreme suffering or even
complete breakdown, when workers are overwhelmed by the fear that
circumstances have moved beyond their capacity to manage them.
Work is not essentially painful in Jevons sense then, but rather becomes
so because of the way the work task and work environment are
organised.
ibid., p. 73.
See Derantys analysis of Dejours model of the subject in J.-P. Deranty, Work
and the Precarisation of Existence, European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 4,
2008.
35
36
Where an opportunity cost approach to work directs attention to the

efficient allocation of time, what Dejours analysis directs attention to
is how people either cope or fail to cope with the perpetually confronting experience of working life. Central to his analysis is the recognition
co-workers can provide of a persons work, and so of the contribution
workers make to others through the struggle or suffering they endure.
Dejours writes:
When the quality of my work is recognised, all my efforts, angst, doubts,
disappointments, discouragements become full of meaning. All that
suffering had not been in vain; not only has it contributed to the division
of labour, but it has made me, in return, a different subject from the one
I was before recognitionWithout the benefice of recognition of his
or her work, and failing the power to thereby access the meaning of his
or lived relation to work, the subject faces his or her own suffering, and
it alone.37
Such restorative recognition requires witnesses to a persons work,

and further witnesses who are motivated to (positively) evaluate the
contribution a worker has made through their efforts. However,
Dejours claims that the trend to more insecure, individualistic and
competitive workplaces over recent decades has undermined such
recognitive relationships between workers by fragmenting the work
collectives they require. The more fluid the workplace, the less likely
there is to be a strong collective to bear witness to ones struggles.
Further, the more insecure, individualistic and competitive the
workplace, the less likely that there will be colleagues motivated to
positively acknowledge the contribution of others, for fear it may
undermine their own relative contribution. Dejours argues that the
re-organisation of work across advanced capitalist nations has in this
manner driven an unprecedented increase in the incidence and severity of work related injuries and pathologies, by undermining peoples
ability to cope with working life.
Sennett: Work as Craft
Richard Sennett is a sociologist by training, who also takes fragmentation of work organisation as a source of injuries. His focus is on the
fragmentation of work time, and especially on what he perceives as
an increasingly short-term orientation in share, product and labour
Cited in ibid., p. 453.
37
342
dale tweedie
markets. Sennett argues that due to the demand by shareholders

for immediate results, the successful firm must be quick on its feet,
constantly seeking out new opportunities and abandoning the old,
which requires an equally adaptive and flexible workforce. Emblematic
of the new flexibility in labour organisation is the replacement of
old bureaucratic hierarchies with the work team, where the team is a
functionally defined network of workers with no clear hierarchy, and
which is continually refigured into new teams as each new project
and team membercomes and goes.
Sennetts critical focus is on how such forms of work organisation
fail to provide healthy working conditions. A recurrent theme is the
conflict between flexible work organisation and what he terms the craft
motivation to work: an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to
do a job well for its own sake.38 The conflict here first of all concerns
the availability of time, since if doing a job well requires honing skills
over many years, then the craft ethic will be inherently long term in
orientation. But this orientation is undercut by work organisations
which require immediate results, and which reward the ability to shift
between tasks as new opportunities arise, rather than to persevere at
one task or career over the long term.
As Nicholas Smith observes though, craftsmanship also picks out a
specific structure to time, which follows from the process of skill development that learning to do a job well implies.39 Unlike prodigy or
genius, the term master craftsman suggests a kind of story or journey, from novice to journeyman to master of a skill or trade. Each stage
of skill competency provides a marker of achievement, where a workers performance is judged by, and reflected in, their successes in mastering the standards internal to their craft. For Sennett, this process of
skill development is intimately connected to the well-lived life, via the
markers skill development provides to self-development and progress.
His position follows from an essentially hermeneutic concept of human
identity as a form of narrative: if humans understand their lives partly
as a story unfolding over time, then a craft motivation to work supports just this kind of understanding.
Again, flexible capitalism undermines this understanding, in as
much as it rewards workers able to constantly redirect their efforts
R. Sennett, The Craftsman, London, Allen Lane, 2007, p. 9.
See N. H. Smith, The Hermeneutics of Work: On Richard Sennett, Critical
Horizons, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2008.
38
39
towards new tasks and networks as the firm or market changes: in

Sennetts words, those with talent rather than a craft. But talent in
Sennetts sense lacks the structuring dimension of craft, since the ability to perpetually move from one new task, network or career to
another does not provide the same markers of skill or self-development,
and so of where the worker is heading or has been in his or her lifes
trajectory. Consequently, new forms of labour organisation undermine
two connected forms of satisfaction derived from work: the satisfaction derived directly from realising an instinctive human desire to perform a task well, and the satisfaction of living a certain kind of life, one
characterised by the growth and development that learning to do a
task well entails.
The Economic Relevance of Dejours and Sennetts Clinical Analysis
of Work
Both Knight and Becker present their theories of work as identifying various effects of different forms of work organisation without
evaluating the desirability or otherwise of these effects: what is termed
positive rather than normative economics. However, putting to
one side the controversial distinction between describing and evaluating in economic theory,40 the relevant point here is that it is not possible to judge the desirability of phenomena that are not first brought
into view. In this context, Dejours and Sennett identify ways that work
can affect worker motivation and welfare which are ignored or marginalised by mainstream economic models of work. This has both critical
and constructive consequences for orthodox economic analyses of
work.
Critically, the injuries and pathologies Dejours and Sennett identify challenge prevalent economic interpretations of recent trends
in workplace organisation. In particular, if Dejours and Sennett are
right, then while the last twenty-five years may have witnessed a
substantial growth in wages, this has been accompanied by a substantial growth in certain types of injuries and pathologies, which are consequences of new organisations of the act of work. Indeed, both
these trends have the same putative cause: the cultural and legislative
40
For further discussion of this distinction see D. Tweedie, Economics in Social
Policy: A Philosophical Analysis, in Mobile Boundaries, Rigid Worlds Conference
Proceedings, Macquarie University Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, 2004.
344
dale tweedie
shift to more flexible, individualistic and competitive forms of work

organisation.
Yet as noted above, an opportunity cost approach to work (Model B)
only registers one of these trends, since this approach ignores how
changes in the organisation of work affects suffering at work. For
example, an opportunity cost analysis of a program to increase workplace productivity by offering individual performance bonuses would
note the positive effect of a growth in wages. However, it would ignore
the negative effects on the worker which may follow from cultivating
more individualistic, competitive, and transitory relationships at the
workplace, as diagnosed by Dejours and Sennett. Hence, the injuries
and suffering Dejours and Sennett identify are external to analyses of
the desirability or otherwise of contemporary forms of work organisation based on this approach.
Beckers model (Model C) does recognise that different levels of
pleasure or pain can be derived from the experience of work, because
such differences are revealed in observable differences in wages. Yet, as
regards the concerns Dejours and Sennett raise, what is revealed here
is very minimal. At best, wage differentials measure whether people
experience one form of work as more or less painful or pleasurable
than another, which is reflected in the wages they are willing to accept
for different types of work. However Becker himself emphasizes that
wage differentials do not measure whether work is in fact pleasurable
or painful overall, nor do they reveal what causes one form of work to
be pleasurable rather than painful, and under what circumstances.
Hence, if Dejours and Sennett are right and working conditions have
deteriorated in significant respects across the board (for example, to a
roughly proportional degree across different types of work), there is no
reason to believe observable wage differentials would reveal either the
existence of such deterioration or the causes.
Nor is it a sufficient response to rely on market mechanisms to ameliorate or compensate workers for the forms of suffering Dejours and
Sennett claim they are experiencing, because this suffering is precisely
a consequence of the widespread cultural and legislative organisation of
work along market lines (that is, flexible, individualistic, and competitive). Given the dominance of market forms of work organisation, people cannot simply choose to participate or not participate in these work
environments, short of exiting the workforce in part or whole. In contemporary society then, a competitive market-based working environment is not the outcome of peoples choices but the background
condition of their choice, which structures their working lives, and

indeed their lives more generally.
As a result, if Dejours and Sennetts concerns about contemporary
forms of work organisation are taken seriously, the desirability of market forms of work organisation must themselves be assessed. In particular, it must be assessed on not only how market forms of work
organisation may act to organise wage incentives, but also how market
forms of work organisationboth between and within firmsaffects
peoples work experience. This requires a substantive account of exactly
what the act of work contributes to the well-lived or flourishing human
life, in order to determine how different structures of work organisation augment, or detract from, this contribution. Yet, as I showed in
Part 2, such models are conspicuously absent from the contemporary
orthodox models of work (that is, Models B and C).
However, as demonstrated in Part 1, early orthodox economic analyses of work do present more or less substantive models of work, and
Dejours and Sennetts analysis can potentially make a more constructive contribution to these models. In particular, as shown in Part 2,
it follows from Model A that the satisfaction or dissatisfaction people
derive from the act of work can causally influence labour supply,
as well as human welfare. Further, unlike in Beckers approach, there is
no aversion in this model to investigating the exact circumstances
under which work will produce satisfaction or suffering overall.41
If Model A is correct, then theories of work which specify more precisely the circumstances under which labouring causes satisfaction or
sufferingas both Dejours and Sennett dodirectly advance the economic analysis of labour supply and human welfare.
The phenomena of work related stress leave and breakdowns, as
highlighted by Dejours, are extreme but clear examples of how the act
of work and labour supply are connected, because they constitute a
radical breakdown of the workers ability to labour due to working
conditions that are unmanageable for them. If Dejours and Sennett
are right though, these breakdowns may be manifestations of a less
dramatic but broader phenomenon in modern fragmented forms
of work organisation: a desire amongst workers to withdraw their
labour time from working conditions that are hostile or damaging to
them. Following the logic of Model A, forms of work organisation
See Spencer, Deconstructing the Labour Supply Curve, p. 449.
41
346
dale tweedie
more conducive to human welfare at work will not only make labourers better off by that very fact, but may also create an additional incentive to supply labour hours. Dejours and Sennett then provide insight
into the conditions such alternative forms of work organisation would
need to fulfil.
Finally, if Marshalls broader economic conception of work is
also retrieved, then the possibility for a constructive contribution is
greater still, since Dejours and Sennett both connect the development
of human capacities through work to the good life as such. Dejours
develops a far more nuanced analysis than Marshall of how working
conditions may prompt self-development rather than injuries or
pathologies, and in the process, Dejours makes an even stronger
case for the centrality of the act of work to the good human life.42
Sennetts distinctive contribution is to draw out how the structure or
shape that different types of capacity development provide to life may
be relevant to the well-lived life. While the gradual and progressive
development of craft skills is conducive to the well-lived life, the development of a chameleon-like capacity to shift between tasks, projects
and co-workers, as cultivated by modern forms of work organisation,
may have the opposite effect. If Sennett is right, the desirability of
different kinds of work depends not just on the extent to which they
develop or repress human capacities, but also on whether they develop
the right kinds of capacities: those that provide depth, meaning and
structure to human life.
42
See Deranty, Work and the Precarisation of Existence, especially pp. 447 and
452.
Chapter Thirteen
Liberalism, Neutrality and Varieties of Capitalism*

Russell Keat
1.Introduction
Should political choices between economic systems be made without
reference to the conceptions of the good they respectively favour or
disfavour? That considerations of this kind should be excluded from
political deliberation would seem to follow from the principle of state
neutrality (assuming that the systems concerned depend upon the
state). According to this principle, which has been supported by many
modern liberal theorists, the powers of the state should not be used to
encourage or discourage the realisation of particular conceptions of
the good. Instead, its functions should be limited to providing a just
framework within which individuals can pursue their own, freely chosen goals.1
Using the term ethical to refer to questions about the good, as distinct from the right, one can represent this neutralist liberal position
as the view that whilst individuals may properly act for ethical reasons,
that is, on the basis of what they regard as worthwhile or fulfilling ways
to live, the stateor rather those who decide how its powers should be
usedmust not. This is the view that I shall oppose in this chapter.
* This is a revised version of a paper given in September 2006 at the Political Theory
Workshops, Manchester Metropolitan University. I am grateful to Lynn Dobson, Ricca
Edmondson, Jonathan Hearn, John ONeill and Jonathan Seglow for their comments
on earlier drafts.
1
Amongst influential proponents of state neutrality are J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice,
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971, and R. Dworkin, Liberalism, first published
in 1978 and reprinted in A Matter of Principle, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985,
pp. 181204. A defence of state neutrality against many of its critics is presented in
W. Kymlicka, Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality, Ethics, Vol. 99, 1989,
pp. 883905. For an overview of these debates, see S. Mulhall and A. Swift, Liberals and
Communitarians, second edition, Oxford, Blackwell, 1996.
348
russell keat
I shall argue that the principle of state neutralityhenceforth PSN

should be rejected, at least in its application to economic systems, and
hence also the exclusion of ethical considerations in making political
decisions about these. But I shall also argue that the rejection of PSN
need pose no threat to basic liberal principles.2
I will develop this argument by considering the case of a political
choice between two different kinds or varieties of capitalism: specifically, the kind generally regarded as operating in countries such as the
U.K. and the U.S.A., on the one hand, and the kind in countries such as
Germany on the other. Drawing on some recent work in comparative
political economy, I will describe the key differences between these in
Section Two. In policy-oriented debates about the comparative merits
and defects of these (and other) varieties of capitalism, the focus is
normally on issues of economic performance and social justice or welfare. I shall assume here that these considerations are consistent with
PSN. But I shall argue in Section Three that these varieties differ also in
ethically significant ways, that is, in the conceptions of the good they
respectively favour or disfavour. In doing so I shall focus on the possibilities for realising certain conceptions of the good in the sphere of
production.
An important element of the argument will be the claim that (at
least many) conceptions of the good are institutionally dependent:
their realisation, and hence the possibility of their being realistically
pursued, is dependent on the specific character of various (and varying) social institutions: in this case, primarily economic ones. For
example: suppose that someones conception of the good is to engage
in work that involves relations of trust with others. It is unlikely that
2
My position has been strongly influenced by the defences of perfectionism in
J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986, and G. Sher,
Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1997. Like them, I understand perfectionism as the view that ethical considerations are
legitimate grounds for state action, but not that they are the only such grounds: considerations of right or justicein Habermass terms, moral considerationsare also
important (J. Habermas, On the Pragmatic, the Ethical, and the Moral Employments
of Practical Reason, in Justification and Application, trans. C. Cronin, Cambridge,
Polity Press, 1993, pp. 118). Both Sher (Beyond Neutrality, pp. 3134), and Raz
(Morality of Freedom, pp. 110112) note that formulations of PSN differ in the levels
of state action to which it applies, ranging from constitutional provisions to any item
of public policy. I shall assume that it applies (at least) to the basic institutions and legal
provisions that serve to constitute a certain kind of economic system.
liberalism, neutrality and varieties of capitalism349
this could be realised in the absence of firms which operate in ways

that are conducive to such relationships. Suppose, further, that how
firms organise and conduct themselves is significantly influenced by
the nature of the macro-level institutions within which they operate,
and that these in turn depend in various ways on actions by the state.
One might then reasonably expect economic systems to differ ethically, that is, in the extent to which they favour (the possibility of realising) this conception of the good.
In Section Three an attempt will be made to confirm this expectation in the case of these two varieties of capitalism, by identifying some
of their (institutionally dependent) ethical differences. This will not of
itself show that PSN is untenable, since what that principle excludes is
the intentional use of the states powers to favour particular conceptions of the good, and hence any role for ethical considerations in
deciding upon such uses, as distinct from the mere fact of its actions
having non-neutral consequences. But I will go on to argue in Section
Four that there is no good reason to ignore ethical differences of this
latter kind in making political choices between these varieties of capitalism (and more generally between different economic systems).
In particular, I shall argue that there is no reason for liberals to be
concerned by the rejection of PSN, since state neutrality is not necessary for liberal purposes. These are better served by placing constraints
on the means by which the states favouring of conceptions of the good
is effected, securing the requirements for individual choice. Such constraints, I shall claim, are clearly met by both varieties of capitalism
being considered here. With state neutrality replaced by liberal constraints, perfectionist debates about human goods can play their part
in political deliberation without threatening liberal principles. I shall
call this view liberal perfectionism, distinguishing it from a somewhat
different form of non-neutralist liberalism, which I shall call perfectionist liberalism.
In the final section, some broader questions about the relationship
between liberalism and the market will be considered. Market economies are often supported on the grounds that they alone are consistent
with state neutrality. That the two kinds of capitalism I examine are
non-neutral undermines this view of market economies. Thus choosing to establish a market economy, in any of its possible forms, does
not absolve members of a political community from the responsibility
for making collective decisions about human goods.
350
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2. Two Varieties of Capitalism
The following account of two specific kinds of capitalism will draw

mainly on the analysis presented by Peter Hall and David Soskice in
the Introduction to their co-edited Varieties of Capitalism.3 They focus
on the institutional differences between what they call Liberal and
Coordinated Market Economies: henceforth, LMEs and CMEs.
Taking the U.K. (and U.S.A.) as exemplary cases of the former, and
Germany of the latter, they give particular attention to how these differences impact on the behaviour of firms. I will describe in turn three
key areas in which these different institutional arrangements obtain:
ownership and finance, the internal governance of firms, and interfirm relationships.4
There are major differences between patterns of share ownership
(and access to finance) in LMEs and CMEs.5 In the U.K., for example,
3
See P. Hall and D. Soskice, An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism, in eds.
P. Hall and D. Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of
Comparative Advantage, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 170. The account
that follows reproduces in part the more detailed one provided in R. Keat, Practices,
Firms and Varieties of Capitalism, Philosophy of Management, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2008,
pp. 7791, especially section two. My reliance here on Hall and Soskices analysis is
primarily for expository convenience: there is a large body of literature in comparative
political economy in which broadly similar characterisations of these differences are
presented, including eds. C. Crouch and D. Marquand, Ethics and Markets: Cooperation
and Competition within Capitalist Economies, Oxford, Blackwell, 1993; eds.
J. Hollingsworth, P. Schmitter and W. Streeck, Governing Capitalist Economies:
Performance and Control of Economic Sectors, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994;
eds. C. Crouch and W. Streeck, Political Economy of Modern Capitalism: Mapping
Convergence and Diversity, London, Sage, 1997; R. Whitley, Divergent Capitalisms: The
Social Structuring and Change of Business Systems, Oxford, Oxford University Press,
1999; V. Schmidt, The Futures of European Capitalism, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 2002. The theoretical and methodological debates within this literature that
would be important in other contexts need not be addressed here; notice, though, that
many authors, including Hall and Soskice, also recognise the existence of other varieties of capitalism, so that LMEs and CMEs are not the only kinds.
4
Liberal is used here in its economic, rather than political, sense. Other countries
whose economic institutions are regarded by Hall and Soskice as LMEs include
Australia, New Zealand and Ireland; others regarded as CMEs include the Netherlands,
Sweden and Austria (Introduction, pp. 1920). In theoretical terms, the distinction
between LMEs and CMEs is between capitalist systems which rely on markets and
hierarchies alone as the primary means of economic coordination, and those in which
there is also extensive use of other means. On different forms of coordination (or governance) see Hollingsworth et al, Governing Capitalist Economies, pp. 316.
5
For more on these differences see S. Vitols, Varieties of Corporate Governance:
Comparing Germany and the U.K., in eds. Hall and Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism,
pp. 337360.
the dominant shareholders are typically pension funds and similar

institutions, whose holdings in any one company form only a small
part of a large portfolio, and whose managers have strong incentives to
switch funds in response to relatively short-term changes in company
profits. In Germany, by contrast, the major shareholders are other
companies and banks, whose holdings in one company form a large
proportion of their total holdings, and whose concerns are often strategic as well as financial. U.K. companies are also more vulnerable to
takeovers than their German/CME counterparts, due partly to regulatory differences. In broad terms, then, there is a contrast between the
impatient capital of LMEs and the patient capital of CMEs.
With respect to internal governance, firms in LMEs display high
degrees of managerial prerogative and hierarchy by comparison with
more consensual forms of management in CMEs. For example, the
membership of supervisory boards of German companies, which are
responsible for major strategic decisions (such as dividend policy),
consist of equal numbers of employee and shareholder representatives;
for lower level decisions (such as redundancies), managers are required
to consult with works councils. In the U.K., by contrast, equivalent
forms of representation and consultation are rare. Combined with
other legally sanctioned differences, these varieties of governance give
rise to higher levels of job security in CMEs than in LMEs.
Finally, the exclusively competitive nature of relationships between
firms in LMEs is significantly modified or complemented in CMEs by
various forms of cooperation. In Germany, the main institutional support for this is provided by formally organised, industry-based associations, which play a central role both in education and training, and
in research, development and technology transfer.6 In the German system of vocational training and apprenticeships, employers organisations and trade unions negotiate agreements on skill categories and
training protocols. The result is a high level of industry-specific skills
and knowledge (that is, applicable across different firms in the same
6
These associations between firms in the same industry, in Germany, differ from
the keiretsu, or families of firms from different industries, in Japan (Hall and Soskice,
Introduction, pp 3435; see also M. Sako, Neither Markets nor Hierarchies:
A Comparative Study of the Printed Circuit Board Industry in Britain and Japan, in
Hollingsworth et al, Governing Capitalist Economies, pp. 1742, and R. Dore, The
Distinctiveness of Japan, in Crouch and Streeck, Political Economy of Modern
Capitalism, pp. 1932. Here I follow Hall and Soskice in concentrating on the former
(German) type of CME.
352
russell keat
industry). In the U.K., by contrast, formal public education, which

focuses mainly on generic skills and knowledge (that is, applicable
across different industries), is combined with training conducted by
individual firms.7
Turning to research and development, in LMEs this is primarily
conducted within individual firms in competition with others, the
winner then protecting its technological superiority by the use of patents; technology transfer (that is, the diffusion of new developments
across an industry) takes place through licensing arrangements, the
movement of employees between firms, or company takeovers. In
Germany, by contrast, a good deal of research and development takes
place through cooperation between firms, and the industry associations which facilitate this are also involved in technology transfer and
the specification of technical standards. In LMEs, the weaker role of
industry associations is reflected in the relative absence of such standards, and inter-firm collaboration is more difficult to achieve because
of legislative regulation such as the U.S.A.s anti-trust laws.
Hall and Soskice emphasise the complementarities between the various institutional elements in each kind of capitalism, such that the specific behaviour by firms that each element facilitates or requires is at
least compatible with, and generally reinforces or supports, the behaviour required or facilitated by other elements. For example, firms in
LMEs will often be under pressure from shareholders to rectify shortterm declines in profitability, and cost-cutting measures such as shedding labour will be facilitated by managerial prerogative. For firms in
CMEs such measures would be less easy to take, given the need to
negotiate with workers representatives, but their relationships with
shareholders make it less likely that such measures will be required. It
is therefore easier for them to make what Hall and Soskice call credible commitments to employees, and likewise to suppliers and clients.
This is closely related to the tendency for CMEs to operate with a relational understanding of contract, by contrast with its predominantly
classical form in LMEs.8
7
For more on generic versus specific skills training, and the relationships between
production and welfare systems, see M. Estevez-Abe, T. Iversen and D. Soskice, Social
Protection and the Formation of Skills: A Reinterpretation of the Welfare State, in eds.
Hall and Soskice Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative
Advantage, pp. 145183.
8
On the classical v relational distinction, see I. Macneil, Contracts: Adjustment of
Long-Term Economic Relations under Classical, Neoclassical, and Relational Contract
Law, Northwestern University Law Review, Vol. 72, 1978, pp. 854905. Note that the

3. Ethical Differences between LMEs and CMEs
I will now make use of Hall and Soskices analysis to indicate how the
institutional character of each variety of capitalism differentially
favours or disfavours the realisation of certain conceptions of the good.
It should be emphasised, however, that what I will argue is in no way
sanctioned by their own work and reflects quite different theoretical
interests to theirs. Hall and Soskice use their analysis to develop a theory of comparative institutional advantage which enables them, for
example, to explain the dominance of different economic sectors in
LMEs and CMEs, and to assess the implications of globalisation for the
convergence or otherwise of different kinds of capitalism. By contrast,
I shall be applying the idea of comparative institutional advantage to
conceptions of the good.
As noted in the previous section, Hall and Soskice are concerned to
show how the institutional differences between LMEs and CMEs
impact on the organisation and conduct of firms. These latter differences, I will now argue, may be expected to affect the relative ease or
difficulty with which individuals can realise various conceptions of the
good related to the work they do, since it is firms that provide the
immediate institutional settings for their possible realisation. The cases
that will be presented are intended only as illustrative; they are by no
means the only ones, nor necessarily the most important.
Consider, first, the ease or difficulty with which conceptions of the
good involving different kinds of work-satisfaction might realistically
be pursued. Here it could be argued that CMEs are more conducive
than LMEs to the achievement of intrinsic, as distinct from extrinsic, satisfactions. There is a good deal of evidence that intrinsic satisfactions are most readily experienced when the work that people do
combines high levels of skill with significant degrees of autonomy.9
That this is more likely to be available in CMEs is implied by the claims
that Hall and Soskice make in the following passage, where they identify the characteristics of firms in CMEs that make them better suited
sense that I give to complementarity differs slightly from the more technical definition provided by Hall and Soskice: Introduction, p. 17.
9
See the analysis of this evidence by Robert Lane, including his depiction of the
privileged class of workers, whose jobs offer self-direction, substantive complexity
and challenge, variety, little supervision, and intrinsic satisfaction of excellence or selfdetermination (R. Lane, The Market Experience, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1991, p. 302). My suggestion is that, if Hall and Soskice are right, the size of
this class will be greater in CMEs than in LMEs.
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than those in LMEs to what they call incremental innovation; as will

be seen, these include just what is also conducive to intrinsic worksatisfactions. Thus:
It will be easier to secure incremental innovation where the workforce
(extending all the way down to the shop floor) is skilled enough to come
up with such innovations, secure enough to risk suggesting changes to
products or process that might alter their job situation, and endowed
with enough work autonomy to see these kinds of improvements as a
dimension of their job. Thus, incremental innovation should be most
feasible where corporate organization provides workers with secure
employment, autonomy from close monitoring, and opportunities
to influence the decisions of the firm, where the skill system provides
workers with more than task-specific skills and, ideally, high levels of
industry-specific technical skills, and where close inter-firm collaboration encourages clients and suppliers to suggest incremental improvements to products or production processes.10
A second example of the different conceptions of the good likely to be

favoured by these varieties of capitalism is indicated by the reference
here to industry-specific skills and inter-firm collaboration. In CMEs, I
would argue, it will be easier than it is in in LMEs for people to engage
in work that has at least many of the features attributed by Alasdair
MacIntyre to what he calls productive practices.11 A key feature of such
practices is the existence of standards of excellence that are shared by
those who engage in a specific field of productive activity, and by reference to which the quality of what they produce, and the value of their
contribution, can be judged. By comparison with LMEs, I suggest, the
industry-wide associations and training typical of CMEs makes them
more conducive to such shared standards, and more generally to the
successful pursuit of what MacIntyre terms internal, as distinct from
external goods.
The institutional differences between CMEs and LMEs that make
them more or less conducive to practice-like production can be
expected also to favour different conceptions of a successful career. In
CMEs, it would seem, the favoured kind of career will be one in which
Hall and Soskice, Introduction, p. 39.
See A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press,
1981. I develop this argument much more fully in Practices, Firms and Varieties of
Capitalism, building on my earlier discussion of MacIntyre in Markets, Firms and
Practices, in R. Keat, Cultural Goods and the Limits of the Market, London, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2000, pp. 111132. The argument applies only to the German, and not to
the Japanese type of CME (see Note 6 above).
10
11
success is understood in terms of the development and exercise of

knowledge and skills in a specific kind of productive activity, of the
contribution that has been made to this, and of its recognition by others. But this conception of a successful career will be more difficult to
realise in LMEs where, as Hall and Soskice argue:
Financial market arrangements that emphasise current profitability and
corporate structures that concentrate unilateral control at the top deprive
the workforce of the security conducive to their full cooperation in
innovation. Fluid labour markets and short job tenures make it rational
for employees to concentrate more heavily on their personal career
than the firms success and on the development of general skills rather
than the industry- or company-specific skills conducive to incremental
innovation.12
This institutional context provided by LMEs thus favours, I suggest, a

significantly different conception of a successful career, and of the
kinds of goods that it can provide. It will be one in which what counts
as success is defined without reference to judgments of contribution or
achievement within any particular field of productive practice, but
instead, for example, in financial terms. And the skills and abilities
needed to achieve this kind of success will be those that can be utilised
in multiple settings, transported from one to the other, and regarded
as the property of the individual concerned, aiding them in a career
that is likewise very much their own.
As a final example I return to the case of trust, introduced in the
opening section to illustrate the possibility of conceptions of the good
being institutionally dependent. It should now be clearer how this
might be so. Hall and Soskice explain why it is that employers in CMEs
are better able than their LME counterparts to make credible commitments to employees, and why in more general terms CMEs are
regarded as high trust economies. One may also surmise that the
recognition by workers of one anothers validated competences and
their dependence on each others practical judgments are conducive to
the kinds of relationships and attitudes that anyone who valued trust as
a feature of their working lives would find attractive.13 This is not to say
that this conception of the good cannot be realised in LMEs, but only
Hall and Soskice, Introduction, p. 40.
Individuals can persist in acting trustingly in situations where there is little
prospect of reciprocity. But this does not enable them to achieve the good of trust,
which requires mutuality, and the costs of unreciprocated trustfulness are probably too
high for most people to sustain.
12
13
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that in this case, as in others, it may well be more difficult to do so than

in CMEs (whereas for other conceptions of the good the reverse may
be true). What is involved here is the differential favouring and disfavouring of conceptions of the good by institutional arrangements.
In the next section I shall consider the implications for neutralist
liberalism of these kinds of institutionally based ethical differences
between varieties of capitalism. But before doing so I shall comment
on the nature of the relationship between institutions and conceptions
of the good that is implied by what I have said so far.
First, it is the realisation of conceptions of the good that has been
said to be institutionally dependent, as distinct from their adoption.
Institutions are being claimed to favour certain conceptions of the
good over others (and to differ in those they favour), not in encouraging people to regard them as desirable aims to pursue, but in making it
possible, or at least easier, to realise them, were they to be adopted.14
Institutions may also influence which conceptions of the good individuals actually adopt, and one way they may do this is through the
adaptation of peoples conceptions of the good to what is realistically
achievable, but that is a separate matter.
Second, if the idea of conceptions of the good is replaced by that of
preferences, the claim that institutions affect the realisability of conceptions of the good can be seen as a central thesis of rational choice
institutionalism. But what I am claiming differs in certain respects
from this influential form of institutional analysis, and also from its
main theoretical rival, sociological institutionalism.15
According to rational choice institutionalists, institutions affect the
likelihood of preferences being satisfied by affecting the costs of actions
aimed at doing so. In particular, institutions can reduce the costs of
mutually beneficial cooperation between calculatively rational agents,
and hence overcome or mitigate the (supposed) problems of collective
action. This generic feature of institutions is used to explain (in apparently functionalist or evolutionary terms) the existence and nature of
14
The neutrality principle may be formulated in terms either of realisation, or of
adoption, as Raz notes (Morality of Freedom, p. 112); I take it in the former sense
throughout.
15
On these two forms of institutionalism, see P. Hall and R. Taylor, Political
Science and the Three New Institutionalisms, Political Studies, Vol. XLIV, 1996,
pp. 936952. I put aside what they identify as a third form, historical institutionalism,
since in the respects that matter here it tends to draw on one or other of the first two.
various specific kinds of institution, including that of the firm, and also
to explain the behaviour of individual agents, given certain preferences, by reference to the institutionally determined costs of satisfying
these in particular ways.16
Sociological institutionalists have criticised rational choice institutionalism on a number of important grounds. One of these is for its
failure, or refusal, to explain preferences themselves: more specifically,
for regarding preferences as exogenous, rather than endogenous, with
respect to institutions.17 But such institutional determination or shaping bears only upon the adoption of preferences (or conceptions of
the good), and not their realisation, and hence is not relevant for my
purposes. Rather, the key departure from rational choice institutionalism that my claims imply concerns the relationship between institutions and what may be termed the objects of peoples preferences, that
is, what it is that they desire or wish to achieve, as distinct from the fact
of their having such a desire.
For rational choice theorists, these objects can be specified without reference to the institutions concerned and the social activities
they encompass: institutions are conceived as instrumentally useful for
the satisfaction of preferences whose objects can exist without these
institutions (and are presumed actually to do so, prior to the creation
of the relevant institutions). By contrast, in the kinds of examples I
have presented, institutions are conceived as supporting (or undermining) the complex social relationships and activities which the
objects of these preferences either consist in or depend upon.18 It is the
16
An important application of rational choice institutionalism is the transaction
costs analysis of the firm, as in O. Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism:
Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting, New York, Free Press, 1985. For criticisms, and
alternative forms of institutional analysis in this area, see W. Lazonick, Business
Orgamization and the Myth of the Market Economy, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1991, and N. Foss, Theories of the Firm: Contractual and Competence
Perspectives, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Vol. 3, 1993, pp. 127144.
17
See, for example, S. Bowles, Endogenous Preferences: The Cultural Consequences
of Markets and Other Economic Institutions, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 36,
no. 1, 1998, pp. 75111. Hodgson argues that what chiefly distinguishes the new institutionalism in economics (roughly, rational choice institutionalism), which he
opposes, from the old institutionalism, which he supports, is the formers treatment
of preferences as exogenous to institutions: G. Hodgson, What Is the Essence
of Institutional Economics?, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. XXXIV, 2000,
pp. 317329.
18
This claim might best be developed through Razs account of collective goods and
what he terms social forms, in Morality of Freedom.
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existence of the institutions that makes it possible for the objects of

these preferences to exist.
Thus, returning to the terminology of conceptions of the good, my
claim is that their realisation is dependent on institutions because the
goods themselves depend on, or consist in, social relationships and
activities that require suitable institutional conditions. It is here that a
second major criticism made of rational choice institutionalism by
sociological institutionalists becomes relevant, namely of the narrowness of its motivational model and its inability to grasp the character of
the social relationships and activities that form, as it were, the inner life
of institutions, including that of firms.19 But the issues raised by these
criticisms cannot be explored here.
4. From State Neutrality to Liberal Constraints
I will now consider the implications of these ethical differences between
LMEs and CMEs for liberal neutrality. As I noted in the opening section, the existence of such differences does not imply that the principle
of state neutrality (PSN) is untenable, since what that principle rules
out is the deliberate use of the states powers to favour particular conceptions of the good, and hence the appeal to ethical considerations in
justifying such uses, as distinct from the mere fact of its actions having non-neutral consequences. However, I will now argue that there is
no good reasonor at least, no reason that liberals need acceptto
ignore these ethical differences in making political choices between
these varieties of capitalism.
Although the distinction (implicitly just made) between so-called
justificatory and consequential neutrality is reasonably clear, the
rationale for requiring state action to conform only to the former, and
not to the latter, is much less so.20 Justificatory neutrality is certainly
19
For example, March and Olsen argue that we need to replace, or at least complement, rational choice theorys logic of consequentiality by a logic of appropriateness (J. March and J. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of
Politics, New York, Free Press, 1989), and Searle argues that institutions provide
desire-independent reasons for action (J. Searle, What is an Institution?, Journal of
Institutional Economics, Vol. 1, 2005, pp. 122).
20
On the distinction between justificatory and consequential neutrality (or neutrality of effect, or outcome) see D. Miller, Market, State and Community, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1990, ch. 3; Mulhall and Swift, Liberals and Communitarians,
pp. 2534, and J. ONeill, The Market: Ethics, Knowledge and Politics, London,
less demanding than consequential neutrality, since it will permit

many kinds or instances of state action that the latter would not; further, the endorsement of PSN defined in justificatory rather than consequential terms protects it from objections based on the difficulty or
impossibility of achieving consequential neutrality. However, this
reduced vulnerability comes at considerable cost, since it is difficult to
see why the states acting in ways that have ethically non-neutral consequences should be unacceptable only if the political decisions leading to these actions were intended to have these effects and were hence
justified in ethical terms.
Applied to the case being considered here, this would mean that the
political choice of one variety of capitalism rather than another would
only be acceptable if no reference were made to the conceptions of the
good they respectively favoured, and no attempt made to justify this
choice on ethical grounds, even though those involved in making this
choice had good reason to believe that it would have ethically nonneutral consequences. But this seems hard to justify. It is as if what
justificatory neutrality permits is the refusal by political actors to take
responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of their decisions,
encouraging them to turn a blind eye to these rather than subject them
to ethical reflection.
This surely cannot be the intention of those who advocate PSN.
Rather, given their liberal commitments (and ancestry) it seems reasonable to assume that its primary rationale is connected to traditional liberal concerns with placing limits on the legitimate role of the
state so as to protect individual liberty. These concerns have given rise
to a number of long-established (and recognisably liberal) political
principles and practices, such as the enforcement of various basic
rights, the rejection of paternalistic legislation, and a more general
commitment to providing individuals with a range of reasonably
attractive options from which they may choose.
I would argue that PSN adds nothing of (liberal) value to these kinds
of principles. By prohibiting ethical aims (and hence justifications) for
state action it imposes restrictions on political reasoning that serve no
Routledge, 1998, ch. 2. Most proponents of neutrality define it in justificatory rather

than consequential terms, though in doing so they encounter problems in identifying
specific actions by the state that PSN rules out, since such actions are typically open to
different possible justifications: see Sher, Beyond Neutrality, ch. 1.
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recognisable liberal purpose; further, it fails to prohibit things that

liberals would wish to prohibit, since some of the consequential nonneutralities it allows may be generated in ways that liberals would find
objectionable. Liberals, I suggest, should abandon PSN, and instead
focus their attention (as they traditionally have) on whether there is
anything illiberal about the particular kinds of institutional arrangement and uses of state power that are being proposed in political
debate, independently of whether these are being supported on ethical
grounds. Then, provided that liberal requirements are met, ethically
based considerations may play their part in political deliberation.
How would this apply in the case of a political choice between LMEs
and CMEs? Advocates of PSN would insist that the various conceptions of the good they differentially favour should be excluded from
consideration in debates about their respective merits and defects. By
contrast, those who endorse liberal principles but are not saddled with
the unnecessary burden of PSN will be concerned with the liberal
credentials of each economic system and their supporting social institutions and forms of state action. I will now argue that there is no reason to regard either of these varieties of capitalism as seriously
problematic from a liberal standpoint.21
First, in actual examples of both LMEs and CMEs, such as Britain
and Germany, the standard array of civil and political rights is clearly
present, including religious freedom, freedom of contract, political
freedom and so on. In particular, CMEs do not depend upon strong,
that is, intrusive and interventionist states, by contrast with supposedly weak states in LMEs; rather, as Hall and Soskice emphasise, what
distinguishes the German state from its British counterpart is the
formers willingness to assign powers or functions to intermediate
associations.22 Further, the specific ways in which the differential
ethical effects of these systems are generated should not be seen as
21
The logic of the following considerations might be expressed like this: the fact
that these two economic systems, with their different ethical characters, can and do
operate in a liberal-consistent manner, implies that it must be possible to construct a
justificatory argument for each of them, and their respective uses of state power, which
relies upon ethical reasons but does not thereby threaten liberal principles; there is
thus no need for liberals to accept PSN.
22
Hall and Soskice, Introduction; the same point is made in Whitley, Divergent
Capitalisms. See also Schmidt, Futures of European Capitalism, on the differences
between the managed capitalism of Germany and the state capitalism of France
(not a CME, in Hall and Soskices terms).
objectionable by liberals. The paradigmatic object of liberal concern

is the direct use of the states coercive powers either to require people
to act in some specific way deemed ethically desirable, or to prohibit
them from similarly specific actions deemed ethically undesirable: for
example, laws requiring certain religious observances, or prohibiting
certain kinds of sexual behaviour.
But the ways in which outcomes regarded as ethically desirable are
generated in LMEs and CMEs differ radically from this, since: (i) there
is no direct attempt to require or prohibit the ethically relevant behaviour of individuals through legislation; (ii) to the extent that the state
can be regarded as acting upon the ethically relevant behaviour of
individuals, it does so only indirectly, through the various institutions
it establishes or supports; (iii) to the extent that the state acts directly
and coercively through the law, it does so only in shaping and regulating these institutions, not the ethically desired or undesired behaviour they may favour; (iv) the ways in which the institutions themselves
favour certain kinds of behaviour does not involve coercive requirements and prohibitions.
Consider, for example, the favouring of relationships based on
trust in CMEs. This is not achieved by state legislation that requires
people to develop relations of trust with their co-workers, and punishes those who do not. Rather, legislation is involved in protecting
workers from redundancy, in requiring consultation through works
councils, in ownership rules which protect firms from the threat of
take-overs when profitability is under pressure, and so on. These coercively enforced measures establish a framework within which firms
operate, and make it in their interests, or at least not unduly against
their interests, to act in ways that make long-term working relationships and commitments relatively easy to secure, and hence facilitate
the development of trust between workers (and between workers and
managers). This is how CMEs favour conceptions of the good involving relationships of trust: the powers of the state are certainly involved,
but it is hard to see how the form that this takes poses a threat to individual liberty.
Finally, there is the liberal concern for individuals to be able to make
genuine choices, and hence for the existence of a range of available
options to choose between. Admittedly there is a conceptual problem
in addressing this requirement, since the counting of alterna
tivesdepends on the level of generality at which, or the criteria of ethical relevance with which, such alternatives are described: that is, on
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defining what is to count as a single or different option. It is easy to

multiply alternatives by making the descriptive categories more finegrained; it is easy to reduce their number by making them less so, and
it is difficult to identify and justify the relevant form or appropriate
level of description.
However, putting this conceptual problem aside, one could say the
following. On the one hand, there are clearly many options in the
domain of production for people to choose between in both LMEs and
CMEs. On the other hand, each system restricts its options to an overall set with a specific and partly distinctive character. Because this is so,
individuals who wish to pursue a conception of the good that does not
belong to this set will have difficulties in doing so. But this kind of limitation on realistic options is an inevitable consequence of the institutional basis of any economic system, combined with what I have called
the institutional dependence of conceptions of the good. To conceive
of choice in such a way that these kinds of restrictions are seen as
unduly limiting would imply opposition to any kind of economic
structure. Further, such opposition (if intelligible at all) would be
counter-productive, given that many conceptions of the good can only
be realised, and sometimes even conceived, through such institutions
and the social relationships they secure. Institutions enable as well as
constrain. The specific nature of these institutions will determine which
range of options is available, but there cannot be a limitless range. So
what has to be decided politically is which set of possibilities, which set
of goods, are to be made available.
The general position for which I have been arguing here can be
termed liberally-constrained perfectionism, or liberal perfectionism
for short. It is perfectionist in rejecting PSN, and hence in regarding
ethical reasonsconsiderations of the human goodas permissible
grounds for state action. Its liberalism consists in requiring that how
the state acts be constrained by various liberal political principles.
Defined in this way, liberal perfectionism should be distinguished
from what I shall call perfectionist liberalism. Like liberal perfectionists, perfectionist liberals accept the legitimacy of ethical reasons as
grounds for state action. But these ethical reasons are exclusively liberal ones, based on a distinctively liberal vision of the good life for
humans. What this vision consists in varies somewhat between different perfectionist liberals, but it typically and centrally includes some
conception of autonomy, according to which it may then be said that
the good life for humans involves deciding for oneself what kind of
life to pursue.23
This autonomy requires both the (inherited or acquired) capacity to
make such decisions and a range of options between which to choose.
But crucially, for my purposes, what might make these options good or
bad ones to choose is not itself part of this liberal ideal: the value of
autonomy is distinct from that of the options chosen, about which perfectionist liberalism insists on saying nothing.24 So although perfectionist liberals allow the state to act non-neutrally with respect to the
(liberal) good of autonomy, this permission does not extend to its
favouring specific ways in which this autonomy may be exercised:
there is no place for ethical reasons related to the (supposed) substantive value of the kinds of life between which autonomous choices are
made. By contrast, liberal perfectionism as I have defined it here permits the state (also) to act on the basis of these latter kinds of ethical
reasons, provided that various liberal requirements are met.25 One
might put this by saying that, for the liberal perfectionist, the state may
legitimately act to favour (both liberal and) non-liberal conceptions of
the good, but in doing so it must not act il-liberally.
23
My distinction between perfectionist liberalism and liberal perfectionism is
stipulative: the two phrases are used interchangeably in the literature, both normally
referring to what I identify as the former position. Both positions, as I define them
here, are concerned with the permissible grounds for state action, and reject the neutralist exclusion of ethical grounds for this: that is, they reject PSN; but liberal perfectionism is far more permissive than perfectionist liberalism. As Mulhall and Swift
point out (Liberals and Communitarians, pp. 249252), these debates about state neutrality should be distinguished from another set of debates, at a deeper level, about
whether or not liberal political principles are to be grounded in a distinctive ethical
position (comprehensive versus political liberalism). I shall ignore these latter
debates, merely noting that comprehensive liberalism does not entail rejection of
PSN.
24
As Sher notes (Beyond Neutrality, p. 14), there is no inconsistency in claiming
both that liberalism rests on a certain conception of the good, namely autonomy, and
that the state should be neutral with respect to the value or goodness of the options
between which individuals are to make autonomous choices.
25
Liberal perfectionism, as I characterise it here, has much in common with the
position taken in J. Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and
Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. Raz argues that the state has a duty to
provide people with an adequate range of valuable options between which they can
choose, as well as ensuring that they can develop the various capacities required for the
autonomy exercised in making these choices. Crucially, for Raz, as for my liberal
perfectionist, the criteria by which the value of the options are judged are not themselves based on, or derivable from, that of autonomy.
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What liberal perfectionism implies, in effect, is that liberalism

should not be regarded as a complete political theory, but rather as a
set of constraints on actions that may themselves be justified by nonliberal ethical values. From this standpoint, the specific content of, and
differences between, various ethical traditions and their conceptions of
the human good (including, for example, Aristotle and Marx) become
significant resources for political debate, and for political theory. By
contrast, as Dworkins seminal defence of neutralist liberalism made
clear, all perfectionist theories, whether socialist, conservative or
whatever, are equally mistaken or at least equally irrelevant, once we
have decided to exclude ethics from politics.26
5. Liberalism, Markets and Neutrality
As noted at the outset, state neutrality is typically presented by its
advocates as an essential principle for a liberal society in which individuals can freely pursue their own conceptions of the good within a
just framework established by the state. Although debates about PSN
rarely address its implications for economic systems, focusing instead
on issues of secularism, multiculturalism and the like, its proponents
seem generally to regard market economies as consistent with this
principle, and quite possibly as uniquely so.27 Correspondingly, it is
departures from the market that are seen as problematic, at least when
argued for in ethical terms. For example, in debates about state subsidies for the arts, it is widely accepted that only by rejecting PSN
can such exceptions to market-based provision be justified.28 Ethical
reasons, it would seem, are to be reserved for non-market solutions,
26
See Dworkin, Liberalism. I discuss this feature of his position in R. Keat, Social
Criticism and the Exclusion of Ethics, Analyse und Kritik, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2008,
pp. 229253.
27
This seems to be the view taken in Dworkin, Liberalism; also in R. Arneson,
Meaningful Work and Market Socialism, Ethics, Vol. 97, 1987, pp. 517545, and
(arguably) in W. Booth, On the Idea of the Moral Economy, American Political
Science Review, Vol. 88, 1994, pp. 653667. I criticise Arnesons neutralist defence of
the market in R. Keat, Anti-Perfectionism, Market Economies and the Right to
Meaningful Work, Analyse und Kritik, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2009, 121138; see also Miller,
Market, State and Community, ch. 3.
28
Although Dworkin attempts to justify arts subsidies consistently with neutrality,
in R. Dworkin, Can a Liberal State Support Art?, in A Matter of Principle, Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 221233. For criticisms, see S. Black, Revisionist
Liberalism and the Decline of Culture, Ethics, Vol. 102, 1992, pp. 244267, and
Mulhall and Swift, Liberals and Communitarians, pp. 300308.
with the market itself being regarded as satisfying the requirement of

neutrality.
That market economies are (perhaps uniquely) consistent with PSN
is often upported by their depiction in such a way that they appear
directly to embody the neutralist ideal of a liberal society. In particular,
the operation of market economies is represented as consisting essentially of a series of contractual exchanges between free and equal legal
parties, each pursuing their own goals.29 The powers of the state are
required to regulate and enforce such contracts (and likewise the property rights being exchanged), but in supporting this system it appears
neither directly nor indirectly to discriminate between the various
goals that individuals attempt to achieve through voluntary cooperation with one another. Of course, individuals prospects for realising
their goalstheir conceptions of the gooddepend on their financial
resources, and neutralist welfare liberals such as Rawls and Dworkin
see this as justifying intervention by the state so that these resources,
and hence prospects, are distributed fairly. But this is (rightly) viewed
as quite different from the state favouring or disfavouring conceptions
of the good themselves.
My discussion of the two kinds of capitalism in Sections Two and
Three implicitly challenges this view of market economies and their
neutrality (that is, their consistency with PSN). Made explicit, the
argument goes briefly as follows. Liberal and Coordinated Market
Economies differ in the conceptions of the good they respectively
favour or disfavour. Thus neither of them is neutral. Yet both may justifiably be regarded as market economies. Since neither of these two
kinds of market economy are neutral, a fortiori market economies
cannot be.30
As it is by Hayek, for example: see ONeill, The Market, ch. 5, on the relationship
between neutralist and perfectionist liberal elements in Hayeks view of markets,
exchange and individual autonomy.
30
More generally, that market economies can take significantly different institutional forms is itself an important fact, since political and theoretical debates about
economic systems often assume that choosing to institute a market economy identifies a determinate institutional or political project, thereby ignoring the normative
relevance of institutional variation. For criticism of Habermas in this respect, see
W. Forbath, Short-Circuit: A Critique of Habermass Understanding of Law, Politics
and Economic Life, in eds. M. Rosenfeld and A. Arato, Habermas on Law and
Democracy: Critical Exchanges, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998, pp. 272
286. I criticise Habermass view of the place of ethics in political judgments about
economic systems in R. Keat, Choosing Between Capitalisms: Habermas, Ethics and
Politics, Res Publica, Vol.15, No. 4, 2009, 355376.
29
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To this it might be objected that LMEs are more deserving of the

title market economy than are CMEs: that the former are more market-like than the latter.31 But even if this were accepted, it would not
rescue the neutrality of the market, since what would now be described
as an ethical comparison between market (that is, LMEs) and (partially) non-market systems (that is, CMEs) would still demonstrate
the non-neutrality of both. One must therefore avoid thinking that the
conceptions of the good favoured in CMEs are somehow being subsidized by the state, by contrast with the neutrality of LMEs and
absence of subsidies for their conceptions of the good. Instead, one
should either regard both systems as involving state subsidies for
their respectively favoured conceptions of the good, or (preferably)
neither.32
As well as challenging the supposed neutrality of market economies,
my analysis of these varieties of capitalism also implicitly suggests two
(interlocking) reasons for this non-neutrality not being recognised.
First, there is the failure to recognise the institutional dependence of
conceptions of the good, so that all that is seen as required for their
realisation by individuals is a sufficient supply of financial resources
(and willing partners). Second, there is the corresponding tendency to
ignore various institutional features of market economies and the
influence upon these of the state: in particular, the organisational character of firms, which themselves provide the institutional settings for
realising conceptions of the good, and cannot be understood through
the model of exchange.
However, the non-neutrality of market economies need not concern
their liberal defenders. In Section Four it was argued that neither
31
This view is encapsulated in Schmidts labelling of what Hall and Soskice call
LMEs as market capitalism, as distinct from the managed capitalism of what they
call CMEs: Schmidt, Futures of European Capitalism. The strongest argument for
LMEs being more market-like than CMEs would be based on the greater scope of
markets in the former, especially with respect to financial markets.
32
I develop this argument in Keat, Anti-Perfectionism, in the case of what might
be seen by neutralists as unacceptable subsidies for meaningful work in CMEs. More
generally, I argue there that political theorists who attribute neutrality to the market
rely on the kind of individualistic understanding of markets to be found in neoclassical
economics and its conceptual successors, and that the opposing position I have outlined here depends on replacing that with an institutionalist (but not new institutionalist) alternative.
LMEs nor CMEs posed any threat to liberal principles, and it seems
reasonable to infer that the same is true of other kinds of market economy, whether capitalist or non-capitalist. Whether this compatibility
with liberal principles extends beyond the category of market economies is an issue I shall not pursue here. But even if it does not, so that
liberally constrained perfectionism turns out to require the choice of
some kind of market system, one can expect there to be significant
ethical differences between these kinds, and according to the position
I have argued for, judgments about these ethical differences can play a
legitimate part in political choices between them.
Of course, there will also be many non-ethical differences, which
will also be relevant to these political choices, since liberal perfectionisms inclusion of ethical considerations does not imply the exclusion
of non-ethical ones or their lesser significance. As well as standard
measures of economic performance, these will include issues of distributive justice and social welfare that (have been assumed here to)
belong to the category of the right rather than the good.33 Further,
even restricting oneself to ethical considerations, the kinds of differences between LMEs and CMEs suggested in Section Three are by no
means the only or necessarily the most important ones, since not only
was the analysis primarily illustrative in purpose, but it was restricted
to conceptions of the good within the domain of production. What
would also need consideration are the goods of consumption, along
with the ethical impact of both production and consumption on the
character of non-economic practices, relationships and institutions.34
Admittedly, the more that the extent and complexity of the relevant
ethical issues is recognised, the more it may seem that their inclusion
33
For example, Hall and Soskice (Introduction) claim that CMEs are more compatible with social or Christian democratic welfare systems than are LMEs, and generate lower degrees of income inequality. However, whilst supporting these claims, it is
argued in Estevez-Abe et al, Social Protection and the Formation of Skill, that CMEs
are less egalitarian than LMEs with respect to issues of gender: rates of workforce participation by women are lower in CMEs than in LMEs, there is a higher degree of
gender-based job segregation, and the gaps between female and male (rates of) pay are
greater.
34
See Keat, Cultural Goods, on various aspects of the justification for market
boundaries. In Consumer-Friendly Production or Producer-Friendly Consumption
(ibid., pp. 133148) I discuss Lanes argument (Lane, The Market Experience) that production is more important than consumption as a source of human well-being.
368
russell keat
as permissible grounds for choice between economic systems makes

impossible demands on political reasoning and democratic decisionmaking.35 Indeed the impossibility of arriving at remotely consensual
decisions about human goods has often been advanced as a reason for
excluding them from political deliberation.36 I shall not try to address
these problems here. But I do want to point out, in conclusion, that if
the overall argument of this chapter is correct, it undermines an influential and seemingly attractive way of avoiding them.
What I have in mind is the argument presented by Hayek that the
adoption of market economies obviates the need for collective, societal
level decisions about the (in my terms, ethical) purposes to be served
by economic production.37 This is held to be a major advantage of the
market since, at least in modern, pluralistic societies, no agreement
could be reached about such social purposes (and/or their prioritisations) and failure to do so will lead either to serious conflict or the
forcible imposition of a powerful minoritys decisions. The market, it is
claimed, enables the political system to avoid these undesirable consequences of attempting the impossible by, as it were, devolving the
relevant decisions to individuals, pursuing their own freely chosen
goals within the (ethically) neutral framework of the market.
At one level of analysis this argument has merit, since market economies clearly remove the need for a certain kind of ethical micromanagement by the state with respect to economic production and its
goals. But at another level it is defective, since it ignores the various
institutional processes through which market economies in general,
and their specific varieties in particular, differentially favour and disfavour the realisation of certain conceptions of the good, and hence
delimit the sets of possible goals that it is realistic for individuals to
35
My claims about the ethical differences between LMEs and CMEs are not to be
understood as ethical judgments about their respective merits or defects; rather, they
are intended to identify some of the relevant features of these systems about which
substantive ethical judgments would need to be made as a basis for political choices
between them. See Keat, Social Criticism, on the conception of value-free social science assumed by this.
36
But I agree with Razs view (Raz, Morality of Freedom) that consensual decisions
about matters of justice or the right are no more easily achieved than those about
ethics or the good, and also that scepticism about the possibility of justifying ethical
judgments is not a persuasive argument for PSN.
37
See F. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2, London, Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1976, especially ch. 10.
pursue.38 The question thus arises of which set is to be preferred. The

members of a political community may decide not to answer this question, refusing to take collective responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of different institutional structures supported by the state.39
But they should at least acknowledge that by keeping ethics out of
political processes, they will not keep ethics out of economic ones.
38
Rawls argues that no society can be equally hospitable to the realisation of all
conceptions of the good; my point here is that, having recognised this, the members of
a political community should decide collectively on which set of possible conceptions
of the good are to be favoured by their societys economic institutions. Choosing the
market is not a way of avoiding this decision.
39
That is, they can adopt the justificatory version of PSN, accepting that its consequential version cannot in practice be realised.
Notes on Contributors
Christophe Dejours is Chair Professor (Psychoanalysis, Health,
Work) at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Mtiers, Paris. He is
the author of many books on psychoanalysis, psychosomatics, pathologies of modern work and the social impact of work pathologies. In
2009 he published Travail vivant (Payot), a two-volume monograph
presenting the main aspects of the psychodynamics of work. His most
recent publications include Suicide et travail. Que faire? (with F. Bgue,
PUF, 2010) and as editor, Observations cliniques en psychopathologie du
travail (PUF, 2010).
Jean-Philippe Deranty is Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Macquarie University, Sydney. He has written extensively on French
and German philosophy, notably on Critical Theory and recognition.
His recent publications include Beyond Communication. A Critical
Study of Axel Honneths Social Philosophy (Brill, 2009) and, as editor,
Jacques Rancire. Key Concepts (Acumen, 2010).
Russell Keat is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory in the School
of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh. His research is
concerned with the ethical character and implications of market institutions. Publications include Cultural Goods and the Limits of the
Market (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Recent papers are available at
www.RussellKeat.net.
Craig MacMillan is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of
Economics at Macquarie University. His research interests include the
moral limits of markets, institutional approaches to labour markets
and child labour. His recent work on internal labour markets in
Australia has been published in the Australian Journal of Labour
Economics.
Pascale Molinier is Professor in Social Psychology at the University
of Paris North. Her research is dedicated to the links between work
and mental health from the perspective of gender. Her publications
include LEnigme de la femme active (2003); Les Enjeux psychiques du
372
notes on contributors
travail (2006); and with Sandra Laugier and Patricia Paperman,

Quest-ce que le care? (2009).
Paul Redding is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney.
He is the author of Hegels Hermeneutics (Cornell UP, 1996), The Logic
of Affect (Cornell UP, 1999), Analytic Philosophy and the Return of
Hegelian Thought (Cambridge UP, 2007), and Continental Idealism:
Leibniz to Nietzsche (Routledge, 2009). He is currently working on a
book project on the relation of religion and metaphysics within the
philosophies of Leibniz, Kant and Hegel.
Emmanuel Renault teaches Philosophy at the cole Normale
Suprieure de Lyon. His publications include Marx et lIde de Critique
(PUF, 1995); Hegel, La Naturalisation de la Dialectique (Vrin, 2001);
O en est la Thorie Critique? (co-edited with Yves Sintomer, La
Dcouverte, 2003); Mpris social. Ethique et Politique de la Recon
naissance (Editions du Passant, 2nd ed., 2004); LExprience de lInjustice. Reconnaissance et Clinique de lInjustice (La Dcouverte, 2004)
and Souffrance Sociale (La Dcouverte, 2008).
Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch is Visiting Professor of
Philosophy at Mnster University and Scholar at the Institut fr
Sozialforschung in Frankfurt. His areas of research include nineteenth
century European philosophy and contemporary social and political
philosophy. He is the author of Hegels Begriff der Arbeit (Akademie,
2002), Religise Hingabe oder soziale Freiheit. Die saint-simonistische
Theorie und die Hegelsche Sozialphilosophie (Felix Meiner, 2007), and
Anerkennung als Prinzip der Kritischen Theorie (de Gruyter, 2011).
He has co-edited Heinrich Scholz. Logiker, Philosoph, Theologe (with
K. F. Wehmeier, Mentis, 2005), Hegelianismus und Saint-Simonismus
(with L. Siep, H.-U. Thamer, and N. Waszek, Mentis, 2007), and The
Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
(with C. F. Zurn, Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).
Nicholas H. Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie
University, Sydney. He is the author of Strong Hermeneutics (Routledge,
1997) and Charles Taylor: Meaning, Morals and Modernity (Polity,
2002). He is also editor of Reading McDowell: On Mind and World
(Routledge 2002). His current research focuses on issues of recognition, philosophical anthropology and the philosophy of work.
notes on contributors373
Dale Tweedie recently completed his doctoral thesis at Macquarie

University, Sydney. The thesis examined the links between economic,
sociological and philosophical theories of work and contemporary
workplace organisation. His ongoing areas of research include the
philosophy of economics, social philosophy, Australian social policy,
and accounting ethics.
Stephan Voswinkel (Dr. habil.) is a sociologist at the Institute for
Social Research (IfS) in Frankfurt/Main. His research focuses on the
meaning and importance of recognition in modern societies, especially in work relations. He has worked on several empirical research
projects at the Sociological Research Institute (SOFI) in Goettingen, at
the Universities of Goettingen, Marburg and Duisburg, and the IfS.
His publications include Welche Kundenorientierung? Anerkennung in
der Dienstleistungsarbeit (Berlin, edition sigma 2005), Anerkennung
und Reputation. Die Dramaturgie industrieller Beziehungen (UVKVerlag 2001) and Anerkennung und Arbeit (co-edited with Ursula
Holtgrewe and Gabriele Wagner, UVK-Verlag 2000).
Gabriele Wagner is Professor of Organizational Sociology at the
Leibniz University of Hanover. Previously she worked at the University
of Duisburg, the University of Bielefeld, and the Institute for Social
Research, Frankfurt. Her main research interests are work organisation, globalisation, world society and sociology of recognition. Her
publications include Ein Neuer Geist des Kapitalismus? Paradoxien
und Ambivalenzen der Netzwerkkonomie (co-edited with Philipp
Hessinger, 2008) and Anerkennung und Arbeit (co-edited with Ursula
Holtgrewe und Stephan Voswinkel, UVK-Verlag, 2000)
Index
action
as distinct from work and labour 58,
155, 188189, 191
collective 12, 112, 117, 277, 356
instrumental 189, 190
theory of 27
activity
coordinated 142, 143, 166
deontic 146, 209, 224
productive (poietic) 35, 54, 137,
142, 157, 167, 354, 355
professional18
subjectivising 222, 234
self-forming15
technical141
working 16, 2227, 3738, 137139,
141146, 152, 155, 172, 182,
193194, 197199, 206
agency 14, 16, 19, 31, 56, 201, 204
alienation 22, 33, 114, 135, 148, 155,
193, 203, 210, 212, 245249
animals 5, 11, 5354, 58, 113, 310, 314
non-human55
rational 2, 7
Anscombe, E. 50, 51
anthropology 6, 214
expressivist5
philosophical 12, 15, 16, 372
of work 152
Arendt, H. 2, 9, 58, 60, 135, 154,
188192, 328
Aristotle 14, 44, 4754, 188190, 195,
334, 364
atomism, versus holism 19
authority 15, 79, 80, 108, 116, 154,
214, 247, 278, 281, 321
automation222
bargaining, collective 20, 118121,
127128
Behrens, J. 286288, 319
biography 309, 313
Boltanski, L. 4, 92, 98, 137, 186
bond, social 9, 177
Bourdieu, P. 99, 134, 237,
capacities 116117, 127, 154, 157,
170172, 197199, 204, 257258,
270, 276, 313, 363
development of 28, 329, 334, 346

distinctive human 5, 7, 12, 46, 4950,
55, 7274, 240, 265, 277, 280
capitalism 16, 18, 68, 97, 99105, 156,
296, 342
critique of 63, 64, 70, 159162
kinds of 38, 66, 348369
neoliberal 66, 67, 71
spirit of 4, 98
transformations of 13, 36
care
bodily 252, 255, 260
versus cure 253254, 265266
invisibility of 2930, 257, 260
versus love 253, 259260
and transgression work 261
career 7377, 125, 267, 283, 306,
313314, 342343, 354355
Castel, R. 99, 137, 147, 279
character 3, 16, 37, 56, 262, 275278,
293, 333334
civil society 14, 16, 60, 62
ethical basis of 17, 18, 7279,
81, 88, 93
class 6, 7, 9, 17, 77, 115, 161, 201
Commons, J. R 1820, 101103,
112129
communication 9, 28, 84, 316, 320
community8
distortions of 1011, 227
compensation 69, 9496, 285
competence 7, 30, 35, 81, 8387, 90,
254, 258, 291, 315, 326
consumption 1618, 21, 55, 58, 75, 79,
8697, 184, 188, 332333, 337, 367
conspicuous17
contract 4344, 107108, 121, 129, 187,
266, 310, 316, 352, 360
cooperation 6, 2729, 101, 113, 116,
173178, 206, 209, 223234, 249, 252,
264, 299, 351356, 365
versus coordination 144145,
norms of 24, 135, 138, 152157,
162163, 178
corporations, Hegel on 1617, 72,
7891, 94, 96, 107108, 112, 176
craft 61, 121125, 267, 343, 346
craftsman ideal 102104, 152159,
168, 198200, 205, 342
376
index
critical theory 1621, 63, 97, 190

criticism
external 101105, 160, 162, 199, 205
immanent 21, 101, 152153, 156,
158, 197, 205
internal 6770, 97, 205
normative foundations of 21, 25, 157,
181183, 203, 206
rational basis of 22
social 4, 22, 158, 162, 178
utopian2021
culturalism69
decompensation 211, 229, 231
defence strategies 30, 211, 226227, 230,
263264, 266, 269, 315
Dejours, C. 2330, 37, 134153,
164178, 185, 193194, 212, 216237,
247258, 264, 328, 339346
democracy 2223, 135140
industrial118
dependence 6, 30, 5659, 81, 106, 117,
154157, 253259, 263, 269, 355,
362, 366
desire
belief-desire analysis 53, 54
Dewey, J. 135, 139, 140
disqualification239
domination 23, 138144, 147149, 190,
203, 323
Dubet, F. 136137
Durkheim, E. 1921, 101109, 118,
128129, 158, 176177, 204, 216
duty 106, 279282, 285286, 316,
320, 325, 326, 363
ethos 302, 305, 326
economics
neo-classical 18, 36, 37, 103
institutional 38, 7071, 102103,
109126, 128, 350, 353362,
366, 368
orthodox 14, 18, 25, 3637, 102103,
109111, 327333, 339, 343, 345
homo economicus19
economy
market 17, 20, 38, 106, 204, 349,
365367
psychic 162, 168, 173, 250
as system 21, 61, 136, 160
emancipation 7, 1011, 58, 156,
181182, 195, 213, 235, 241
employee 117119, 178, 203, 289, 299,
301, 305, 306, 312, 351
employer 34, 109, 111, 117123, 203,

258, 289, 306
Enlightenment 5, 7, 12
equality 20, 115, 116, 118, 119, 160
ergonomics 27, 165, 215, 217221
esteem 8485, 90, 94, 100, 129,
201206, 319
self 6567, 7172, 90, 9495, 9799,
129, 143, 177
social 77, 107, 127, 137, 194, 201,
202, 322
ethics 112, 217, 239, 253, 364, 365,
368, 369
ethical basis of society 17
professional230
evaluation 3234, 6770, 94, 98, 140,
145, 167169, 239, 268, 275277,
292293, 298, 313, 323
exchange 69, 113, 159160, 173, 225,
291, 305307, 315, 323, 366
of commodities 114
fairness of 1921
normative presuppositions of 153,
204, 206
of services 2021, 32, 105, 183,
201, 204206
execution 60, 61, 166, 218, 222
exit 34, 290, 295, 298
expression, norm of 155, 157
expressivism 193200, 206
extravagance, love of 17, 8789, 93
femininity 258, 262263
Fordism 211, 285
crisis of 33
form 15, 242, 257, 279
distinct from matter 4450, 53
Frankfurt School (see critical
theory) 32, 190
Fraser, N. 18, 6370, 78, 9798, 105,
151, 201
freedom 13, 10, 14, 49, 5557,
135140, 159160, 211212, 219,
223, 273, 287, 360
Geist (see spirit) 48
gender 28, 210, 249, 258, 263, 282,
367, 371
good (the) 3738, 5354, 192198,
347, 367, 368
common 21, 106107, 124, 175
conceptions of 3738, 156, 205,
347369
life goods 184, 192
index377
Habermas, J. 2, 42, 63, 69, 135, 153, 163,
189192, 198, 201, 233, 241, 348, 365
colonisation thesis 304, 323
health 120, 138140, 149, 167, 200, 217,
243, 254256, 264, 267, 290, 296
mental (psychic) 140, 145146,
210213, 220, 226, 229230,
250, 256
as norm 23, 139, 140
Hegel G. W. F. 121, 4162, 71107,
118, 128129, 145, 159161, 175177,
194, 204
Idealism 43, 45, 51, 55
master-slave dialectic 14, 43, 52,
59, 60
Phenomenology of Spirit1415,
4143, 5253, 59, 194, 277
Philosophy of Right 14, 16, 4344, 61,
64, 7193, 98, 101, 176
Heidegger, M. 2, 29, 41
hierarchy 30, 54, 136137, 141143,
147, 165, 169, 174, 257, 342, 351
history, philosophy of 6
Hobbes, T. 14, 4345, 48, 53, 57, 60
Honneth, A.
The Struggle for Recognition 42, 104,
151, 200
Work and Instrumental Action 3, 21,
22, 104, 138, 151, 196
Work and Recognition: A
Redefinition 3, 20, 67, 101,
104105, 115, 125, 128, 151, 154,
158, 197, 200, 204
honour282
bourgeois1618
Horkheimer, M. 6364, 190
Hughes, E. 133134, 141, 143, 252
human
distinctive faculties 14, 45
factor 27, 174
soul 44, 47, 60, 61
Hume, D. 14, 45
identity
ego-identity 275276, 288
formation 3, 34, 275276
versus personality 227
professional325
ideology 183, 264
neo-liberal 22, 133
illness 27, 8082, 211212, 231, 306
income 17, 6970, 74, 80100, 115, 136,
175, 183, 327328, 335, 337338, 367
individualisation 12, 172, 277
inequality 19, 250, 282, 367

injustice 23, 102, 105, 136, 138148,
153, 161162, 178
institutionalism 1819, 102105,
110111, 115, 125129, 331, 356358
new 102, 125126, 357
institutions 43, 4950, 57, 8385, 108,
111113, 245, 257, 293, 323, 357
integration 158, 223, 257, 303306, 310,
315, 323
social 3435, 101107, 177, 206, 275,
277, 304, 323324
intelligence 2728, 47, 213, 216218,
222, 225228, 234235, 244, 251, 255
practical 5, 176, 197, 200, 206, 222
worker222223
interaction, social 12, 13, 112, 114,
137, 276
justice 115, 136140, 148, 166, 179, 329,
348, 367, 368
Kant, I. 14, 19, 4548, 57
Kojve, A. 41, 55
labour (see work, workforce)
casual 137, 147, 148
centrality of 28, 210, 256, 334
division of 7, 2026, 61, 101109,
136144, 151162, 171177, 192,
249252, 263, 268, 330, 341
force 122129, 342344, 354,
355367
gang191
the labour problem 1920
market, organisation of 1724,
101102, 105107, 115117,
123124, 128129, 137, 157, 192,
195, 204, 307, 334
supply 6, 327337, 345
waged 255, 259, 280
Lacan, J. 41, 258, 259
language 2, 712, 49, 112, 163, 230,
233236, 240243
anthropological significance of 8
linguistic turn 2, 3, 89, 11
versus production 4, 7
Latour, B. 147
leadership 296, 310316
Leistung 33, 171, 174, 177, 274, 278,
280, 286
leisure 37, 273, 330, 333, 335337
liberalism 9, 37, 73, 349, 356, 362364
perfectionist 349, 362363
378
index
life
as core norm of work 17, 30, 3637,
54, 7386, 136, 156, 184199, 206,
242, 261, 330335, 342346, 358
goods 184, 189, 192
world137
love 6566, 81, 201, 248, 253, 259260
Luhmann, N. 293, 310
Lukacs, G. 6
luxury 16, 17, 72, 8789
MacIntyre, A. 19, 195, 354
management 220, 224225, 230231,
268269, 288, 292, 297, 302, 310, 318,
320322, 351
methods of 33
Marcuse, H. 193
market economy 106, 209, 364
coordinated versus liberal 38,
350356, 358, 360362, 365367
market
-centred 303, 306, 321, 322, 324
constraints311312
deregulated 67, 99
ethical basis of, 17, 21
financial355
internal labour (ILM), 121125,
mechanism 110, 299, 344
-orientation307
secondary125
success 36, 305, 308, 317, 319,
322, 325
marketization 35, 293296, 299, 301,
303, 309, 322323
Marx, K. 6, 41, 5960, 64, 103, 133, 161,
196, 364
Capital 154, 158, 160, 162, 167, 177
Grundrisse159
Manuscripts of 1844193194
Mead, G. H. 32, 127, 145, 275, 288
mind, and body 44, 4748
misrecognition 3, 202, 295, 299
modernity 14, 58, 61, 160162, 172
morality 46, 184, 277, 279
Murphy, J. B. 185, 188189, 192,
194, 334
mutual benefit 19, 21
narrative 5960, 242, 265, 342
naturalism45
needs 59, 21, 86, 9192, 100, 106, 157,
188, 204, 253, 291292, 338
system of 6062, 74
neo-liberalism6667
normativism19
normativity 49, 57, 139, 153, 164, 182,
188, 194195, 201204
normative content of work 23, 24,
141143, 190191, 196, 206
normative surplus 31
norms (see expression, cooperation,
work)
of efficiency 141, 145, 192
of health 23, 139140
moral 105, 187188, 190, 192, 197,
280
nursing 31, 195, 252, 267268
ontology
ontological significance of work 193
social12
organisation
formal/informal 218, 304
pain 113, 134, 155, 184, 238, 354, 265,
329340, 344
Papin sisters 258, 259
paradigm 911, 13, 28, 115, 156, 168,
196, 201
interactionist147
language4
production47
recognition 14, 12, 1415, 201
pathology 168169, 249
mental 212, 245
social4,
psychopathology 2526, 174175,
209210, 212217, 229, 231, 240,
247248, 250
perfectionism 348349, 362, 363364,
367
performance 29, 35, 61, 84, 94, 167174,
183, 274299, 302326, 342344,
348350, 367
Plato4748
pleasure 113, 143145, 184, 191, 209,
213, 223, 229232, 245249, 261,
329338, 344
poiesis54-58, 188, 224, 241242
power
bargaining 20, 108, 117118,
128129
relations 27, 218, 220221
pragmatism 112, 135, 139, 140
praxis215216
revolutionary6
versus poiesis 5458, 188, 224,
241242
index379
precarious work 186187, 252
production
mode of 37, 103, 172
relations of 129
professions
hierarchy of 141
profit 69, 102, 105, 134, 203, 307, 311,
317, 351
quest for 1617, 72, 87, 89, 98
psychoanalysis 214215, 234, 241,
244245
psychodynamics 23, 2531, 152,
174175, 178, 209250, 251, 256,
258, 263
psychology 12, 19, 66, 111, 113, 116,
147, 212, 229, 245, 249250, 328
of work 144, 215, 218
Meadian127
negotiational 114, 126127
rational choice theory 18, 358
rationality 7, 8, 12, 24, 28, 46, 205206,
213214, 233, 264
axiological231232
instrumental 182183, 192, 197,
231, 244
rational animal 2, 7, 11, 1415
rational society 64
recognition and 14, 231
subjective 212, 221, 231232, 242
teleological 221, 232
real (the) 28, 57, 137, 143145, 147148,
166167, 169, 174, 298, 267, 340
reason
as human-making feature 3
instrumental 4546, 6061, 182,
187190, 192
practical 48, 51, 62, 199, 215, 348
space of reasons 15
reciprocity 11, 3233, 204, 299, 355
recognition
and income 18, 6970, 8893,
9596
and success 295298
as admiration 3436, 294
as appreciation 3336, 282
as gratitude 227
as ideology 13
as practical attitudes 11
as prestige 32, 141, 274, 278279, 286
claims 288, 294, 298299, 313, 316,
319, 324
deficit of 257
denial of 140141, 145
mutual 24, 49, 77, 127, 204205,

248, 278
order of, 87, 305, 312, 316
paradoxes of 273, 298
priority over cognition 12
psychodynamics of 209
struggles for 3, 13, 32, 67, 151, 326
struggles over 41, 68
trap of 3536
versus redistribution 6568, 70, 141
reputation 35, 291, 292, 298
respect 65, 7273, 119, 183, 201, 206
legal 6667, 71
responsibility 12, 236239, 264, 288,
293, 297, 302303, 308, 314, 321324,
349, 359, 369
Ricoeur, P. 2, 251252
rights
abstract right 7778, 82, 86
political 23, 360
to contribute 230231
Romanticism 5, 7, 159
sacrifice 35, 184, 278280, 282,
289290, 296, 318319, 331, 335336
self (the) 3233, 184, 291
self-development 288, 342343, 346
self-exploitation 320, 324
self-expression 12, 5, 33, 183,
193194, 197198, 337
self-fulfilment 227230, 253
self-making5
self-organisation 284, 289, 294, 303
self-realisation 13, 19, 24, 3233, 159,
162, 171, 188, 194197, 281282,
286291, 295299
self-regulation303
self-respect 16, 73, 105, 107, 127, 201,
204, 207
self-sacrifice 33, 258, 260, 285, 294
self-transformation56
social127
triangulation with object and
other16
Sennett, R. 9, 37, 99, 154155, 175,
185, 199, 203, 291, 315, 328, 339,
341346
shareholder 35, 283, 285, 342, 351352
Simmel, G. 278, 306
skill(s)
inconspicuous 2930, 256259
Smith, Adam 6, 154, 159, 275, 330
socialisation 12, 31, 42, 142143,
201, 237
380
index
sociality 1, 6, 89, 12, 138

society
bourgeois 6567, 7175, 82, 86, 97,
273274, 279
consumer7
sociology 3334, 111, 125, 186, 197,
203, 214, 217, 236, 341, 249, 282
interpretive323
organisational 34, 302
qualitative 25, 34
specialisation 101, 103, 106, 213
species-being197
spirit 1415, 4148, 5253, 5960,
194, 277
objective46
state (the) 54, 7879, 108109, 111113,
127, 135, 262263, 281, 347, 349,
358369
neutrality of 3738, 347349,
358359, 364365
stress 140, 170, 185, 212, 317, 340, 345
subject (the)
capacities of 33, 167, 276
mobilisation of 224231
writ-large6
sublimation 146, 229, 250, 253
suffering 24, 337, 140149, 153,
164179, 185, 209249, 256, 263268,
326, 328, 340345
Taylor, C. 2, 5, 50, 184
Taylorism 211, 279, 282285,
297299
technique 55, 177, 216228, 248
technology 5, 7, 178, 182, 188, 211,
216, 351
Thompson, E. P. 13, 105, 156
trade union 20, 102, 109, 112, 118119,
134, 185, 281, 351
trade, rules of the 224, 257, 261
trust 38, 174, 185, 223224, 307, 315,
348, 355, 361
under-employment186
unemployment 19, 22, 120, 134,
189, 328
utilitarianism334
utility 19, 102, 112, 142145, 189,
257, 345
utopia 19, 195
value
horizon 277, 280, 308
shareholder 283, 285
virility 262, 270

voice 34, 178, 295, 298299
vulnerability 30, 148, 162, 169, 253,
260261, 264265, 359
wage 21, 7874, 98, 105107, 117129,
136141, 162, 204, 255259, 279286,
327345
Walzer, M. 274
welfare 33, 328, 336, 365, 367
state 34, 67, 362
human 327, 330331, 334, 345346
worker 332, 333, 335, 345
work
as activity 143144, 155, 166, 182,
188, 192, 197, 219, 229, 289
centrality of 28, 210, 256, 334
collective 31, 209, 242
critical conception of 2124, 104,
138142, 146152, 196198
denial of 133134
dirty 32, 252260, 270
as disutility 36, 337
domestic 142, 253259, 282
emotional253
as employment 141147
ethic 3233, 184, 186, 273, 286
health and 23, 120, 138140,
145149, 167, 210213,
217226, 229230, 250268,
290, 296
hermeneutic of 27, 187, 241, 342
honour 1718, 282
industrial 210, 282
invisibility of 22
irksome 18, 338
love and 25, 248250, 253, 259260
malaises of 183
meaningful 7, 62, 198, 204, 206, 366
norms of 24, 161163, 178, 182,
187189, 193, 200, 203205
as opportunity cost 36, 335337,
341, 344
organisation of 2122, 26, 101105,
128, 137, 152, 165167, 175,
198205, 210231, 239245,
268270, 327, 344
philosophical exclusion of 134136
pleasant338
prescribed 144, 146
psychic function of 144
psychodynamics of 2331, 152,
209223, 228250, 256258, 263
psychology of 144, 215, 218
index381
psychopathology of 26, 209217, 229,
231, 240, 247, 249
quality of 25, 37, 107, 123, 184, 186,
198, 206, 298
rationalisation of 169
real 26, 144, 146, 155, 166, 168,
219220, 224, 233
rules230
satisfaction 186, 353
sciences209
situation217
sociology of 25, 3334, 282
struggle for 42, 153, 245,
320321, 341
subjectivisation of 283288
Taylorist 211, 282285, 297, 299
to-rule223
work/life balance 183186
workers movement 22, 133
workforce 122, 125, 129, 342, 344,
354, 355, 367
working
conditions 119, 125, 137, 145146,
156, 165, 171, 179, 243, 288, 296,
329335, 342346
class 6, 17
day 318, 332, 333
workloads 297, 316, 317

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New Philosophies of Labour

Social and Critical Theory

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FROM HEGEL TO INSTITUTIONALISM

CRITIQUE, NORM AND WORK

WORK AND SUBJECTIVITY: TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHICAL

WORK, RECOGNITION AND THE CHANGING

Work, Recognition and the Social Bond:

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

without justification taken as central to his philosophy1but the

See, for example, T. Pinkard, Hegels Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason,

work, recognition and the social bond3

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

long ago, to characterize the spirit of the times as a spirit of capitalism.6

work, recognition and the social bond5

The centrality of labour from an anthropological point of view,

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

aradigm. A third feature of this anthropology is a particular formulap

work, recognition and the social bond7

bygone age. To many post-Hegelian thinkers in the post-war period,

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

or thinking in a manner that does not instrumentalize or objectify its

work, recognition and the social bond9

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

work, recognition and the social bond11

athologies as distortions of communication does not seem to use the

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

towards its own kind, a dependency whose extent is unknown to the

work, recognition and the social bond13

expressed in denials or restrictions of rights, which prevent individuals

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

As we have already suggested, it is above all to Hegel that we owe both

work, recognition and the social bond15

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

work, recognition and the social bond17

social process of production, that is, by contributing to the general

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

civilsociety would fall apart. As Schmidt am Busch remarks, Hegels

work, recognition and the social bond19

liberal (Kant-inspired) models of critical theory. At the ontological

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

further by making concrete proposals about what these institutions

work, recognition and the social bond21

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

work, recognition and the social bond23

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

work, recognition and the social bond25

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

the psychodynamics of work, which matured thanks to a many-sided

work, recognition and the social bond27

illness. More broadly, the focus on subjective experience and workers

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

lessons: the methodological primacy of experience; the difficulties in

work, recognition and the social bond29

in affective capacities that would be inherent in one of the two sexes.

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

present in the tasks of care themselves. The discreetness demanded by

work, recognition and the social bond31

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

work, recognition and the social bond33

nicholas h. smith and jean-philippe deranty

Recognition as appreciation is significantly undermined. This is

work, recognition and the social bond35

work, recognition and the social bond3

work, recognition and the social bond5

work, recognition and the social bond7

work, recognition and the social bond9

work, recognition and the social bond11

work, recognition and the social bond13

work, recognition and the social bond15

work, recognition and the social bond17

work, recognition and the social bond19

work, recognition and the social bond21

work, recognition and the social bond23

work, recognition and the social bond25

work, recognition and the social bond27

work, recognition and the social bond29

work, recognition and the social bond31

work, recognition and the social bond33

work, recognition and the social bond35

work, recognition and the social bond37

processes of recognition in hegels idealism43

processes of recognition in hegels idealism45

processes of recognition in hegels idealism47

processes of recognition in hegels idealism49

processes of recognition in hegels idealism51

processes of recognition in hegels idealism53

processes of recognition in hegels idealism55

processes of recognition in hegels idealism57

processes of recognition in hegels idealism59

processes of recognition in hegels idealism61

hegelian philosophy and critical theory65

hegelian philosophy and critical theory67

hegelian philosophy and critical theory69

hegelian philosophy and critical theory71

hegelian philosophy and critical theory73

hegelian philosophy and critical theory75

hegelian philosophy and critical theory77

hegelian philosophy and critical theory79

hegelian philosophy and critical theory81

hegelian philosophy and critical theory83

hegelian philosophy and critical theory85

hegelian philosophy and critical theory87

hegelian philosophy and critical theory89

hegelian philosophy and critical theory91