Jurgen Habermas, Technology and the Prompt Global Strike system

Jurgen Habermas, Technology and the Prompt Global Strike system
Philosophical Problems in the Social Sciences
Terese Howard
5/12/10

On April 22, 2010 – less than a month ago – an article in the New York Times caught my eye: “U.S. Faces Choice on New Weapons for Fast Strikes.” The article explained,
“In coming years, President Obama will decide whether to deploy a new class of weapons capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour and with such accuracy and force that they would greatly diminish America’s reliance on its nuclear arsenal” (Singer and Shanker, New York Times).

Why and how has the U.S. gotten to the point at which it is developing this new military technology? How did technology develop such that this is possible and how have the State and capitalism, through technology, been a part of that process?
In order to address these questions I turn to Jurgen Habermas’s socio-political and philosophical critique of technology. Habermas (1929-present) is a renowned critical theorist and former director of the influential Institute for Social Research in Germany. Following in the tradition of critical theory Habermas draws from Hegel and Marx in critique of the dominating logic of capitalism. However, Habermas deviates from these thinkers and most critical theorists by maintaining a role for capitalism in society and shifting the locus of political revolution from labor, as in Marx through Max Horkheimer, to communication. In addressing the role of technology in today’s society, Habermas speaks through these post-Marxist and pro-communicative philosophies. Habermas’s critique of technology is not a rejection of technology as such (which he blames Herbert Marcuse for doing) but a critique of the political and economic use of technology. In this way, a Habermasian analysis of the Prompt Global Strike system would not automatically reject it as technology, but would observe what democratic and anti-democratic processes were involved in developing the system and how the sphere of democratic communication could contribute to the development or critique of this new bombing technology.

Habermas’s critique of technology is not so much a critique of technology itself as it is of the roles of what he calls technological consciousness which is driven by purposive-rational action. Technology itself, such as the Prompt Global Strike (PGS), is the product of, as well as the force behind, a particular sort of rationality. Habermas’s concern with technology in contemporary society takes form in the context of the overwhelming dominance of this technological consciousness as well as technological production. The vast increase of new technologies in recent years is coupled with a rationality that, left outside of the communicative sphere, absorbs the communicative rationality which is fundamental to political participation as opposed to political domination. The preservation of the communicative sphere is a fundamental force behind Habermas’s concern with the current state of technology as a dominating rationality.

In order to understand what Habermas means by technology and technological consciousness, and how he finds it problematic, one first must understand what he means by purposive-rational action and how this rationality contributes to the development of technology. In setting out his approach to technology in distinction from that of Marcuse and Max Weber, Habermas distinguishes between two types of rationality: purposive-rational action and communicative action. Purposive-rational action is understood as, “either instrumental action or rational choice or their conjunction. Instrumental action is governed by technical rules” (Habermas, Culture and Technology as Ideology, 124). Communicative action, on the other hand, is symbolic interaction which “is governed by binding consensual norms, which define reciprocal expectations about behavior and which must be understood and recognized by at least two acting subjects” (Habermas, 124). Purposive-rational action is the rationality which is driven by technical logic and drives technical production. While communicative action is concerned with interaction between human acting subjects, purposive-rational action is concerned with “realizing defined goals under given conditions” (Habermas, 124). Communicative action interacts with other actors, but purposive-rational action works down a set path toward an end that is contained within itself. Take for example the difference between planning and producing a computer program – a process that takes technical knowledge of codes and step by step tasks which must be done correctly in order for the computer to “understand” them and produce the intended result – and deciding how to go about a marketing plan with a business partner – a process that requires listening, responding, and taking creative initiate with another person who must also do the same. While both of these jobs can involve some of both types of rationality, the computer programming defiantly requires the use of purposive-rational action while the decision of business partners only could entail that rationality. When acting others are involved communication serves as the paradigm. Technology does not interact as other but works toward a particular purpose that is defined within itself.

Habermas privileges communicative action because of its irreplaceable possibility for critique and understanding, but this does not mean he dismisses purposive-rational action as useless or totally unethical. The trouble with purposive-rational action is not in itself, but in its inability to question itself. Habermas explains that technology “serves as an ideology for the new politics, which is adapted to technical problems and brackets out practical questions” (Habermas, 134). Technology, under the drive of purposive-rational action, works toward an end without having the capability to question itself – not for practical, ethical, or any other concerns. Because technology follows purposive-rational action which follows only the means which work toward achieving some end, it cannot question its own means or end for anything but its productivity in achieving that said goal. Habermas states, “The moral realization of a normative order is a function of communicative action oriented to shared cultural meaning and presupposing the internalization of values” (Habermas, 134). Ethical concerns are explicated under the communicative sphere because that is the sphere where acting subjects, others, are involved. Technology does not act as an other, but as a tool. In this way, technology serves a function in society that is a-ethical. Habermas sees this as a necessary condition for the need for communicative reason. Because the communicative sphere can question itself in a way that technology cannot, Habermas turns to communicative action to question and critique technology. While technology is not bad in and of itself, its negative sides can come to dominate without a powerful presence of communicative action in questioning it. This is why Habermas privileges communicative action over purposive-rational action and why he turns to the communicative sphere to address the ethical issues which arise from technology.
This is also why technology can tend to dominate over the communicative sphere for Habermas. Internal questioning serves as a hindrance to dominating forces which purposive-rational action pushes forth in its productive drive. Habermas’s turn to communicative action serves to address the power of purposive-rational action to produce of its ends without questioning the implications of those ends or the means of getting there. With the increase in technology and technological superstructures more and more of life is taken over by purposive-rational action. While communicative action still must be utilized in various areas of production – i.e. people still must make decisions about what to make – the use of technology to achieve that communication, to survive, or to do nearly anything forces all areas of life under the rationality of technology. Eventually, modern technological rationality, “widens to take in all areas of life: the army, the school system, health services, and even the family” (Habermas, 128). Technology becomes more than a tool, it becomes a consciousness. Under technological consciousness people begin to think more like technology. In comparison to communicative action “technological consciousness is not based in the same way on the causality of disassociated symbols and unconscious motives” (137). Technological consciousness is more driven by directive purposive ends. Habermas argues that secularization, the loss of myth, is a result of this technological consciousness, for, “measured against the new standards of purposive-rationality, the power-legitimating and action-oriented traditions – especially mythological interpretations and religious world views – lose their cogency….Instead they are reshaped into subjective belief systems and ethics which insure the private cogency of modern value-orientations” (Habermas, 128-9). Under the power of technological rationality, the “subjective” nature of spirituality begins to function as a means to some concert ends. Technology comes to dominate non-technical rationalities through its very nature. Accordingly, Habermas turns to the communicative sphere to keep technological in cheek.

The communicative sphere is critical, for Habermas, in the political. The communicative sphere falls under the category of the “life world” which Habermas sets forth as the gel in which the State and economy take place. The communicative sphere serves as the normative foundation for critique of both State and economy. It is through assumed or agreed upon norms and symbols that common understanding, Habermas’s goal for communication, takes place. In this paradigm the State and economy are not put in opposition to communicative action – that is, they do not represent purposive rationality. Though Habermas does come to argue, as we have seen, that purposive-rational action is over taking the State and economy, in and of themselves they are not forces of purposive-rational action.

While capitalism cannot be reduced to purposive-rational action it does follow this rationality much more than a communicative rationality. Capitalism is driven to achieve specific ends and to do so without questioning itself in the process. Habermas states that the “capitalist mode of production has equipped the economic system with a self-propelling mechanism that ensures long-term continuous growth (despite crisis) in the productivity of labor” (Habermas, 126). By working toward the end of productivity, capitalism, left to its own forces, continually pushes toward its ends. Furthermore, part of its production its technology itself which perpetuates technological consciousness within the capitalist engine of society. However, unlike many, Habermas turns not primarily to the State to keep capitalism in cheek but to the communicative sphere which questions and critiques both capitalism and the State.

Habermas attributes the growing interventionism of the State as a response to the growing power of the capitalist economy with the use of technology and technological consciousness. As capitalism became more and more technological in form and in content the State was driven to intervene to stop these unquestioned abuses of people or land and to direct the technological production to ends which are seen as beneficial for the State (stated to be the people). Habermas argues, “The permanent regulation of the economic process by means of state intervention arose as a defense mechanism against the dysfunctional tendencies, which threaten the system, that capitalism generates when left to itself” (Habermas, 130). As the primary force behind the development of technologies capitalism maintains a vast amount of power to direct society. Accordingly, the State increases its involvement in the economy such that technology does not remain only driven by the capitalist economy but also by the State. Through the use of technology the State absorbs some of this technological consciousness, acting based on productive and quantitative ends rather than distributive or responsive ends. While the State does serve as a hindrance to the domination of technological capitalism, even it cannot serve as the critical counter-part to purposive rationality – a role which is left to the communicative sphere. The result of technology and the power of purposive-rational action driven by and in use by capitalism is the increase in State power to work hand and hand with technology.

This is where the Prompt Global Strike system comes back into the discussion. PGS is a technology developed by State researchers and funding but this development is only made possible because of other technologies developed by non-state forces, particularly more corporate capitalist forces. For example, PGS is using techniques developed by NASA – which is not exactly corporate or State. Furthermore, as the State is funded by the capitalist economy anything which promotes economic growth will affect the State, through increased revenues, need for intervention, or some other means. The purposive-rationality needed to develop a weapon such as the PGS thus seeps through capitalism and the State.

The development of the PGS points directly to the increased State interventionism which Habermas attributes to the increasingly technological nature of capitalism. As more and more technologies are developed for private corporate means the State steps in to keep these technologies from over running State interests. Yet in doing so the state turns more and more to technology to serve its own interest as well. The PGS is a prime example of this because the motivation behind it is directly linked to State intervention in global economic interests. The New York Times, along with most articles on the PGS, states as an example of the innovative possibilities of this system as “destroying an Iranian nuclear sight” (Singer and Shanker, New York Times). The speed and precision of this bomb is continually promoted as a prime technology for pin pointing “terrorists” like Osama Bin Laden. An article in the Washington Independent gives a clear statement of the pro-PGS sentiment:
“Every strategist remembers Aug. 20, 1998, when the USS Abraham Lincoln Battle Group, stationed in the Arabian Sea, launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at an Al Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan, hoping to take out Osama Bin Laden. With a top speed of 550 mph, the Tomahawks made the 1100-mile trip in 2 hours. By then, Bin Laden was gone -- missed by less than an hour, according to Richard A. Clarke, former head of U.S. counterterrorism” (Washington Independent).
PGS is deemed a growing necessity as the notion is perpetuated that the hour speed increase which PGS has would have given the U.S. the possibility of catching Osama Bin Laden.

This motive is clearly a result of the increase in State intervention – whether for economic ends (oil) or national-democratic or some other ends. If the clash with Bin Laden was from the motivation of economic ends through maintaining access to oil, a vital component of modern technology, the link of the State development of PGS to technology is even clearer. The goal of creating a technology which can strike a specific spot across the globe at an extremely fast speed would not exist without the presence of modern technology enabling people to think in terms of setting forth specific ends and making a closed system which can achieve those ends on its own. Only under this rationality is it possible for a technology like the PGS to be developed. The State utilizes this rationality to develop technology which can serve to address the technological engines of society – both local and global. As a State technology PGS is developed for State ends, which in turn perpetuate a technologically driven State.

Nonetheless, the Prompt Global Strike system is not a-ethical. The use of such a bomb raises all sorts of ethical questions – the obvious one being “should anyone have the right to kill another?” But the technology of PGS itself cannot ask those questions. As a technology PGS can only achieve or fail to achieve its intended ends – bombing a precise location fast. In order to address these concerns Habermas turns to the communicative sphere. Placed under the critique of communicative action, technologies, such as the PGS, can be directed by people through mutual communication. Habermas sees the democratic involvement of people in the development of technology as a critical force in asking ethical questions of technology. For Habermas the potential negative effects of even the development of the PGS must be able to be questioned and practically influenced by democratic involvement. PGS has had no democratic involvement, unless you count blog posts and news responses criticizing the system. As military technology, and only the State, and in particular the president, has the legal ability to make decisions about its use. In this way, the PGS is an example of the domination of technology, via the closed logic of purposive-rational action over the communicative sphere, to continually push its production on without halting to the countless critiques of the people communicating through norms and questioning as others.

“Should we develop the Prompt Global Strike?”
“Maybe…but for whose ends?”
“WE, the people.”
“Where is the WE here…?”

Habermas, Jurgen. “Culture and Technology as Ideology” in Critical Theory: the essential reader, ed. David Ingram and Julia Simon-Ingram, Paragon House: St. Paul Minnesota, 1992.
Sanger, David E. and Thom Shanker April 22, 2010 www.nytimes.com
Ackerman, Spencer April 23, 2010 http://washingtonindependent.com/83050/your-prompt-global-strike-primer