Distribution: limited ‘SHC-71/CONF. 1/4 PARIS, 6 August 1971 Translated from Spanish UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION ‘Symposium on CULTURE AND SCIENCE The Diversity of Cultures as against ‘the Universality of Science and Technology (Unesco, Paris, 6-10 September 1971) Topic VIL Sociology of the Tension between Culture and Science Today: ‘S)at_a very highly developed level by Professor Leén ROZITCHNER Ph.D. in Philosophy Buenes Aires, Argentina The opinions expressed in this study are the sole responsibility of the authorSHO-71/CONP. 1/4 SUMMARY 1. We may as well begin our analysis of the tension between culture and science in the so-called "developed" countries by considering what two thinkers who belonged to that particular cultural environment - Marx and Proud - had to say about it. In the case of Marx we start with his concept of "wealth", a basic concept in which science appears in its applied universality: technology as productive force. And we show that for Marx there are two concepts of wealth, one funda~ mental and the other conventional. According to the first of these, the production of all the capabilities, powers, pleasures, etc. generated by a culture is based on anaggregate of labour with man as the basic form. This wealth, in which the human form is established as the guiding principle regulating the productive process, appears in its noga- ted - i.e. conventional mode - in cases where wealth, as is the case in capitalist production systems, ia defined as an aggregate of conmodities with the conmodity as the basic form. Then we show how in capitalist technology, which is based on concealment of this organic unity, the human significance of science as well as of production disappears. But before this, we also see how this production sys- tem produces individuals whose subjective attitudes internalize this dissociation and wake it their om. Nature opposed to culture; social labour withdrawn in ‘the form of private property; technology oriented towards the creation and satisfaction of needs that are not universal nor universally realizable; science confined to the strict Limits imposed on it by the social division of latour, which conceals the field of human universality - the aggregate of men - on which ‘the real meaning of all cultural development rests. In the case of Freud, we show how the cultural forms that determine the so-called "normal" individual are the result of the application of "techniques" to elude reality: science, art, labour, love, also turn out to be techniques which conceal their base. Here we have, seeti from another angle, the dissocie- ‘tion that Marx demonstrated: dissociation between "techniques" that serve to disguise the extension of the subjective into the objective, and "techniques" that hide their subjective significance in the mastery of "external" nature. But above all we point out the result of these repressive "techniques", which is to direct man's aggressiveness away from the obstacle and against himself. Freud believes in the recovery of historical objectivity, which surpasses the individual perspective, when the collective point of view is regained, when social forms arise which make it possible to confront and pinpoint this repres- sive action: through the collective power of the masses. In the actualization of the feeling which originally formed them, in the transition froma primal horde to a community of brothers, Freud rediscovers the historical significance of the present-day masses. These masses live in their particular culture as if - an archaic aggression to the primal horde ~ they were children of nature, as if they had forgotten their cultural origins and the need to renew their effectiveness and power. ‘The general conclusions to be drawn from these two positions can be summed up as follows: in both Marx and Freud, it is man and the totality of mankind that regula- ‘tes the path of all scientific knowledge;SHC-71/CONF.1/4 - page 2 in both, the field of universality thus revealed indicates the path of knowledge: theoretical formation mist of necessity - because it is part of its own production - be extended to a practical universality in Which the relations between men achieve a non-contradictory character. And non-contradiction implies, as its basis, a living coherence among men, stemming from their corporate existence as a cultural entity. 2. With this in mind we briefly describe some aspects of a cultural system. - that of the United States of North America - demonstrating the imbalance of its system of production of material wealth. Here we find the most advanced his- ‘torical alliance of science and technology but the man-form is not and is far from being the regulator of its process. Since this model is also the regulator of the capitalist countries of Europe it seemed obvious that the conclusions of the preceding analyses, which took those countries as the starting point, mst of necessity apply to the whole of this cultural orbit characterized by a similar production system. Only from this point of view did it make sense to tackle ‘the questions raised by the subjects under discussion. +. With regard to the breakdown of the nature-culture disequilibrius, we found hat its basis could be sought only in a system where the subjugated, both inside and outside the system are reduced to "nature". In such dualism, the product of a particular system of production - of which the "spiritual" justification has many defenders (some will be mentioned) - we find the basis of this separation. When considering the problem of scientific élites and cultural illiteracy in relation to the masses, we find that there are in fact two illiteracies and not merely one: there is also the illiteracy of the scientists themselves, who are unaware of the rationality of the systen that determines the exercise of ‘their science, and there is the illiteracy of the masses. ‘The former implies an incoherence inherent in the exercise of the science itself, whereas the problem of the latter is that the masses neither have nor can have access to the sole pertinent rationality: that which would make them aware of their dependent status. With regard to the cultural changes that result from the rejection of science or technology, we point out that no science or technology develops on its own, but only within a particular system that promotes it. And in order to judge the rejection or acceptance, this fact should first be taken into account. For this reason the only real force for change is to be encountered on the level that assumes the modification of the structure as its objective: the political exten- sion of science and technology. Hence as it is logical, in face of the crisis in education or in society, we see that the crisis in developed capitalist countries, should be understood as a result of the contradiction inherent in the system, from which effective univer sality is excluded. While this contradiction is perpetuated and on account of it internal colonies necessarily exist there inno other teaching than the political transformation of reality and, with thet, a reorientation of both science and technology. We also saw that this crisis should also be under stood as a result of the relations maintained by these countries with the Third World, waose refusal to remain in subjection in an underdeveloped condition had repercussions on the former metropolitan countries, with the effect of re- introducing within their own frontiers the imbalance that had been exported and integrating within them that which, due to its having been kept at a distance, did not seem to belong to them. Not only the economic imbalance, but also the violence and killings inflicted outside their territory appeared to form a moreSHC-71/CONF. 1/4 - page 3 striking part of their own culturel reality. Ne show that the organic rationality ‘that could not be assumed by the conventional sciences and technology insofar as they were governed by the system which they served reappeared in those fields in which the irrationality of this system was confirmed. Already here, the discus- sion goes beyond the level aesigned it by conventional science. Here the action of dependent peoples and the negated masses themselves rests on the discovery of a basic rationality to recuperate this alienated sector of humanity which Western humanism has relegated to one side and repressed. 4, As far as the European socialist countries are concerned, of which the USSR is the model, we show that even if the development of technology and science takes place in a framework in which the commodity-form does not seem to be determinate, ‘this does not mean that the man-form predominates: access to collective decisions with the participation of the producers has also been conjured away. The decision- making process does not flow from the participation of the whole people, represen- ted as they are by a Party, which assumed this representation as an independent Power, which cannot now be called into question without calling into question socialism itself of which it embodies the truth. We see how the economy, in which the technology evolved by the sciences culminates, is separated from the political meaning. In so doing, it reproduces at the production level the dis- sociation between culture (the universal sphere of men who formate relations that are true and not contradictory) and science (regional spheres where the truth of abstract and partial objects is formated). But at the same time we show that the contradiction between culture and science seems to be situated on a new level. The ideological dimension no doubt reflects a tension between the ideal formation of socialist principles and the actual framework in which they take effect. On the one hand, it would seem the internal tension mist yield to the demand for liberalization the productive forces call for in their development, here set in a framework different from the capitalist system. But also external tension, ideologically and strategically defined, com mits it to the support of countries whose economic liberation once again points up the political and cultural pre-eminence of this struggle. The countries in which technology and science, now prolonged as far as the confrontation in Viet-Nam for example, were put to the test were those which restored to technology and science the human dimension - the defrauded collective base at present included in ‘the economic determination.SHO-71/CONF.. 1/4 Topic VII: Sociology of the tension between culture and science today: S)at.a very highly developed level We will take as our starting-point in discussing the problem of the tension between "culture and science" from the work of those thinkers in whom this tension found its clearest expression: Marx and Freud. Both wrote from within the sys- ‘tem they were criticizing, and their results radically transformed Western man's conception of himself. They study starting at opposite extremes of the same phenomenon - society and the individual - both end up by diagnosing a similar crisis. Both express the basic contradiction of "Western civilization". I MARK!S CONCEPT OF CULTURE: We start off with a concept that necessarily embraces the structure both of culture and of the men it produces, and affirms the creative moment of both extremes. We believe that the concept of wealth, in which the objective (structure) and the subjective (the individual) meet and are integrated, allows this analysis. As we shall see, wealth in Marxts conception is the point where the objective and the subjective are actualized in the produc~ ‘ion process, and where the universal is confirmed in its real and undeniable material extension. ‘culture will be defined, then, as a "value-creating process". With this in mind, far from limiting ourselves to a simple description of content and modes ~'which are different in every culture - we seek to arrive at a more univer sal meaning: culture as a producer of men. Every culture represents a particular way of producing men ~ a particular type of transition from nature to culture which is endlessly repeated in every individual born within that culture. Although the term "culture" in its immediate sense refers to the specific content and modes governing the relations between the individual and the world in any social organiza- ‘tion, the problem of "universality" inherent in these contents and modes cannot be left’ out of account. The concept of culture should define the field of universa- lity which gives validity to its qualitative contents, those which in a differen~ tiated typology are treated as the highest. It is therefore necessary to con- sider: (1) the historical process in which social labour, creator of culture as a form of wealth, has produced the highest values which characterize it; (2) its validity as tested by the universality which these values have attained. We will try to see how the sequence culture-wealth-social~labour-science- ‘technology lends itself to this analysis. Pirst definition of "wealth in Marx: culture as a totality of men, and man_as its basic form Marx defines wealth from two viewpoints: in its widest sense, as the creator of culture in the historical process; and at the conventional or ideological level, insofar as it relates to a specific form of the historical process, namely capita- lism, We come across the first definition in the Grundrisse;(1) "In fact, however, once the narrow bourgeois form is discarded, what is wealth but the universality of needs, capabilities, pleasures, productive forces, etc. of individuals, produced in universal interchange? What is it but the development to the full of human control over the forces of Ti) XK. Marx, Grundriss der Kritik der Politschen Skonomle, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1953.SHC-71/CONF.1/4 - page 2 nature - those of man's ow nature and those of so-called "nature"? What is it but the absolute externalization of man's creative faculties, without any prior requirement other than preceding historical evolution, which makes of the totality of this evolution - in other words, the evolution of all human powers as such - an end in itself? What is this but a situation in which man does not reproduce himself in a particular form but rather he reproduces his totality; in which he does not seck ‘to endure as something shaped by the past, but rather exists in the absolute movement of becoming?" In this definition Marx shows that: (1) The collective historical process is the creator of the capabilities, powers, pleasures, needs, etc., of man. There is no absolutization of qualities or values. (2) The collective and social character determines individual wealth: universal interchange is the producer of these values. ‘These alone develop - and are therefore proved true or false - in accordance with only one criterion: the extent of their integration in the universal Anterchange in which all men are of necessity integrated. Univer sality is a condition of their quality. (3) All qualities, powers, capabilities, pleasures, etc. are therefore products of man's labour of transforming nature, including his. own, into culture. There is no opposition between the two, only con- tinuity. (4) The creative capabilities that men actualize do not admit of "any previously established yardstick": what has gone before is always what has already been assimilated. Historical creation creates its own measure, a field of reality which appears as an unpredictable surplus of being erected on the foundation of what has gone before. (5) The form assumed by any of a mants qualities, powers or needs is determined solely by this reference to all the other men of whom he is an end-product and to whom the form in question is accordingly referable. Each member of a culture is a qualitative form of being verifiable by reference to the social whole that produced him. (6) ‘he absolute presence of the becoming-process implies the inescapable presence in a culture of the historical time that defines it, and, for man, the cultural significance of his own term: his inescapable transience. This definition of wealth includes the significance of the whole of cultural production, understood in the light of the historical processes of production con- sidered as producers of men, of whom the current generation is the end-product. It contains the diachronic and the synchronic, but it contains them by virtue of a logical normativeness - dialectic of the whole and the parts, or of the indivi- @ual and the collectivity - which is inherent in any cultural process. This interpretation of the contents which a culture creates and mobilizes - i.e. wealth is determined by an historical understanding of the development of the productive systems. These enable us to understand how men arrived at logical forms of organization and the creation of powers, capabilities, needs, etc. which are 1SHO-71/CONP.1/4 - page 3 gradually developed on @ world-wide scale. This gradual embodiment of the meaning- ful in conorete of cultural significance in natural matter, generates an historical logic which, at its simplest, could be defined as a process of universalization of men anong themselves with respect to the quality- and meaning-content that unites them - (new capabilities, new powers, new needs, new tastes, etc.) and which determines the distinctive character of each culture. Thus "wealth", considered as culture, could be said to express the pattern that 1s repeated in all men and in all production systems, although hitherto every culture has tended to perpetuate itself as mere reproduction, concealing the imbalance that shows it to be tran- sient. Second definition of "wealth" in Marx: culture as an aggregate of coumodities as its basic form ‘The second definition of wealth characterizes a particular production system and hence a "culture: capitalism. "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself es an immense accumilation of conmodities, its unit being a single commodity" .(1) In capitalist societies, then, everything that is produced in them as wealth, this being understood in terms of the first definition, everything of quality and value produced in then by means of social labour, acquires the conmodity- form. For this reason this is the basic form in the light of which we will consider the rationale of the system. Once again the important thing here is not the content - that which is different in each culture - but rather the way in Which this content determines relations between men and is apprehended by each one of them. ‘The pre-eminence of the man-form and the human totality which was manifest in the first definition of wealth, is here replaced by the commodity-form and the totality of commodities. To this form of culture, in which wealth appears in the conmodity-form, corresponds the production of men who, in their subjective organization, are determined by the norms of the conmodity-producing system: fetishism. The fetishist form that is imposed by the domination of commodities isguises all the essentially universal and historical characteristics that the first definition of wealth had thrown into relief. Basically in each man thus produced the historical determination of the subjective and the objective is disguised, with the result that he is denied the possibility of access to that @ialectic of the universal and the particular in which the historical meaning of hie contradictory cultural determination’ is to be found. ‘This results in relations between producers disguised as if they were relations between objects; the significance of human labour and social’ labour time appears eubodied in products, and is not understood; dualism between matter and cultural significance in which cultural deter mination appears as an absolute, without a genesis; TH K Jere Gepttal, Vol.I, Pert T, Chapter T, Moscow, Frogresa Publishers, 1965, p.35.SHC-71/CONP.1/k - page 4 tension between nature and culture; concealment of social labour in individual labour, and therefore conceal- ment in the particular of the general or social determination. ‘Thus, in the capitalist production system the man-form 1s supplanted as a regulating principle by the commodity-form. This displacement will of neces- sity determine the direction of the oulture since it organizes the subjective Life of man and all other fields of the production system, including both tech- nology and science. If technology is no more than the terminal form arrived at by "living labour"! in the process of industrial production, we also see manifest in it the dissolution of the man-form of which it is nevertheless but an extension. In technology capital is opposed to labour: The accumilation of knowledge, of expertise and of all the general productive forces of the social brain are then absorbed in capital which is opposed to labour".(1) Capital considered as a commodity is similar to all the others, as price, as money, and in its furthest limit as G.N.P. The man-form on the other hand is expressed in the non-contradictory universality that men experience together. In the science-based technology which develops in the capitalist system of production, the commodity-form is the determinant: "Prom this point (from capital) the production process is no longer a labour process, in the sense that labour constitutes the dominant unity ... Dispersed, subjected to the overall process of the machinery, they only constitute one element in the system of which the unity does not reside in living labour, but in the live (active) machinery which, compared with the isolated and insignificant activity of living labour, appears to be a gigantic organieat (2) Labour as the "dominant unity"; "the unity does not reside in living labour": all this indicates that the nature of the process leaves out of account the dominant unity of human wealth - the man-form - and is regulated solely by quantita- tive criteria of efficiency and surplus value. The consequences that flow from ‘this concealment lead also to the masking of the social purpose of science as well as of labour: Ti) _KWarx, Fondements de la Critique de 1'Economie politique, Eds. Anthropos, 1968, p.213. "Ltaccumiation du savoir, de l'habileté ainsi que toutes les forces productives générales du cerveau social sont alors absorbées dans le capital qui stoppose au travail.” (2) Ibid, p.212. "Das lors, le procts de production cesse dtatre un procks de travail, au sens ob le travail en constituerait 1'unité dominante. (Aux nombreux points du syst&me mécanique, le travail n'apparait plus que conme &tre conseient, sous forme de quelques travailleurs vivents. ) Eparpillés, soumis at processus dtensemble de 1a machinerie ils ne forment plus qutun element du syst8me dont 1tunité ne réside pas dans les travail- leurs vivants, mais dans la machinerie vivante (active) qui, par rapport A ltactivité isolée et insignifiente du travail vivant, apparaft comme un | organisme gigantesque."SHO-71/CONF.1/4 - page 5 "since mechanization develops with the accumilation of social science ~ a general productive force = it is not in labour but in capital that the results of general social labour come to rest.(1) ‘This then is the other extreme: wealth, as "universality of needs, capabilities, pleasures, powers of production" loses its significance and human base. This process is characteristic of the capitalist systems of production, and therefore constitutes the basis for understanding the nature of the "culture" we are examin- ing. Thus beyond the differences in contents or modes - English, North American, French, German cultures, etc. - Narx believes that it is the mode of production that determines the character of each culture, which is thus defined in terms of the production of men. ‘To examine the relation between science and culture is thus to rediscover the basis on which both rest: the form of man that the system produces. Ir ‘THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE IN FREUD Here again the test of “culture! will be in terms of the type of man it produces. Freud defines culture as: "the whole sum of the products and institutions which distinguish our Lives from those of our animal ancestors and which serve two purposes = (2) namely to protect men against nature and to adjust their mtual relations." Here also we have the transition from nature to culture, which is repeated in each man, as well as the historical distance present in this transition; these, as products and institutions, are incorporated in the subject and become part of his cultural being. Here again the subjective, the inner depths the profound, is determined by the objective: by production and institutions. In Freud "techniques" do not refer solely to the process of the transforma~ tion and improvement of a nature which, as something external to man, confronts him from without. In the transition from nature to culture it is man's own “nature that undergoes a "technical manipulation": man himself is transformed into a "technical" instrument and as such he serves the ends of the production system and inhibits in himself the emergence of the historical purpose which nevertheless pertains to him. ‘The relationship between "culture", "technique" and "science" is analysed in the light of a domination that conceals reality. Culture creates techniques which act as mediators in the relationship of man to the world and other men. "Science" itself, insofar as it does not extend organically from man and only Ti) Bid. p.21h. "Comme le machinisme se développe avec taccumilation de 1a Science sociale - force productive générale - ce n'est pas dansle travail mais dans le capital que se fixe le résultat du travail social général." ation and its Discontents, Vol.XXI, London, Hogarth Press, (2) s. Freud: Civilization and its Discontents, 1961. p.89SHC-71/CONF.1/4 - page 6 appears as a rational mediation promoting concealment, 1s a "technique" to avoid facing reality. For this reason, science as a technique for concealment, is grouped with narcotics and art. These are methods by which men seek to escape from the suffering produced by the presence of death and the materialism of their own existence, and to continue masking the contradictory nature of their relation- ship with their fellows. Thus "technique't is used in order to withdraw from the world (subjectivity without objectivity: narcissism) and also in order to draw nearer to it (objectivity without subjectivity: "technique of control over nature" directed by science). In both cases the rationality that this science extends does not dovetail into the organicity of the libido - the rationality of culture made flesh - and thus appears as one more form of dissolution and dualism. "Techniques" are thus seen as cultural procedures intended to obscure reality “techniques in the art of living". This then is the instrumental dissociation whereby the individual converts himself, with the help of dissociative culture, into the instrument sub-servient to the system. Here again the problem, as in Marx, is that of the "technique" external to man: of how a contradictory culture creates us as instruments of its own perpetuation. "Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him (and they still give him mich trouble at times)."(T) ‘Thus both "science" and technology form part of a cultural "sublimation" process, inasmich as they conceal the end of its growing universality (instinct’ of life, Eros, which constantly seeks to Join the totality of individuals into an ever larger unity) Just as they hide the risk of confrontation inherent in this process: that of highlighting the obstacles set up by the repression of the production system (instinct of destruction: retum to the inorganic, thus separated from the instinct of life). then that is so, fate can do little against one." (2) ‘thus there is the "technique" to avoid the world, and the "technique" to dominate the world: they are not separate one from another. In the mastery of nature labour, directed by technology, confronts nature as something outside man. Ih this fragmentation, the painful proximity we wish to avoid appears to us a dis- tance, as if by this fragmentation we would in reality avoid and elude the fate that inevitably bears us towards death. All the more so since love itself, the most subjective and subtly personal, appears in Western culture as a "techniquel': "thus exploiting love for the benefit of an inner feeling of happiness. one of the techniques for fulfilling the pleasure principle".(3) namely, a narcissistic and individual pleasure." But basically Freud refers the whole of this process toan historical distortion: to the "technical" utilization - in the sense already expounded ~ of social labour. Culture - particularly capitalist culture - must withdraw from the man-form a certai, 7) Ibid. p.92. (2) Tbid. p.79. (3) Ibid. p.102.SHO-71/CONF. 1/4 - page 7 libidinal energy in the use of which the man-form becomes nothing. ‘Technological organization which is the culmination of the historical process of social labour implies the existence of a dissociation at the centre of the organicity of man. "But in the course of development the relation of love to civilization loses its unembiguity. On the one hand love comes into opposition to the interests ... of the other'".(1) As evidence of this tension Freud refers to the class struggle with regard to which the meaning of culture, its incoherence, is revealed: "Rear of a revolt by the suppressed elements drives it to stricter pre- cautionary measures. A high-water mark in such.a development has been reached in our Western European civilization". (2 Counterproof of this affirmation is to be found in the conception that culture adjusts itself to sexuality, when the latter also appears as a technique: an instrument of reproduction in the service of the system: ++ tt does not like sexuality as a source of pleasure in its ow right and is only prepared to tolerate it because there is so far no substitute for it as a means of propagating the human race". (3) But in the last analysis, this "technique" as a form of repression calls for a fundamental inversion: to steer the aggressivity directed against destruction of the obstacle, which in the outside world is opposed to life, and direct it instead against itself. or this reason Freud essentially devotes the whole of his analysis in "Civilization and its Discounts" to a single problem: to under stand why the individual instead of directing his agaressivity in a definite way against the obstacle that is opposed to life, instead directs this aggression inwards against himself. And he shows us how the collective models produced by ‘this culture continue to internalize this inverted scheme which lends itself to the domination of the system over man. Freud's analysis, in which the individual drama finds its source in the collective process, culminates in "Group Psychology and the analysis of the Ego". Here Freud deals with the repressive capitalist solution proposed by Le Bon for manipulation of the masses. At the outset Freud establishes the-unitary charac~ ter of both the individual psychology and group psychology in man, But he does this in order to launch into the most radical criticism of the narcissistic and individualistic conception of capitalism expressed by the French originator of social psychology. Freud distinguishes artificial groups - a Church and an army - natural groups and revolutionary groups. He shows us how the groups that are not integrated within the production system - as distinct from the aforementioned stable groups: coercive, heterogeneous, organized - manifest a repressed cultural residual, unassimilated by the official culture, in opposition to it, but pro- duced by it. Freud shows us that these residual groups, expelled outside the coherent whole and isolated as if they constituted the animal or naturel core of the culture, are the test of the universal character of the culture of its pos- sibility of integrating all men into the culture, and from this concludes that TY Ibid. p.103. (2) Ibid. p. 104. (3) Ibid. p.105.‘SHC-71/CONF.1/% - page 8 ‘there is a predominance in the culture of a man-form incompatible with universality and non-contradictory integration. Freud shows us how the repressive oulture, band on the exploitation of one class by another, repudiates the product of its own contradiction, as if it had not been produced by it. However, we should keep in mind the historical significance of the rupture in the contradiction evident in the masses. The revolutionary group would represent the first transition from nature to culture which is continuously being repeated in every historical process where the actual power ensures an absolute cultural dominion as if it were the natural state. ‘The transition from the primal horde to the conmmnity of brothers meant, in the da of history, ‘the opening up of a universal sphere of recognition of onets fellows; and at the same time, led to the discovery of collective power and the exercise of this Power to oppose those to whom they were subjected. Culture of necessity star ‘ted in this way by an act of collective violence - the death of the natural father - that opened up the field of cultural life and cultural individuation. But this transition 1s still being repeated. For Freud this is the meaning of the present-day mass: within the culture it revives the conditions of subjugation which obtained in a state of nature, not culture. Therefore, the initial meaning of transition should again revive the historical meaning that creates the ties of brotherhood which every culture presupposes in its origins, although these origins @isappear during its contradictory development. Here again appears the regulatory form of a human totality of which man is the element. ‘The transition from the primal horde to a community of brothers calls for the opening of a new field of perception. This requires the dissolution both of the rationality of the system productive of oppressed groups and of the rationality internalized in the personal subjective as subjugated subjectivity. Here then, scientific rationality ceases to be simply a "technique" of domina- ‘tion and isolation and it acquires a very precise meaning: the scientist, from his own assumed contradiction, places himself at the service of dominated man and helps to dissolve the false rationality to which man continues to be inter nally subjected. This is a pre-condition of scientific knowledge as such. ‘Thus for Freud: science again questions itself on its own basis as a science determined by a repressive system; criticism of its om basis opens the way to criticism of the cultural contradiction and science regains both the collective and the individual meaning of its creations science is but the prolongation of a rationality that is present in historical labour, the producer of increasing universality, and this from nature prolonged as culture. CONCLUSIONS In Marx as in Freud the two dissociated extremes under discussion - "science" end "culture" meet again. In the universality of scientific Imowledge concerning the human sciences the object of knowledge of necessity contains, as a condition of its truth those subjects which form part of the field of knowledge, including the scientist him self. Thus in the field of the sciences, as distinct from knowledge concerningSHC~71/CONP.1/4 = page 9 ‘the natural sciences, the scientist constitutes an extreme example in which the universality of the object contains as a condition of its truth the non- contradictory universality of the subjects that he embodies. The truth of the subject, of necessity contained in the object of knowledge itself, involves a definition that commits the investigator in so far a: (a) either he knows the human "object" in the light of the categories of objectivity which he applies to the Imowledge of ‘the natural sciences (object without subject). Then we see the evaluative "neutrality" of the scientist, and indifference with regard to the historical process he is analysing, which is thus reduced to "an empirical fact shorn of the historicity pertaining to the human process." The scientist 1s unaware of'his own cultural determination. This science, as far as it is sctentism, is prolonged as mere technology; (b) or, he knows the "object" of human science, defining its meaning within the basic cultural contradiction: starting from the lack of universality and reciprocity between the subjects that constitute 1t.. ‘Thus he integrates the real human sphere, the totality of the subjects, in the object of knowledge. Universality in knowledge here implies recognition of the contradictory structure, in order to achieve, in the understanding of its rationality, the "practical creation of an objec= tive world” which would be the correlate of the theoretical product of objective knowledge. On the other hand, within the scientific conception that leaves the basic contradiction of the capitalist production system to one side, we witness the following result where the dissociation between culture and science is revived: Universality disappears as a field integrating the totality of men, and in its furthest limits, as a non-contradictory totality. ‘The meaning of ‘the universal, eliminated from the process that creates objectivity in human relations, opens up an abstract scientific universality that only admits the framework of nature as a model pattern or a "naturalized" man- form in his cultural determination. But if the contradictory field of the subjects seems to be eliminated from the sciences, it is because it had previously been eliminated from the dominant forms of culture. Consequently, man disappears as a unity of meaning that is determinant of ‘the universal interchange. once the foundation of universality is dissolved, as stressed by Marx and Preud, the manifold faculties of men appear to be exclusively determined by his insertion in the capitalist social division 2f labour, which is enjoined by this distance from the foundation, ‘ruth or falsity is only verified in the regional field of "science" or "applied technology", outside the context which would confer on it the unity of its meaning: the contradictory rationality of the production system by which they are determined. ‘This conception, in its turn, brings forth a "natural science" without subjects, since the production of knowledge excludes their real meaning from the field of natural sciences, which culminates in the wealth-producing process: in the unity that is conferred on it by the technological commodity-producing production system. Thus we have two extremes:SHO-71/CONF.1/ = page 10 Natural science that does not include in its knowledge the contradictory rationality of the system that produces men. Human sciences in which the cultural coalesces as "nature", wherein the subjective and the objective, the individual and the social, the private and collective, are once again dissociated: sociology gives us a society without subjectivitys psychology subjectivity without society. In this way the absolutization and the uncritical acceptance of the capita~ list social division of labour, together with the hierarchies established by privilege accorded by science, change this contradictory articulation into a dis~ articulation that is experienced by the man who exercises it. The conventional scientist does not in himself contain the scientific knowledge of his social determination. He behaves according to the usual categories of the system or, at best, according to the "scientific" categories of the social sciences that, insofar as they are ideologies, sanction such diserticulation.(1) (i) ‘The human element "excluded" from the field of natural sciences reappears, however, in borderline cases. The man of science who extends his knowledge into the technology of defoliation, who studied poison gases and the production of destructive virus, who developed the ability to discern men in the dark so as to kill them; who created the "anti-personnel" bomb, such a man is not merely an "objective" scientist who discovers a result in the field of the natural sciences. He does it in response to a political project. He is directly responsible for the continued murderous oriente- tion of science. Here the "technological" mediation cannot hide the fact that this scientist already contains in himself the project of cultural extermination in the very process of research into nature.SHO-71/CONF.1/4 = page 11 Part 2. ‘TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE. AN EXAMPLE: THE U.S.A. We have reached the following conclusions: (1) Wealth takes on its true meaning depending upon the type of human being that it fosters. It is from this that it derives its cultural significance. (2) A system of production is to be judged, from the scientific point of view, by the practical creation of an objective world against which coherence or incoherence at the level of the sciences should be measured. (3) The technological projection of "scientific" development reveals its level of intelligibility by the way in which it organizes human pro- ductivity within the context of a culture, the "veracity" of which it also determines. We shall go on to show some of the aspects that define this technological organization as applied to production in the United States. In the contemporary world, the United States represents the closest alliance between scientific research and industrial production. This system, based solely on profit-making and on the organization of the market, has produced’ the following results: consumer conditioning over-development of government dealing in armaments growth of the productive process owing to monopolies which control ‘the market and condition consumptioh creation of a world-wide empire ‘The objects of this process are determined by the military-industrial com plex. It is this technical-military complex which determines the new form of society, one entirely centred round the production of goods. But this produc- tion, in connexion with which the State apparently would have to express univer sal needs, is intimately bound up with the military technostructure in such a way that: ‘The technical and scientific wealth which is produced by the nation seems to be used for the technostructure: "Most technological and scientific innova~ tdon is found in government; it comes from the State or from government univer sities or research institutes, or else is the result of substantial government aid". Twus the "social brain" becomes converted into "private brain". But it is also the State which, by its military and technical orders, underwrites the largest capital investments of business. The Department of Defence supports private enterprise with more than $60,000 million. ‘Thus the objectives of the technostructure become identified with those of the army. In the final analysis, it is the business undertakings which, by feeding military needs, hold the above-mentioned complex together and consequently determine both foreign and domestic policy to some extent. ‘This system means doing away with individuality, while ostensibly fostering it.SHO-71/CONF.1/% - page 12 ‘This production 1s predicated on wealth for the few and poverty for the many, the many comprising what really amount to domestic colonies (Galbraith). Accor ding to Kennedy, 25 per cent of the population is still poor. Armaments account for 90 per cent of national income. ‘There are 32 million needy in a population of 200 million. The 3 million unemployed are found among racial minorities which include 32 million individuals, (1 Thus science, which is a product of collective work, becomes freely available to monopoly capital. But this process is also based on international domination which creates a high level of domestic consumption: exporting capital for which there is no use at home to underdeveloped countries where it can grow. Of the $4,000 million invested abroad up to 1964, $25,000 million went to Canada and Europe; less than 2 per cent was invested in the underdeveloped countries. Today the movement of capital is reversed: money flows out of the poor countries. Thus technological and scientific progress makes it possible to increase the rates of profits ebroad and repatriate more capital. In order to maintain the flow in this direction, these countries must continue to be technologically backward. By means of aid in the form of loans and technical co-operation, new relationships of subjection have been woven, all of which siphons off the surplus labour needed for develop- ment. Thus, while imperialism harnesses the scientific revolution to further its domination, the average income per inhabitant in more than 40 underdeveloped countries does not exceed $120 per year, whereas the average income in the U.S.A. is more than $3,000. Add to this picture the following fact: whereas in the last ten years the price of raw materials dropped 25 per cent, the price of industrial products increased some 50 per cent. The foreign debt of 97 under developed countries rose from $9,000 million in 1955 to $30,000 million in 1953 and today stands at almost $40,000 million. It must be realized that in order to be able to have technology and science at its disposal, this process does not concern itself solely with production; it also penetrates into the dominated countries and imposes on the dependent inhabitants of those countries thought categories and an ideology and conception of the human sciences which prevent them from becoming aware of their dependence, introducing only patterns designed to make it permanent. Culture control thus extends to all corners through daily newspapers, magazines, television schools, universities, ete. In exchange for co-operation, the U.S.A. finances the forma- tion of military end police networks, and through financial aid influences the orientation of the natural as well as the social sciences. Ti) W...We also realize that we are a colony within the United States, or rather we form several colonies. For example, the New York colony is made up of three million persons; the Chicago colony of about two and a half million; the colony in the Southern part of the U.S.A. is so large that it contains at least 22 million Afro-americans, plus some 7 million Mexicans in Southern California. Therefore, when we say that we have colonial status within the country, we mean that each commmnity is an exploited colony, Just like South Viet-Nam or Algeria or Cuba when they were exploited by imperialism". - George Murray, Minister of Education of the Black Panther Party, and Joudon Major Ford, Captain of the Black Panther Party.SHC-71/CONF. 1/4 - page 13 This is the pattern that controls production systems in Western Europe end the underdeveloped countries of the Third World. It 1s clear therefore, from ‘the summary description given above, based on official data, that what we find is a cultural structure in which the criticisms of Marx and Freud prove to be Justified. These criticisms of production, both with respect to men and goods, as well as the proper level of intelligibility of a contradictory culture, thus form an acceptable starting point. Ir UPSETTING OF THE NATURE-CULTURE BALANCE OR INTEGRATION When the prolongation of each individual in the "common inorganic body", i.e. his relation with nature, is upset because of culture; when a human factor predominates in which "spiritual values" seem separate and unverifiable in matter transformed by human action, and hence spiritualized; when the universalized "goods" factor is here substituted for the human factor which disappears as a cultural objective, how can the upsetting of that balance or the possibility of its integration be approached except by substantially changing the sense of the very process of production that is organized as "culture"? If, as we have remarked, it is in the process of production - in this case industry and tech- nology as applied to the production of goods - that it 1s possible to make an objective verification of the nexus in which the subjective and the objective the natural and the human are realized, does it not consequently become neces- sary to state that the capitalistic system of production is necessarily founded on that imbalance, that that imbalance 1s its state, the form which it vainly attempts to establish outside of historical time? But this upsetting of the terminal equilibrium which we are witnessing was already incipient in the very dualistic conception of Western culture. Science, projected into technology, was what was proposed as the basis for an exact calcu lation. This was a "natural" science founded on the separation between the spiritual and the material. In other words, it relied, and continues to rely, on the only field which the ruling power sanctions, namely the one wherein technology is separated from its human meaning. ‘That was the science which was projected into technology. That was the science which was applied both inside the industrialized countries and abroad, in the countries which they colonized. But that science which advanced with products, and later with technology, advanced first as a technology of conquest through fire-arms, through cannon, through ships and later through machines, and it also advanced, through "cultural" expressions, as a cultural technology in the service of domination, using the categories of "its Western culture” as ‘techniques for purposes of subjection. But this external colonization existed already as a dualism, inside the colonizing countries. The objectivized expan- sion of culture, turned into a life-form and an object-form in its system of rroducticn, took place on this basis wherein its intention became a reality. ‘ne "universality" of abstract science referred to the field of nature, was thus Zevelopi:ig an objective field of universality through its expansion, but this veal exp.nsion was a dualistic one which implied infletion of the "spirit" and diminution of "nature" ‘Thus side by side with the universality of natural science there was a practical non-universality which was manifested by ignoring other men who, in ‘the process of dominant production, were also considered as mere nature to beSHC-71/CONP.1/4 = page 1h dominated. For the ruling classes, colonized countries and domestic colonies - the working classes - represent "nature" The cultural conceptions of the colonized peoples were also "natural" in that "they were illogical". Was not ‘the culture of the European ruling classes the only true culture? And were not the masses in those same countries looked on,because of their rebellion, as a reversion to animality in so far as they did not adapt to the forms which the official system of culture sought to impose on them? Did not Le Bon, in 1900, and Max Scheler, in 1970,(1) express a similar conception, reducing to animality ‘those who did not share the dominating values of the bourgeois dualism that was flourishing in their day? What human significance do people in countries sub- Jected to underdevelopment take on for a technology based on exploitation of the labour "force" and raw materials, both producers of commodities? ‘Thus the nature-culture imbalance cannot be analysed unless we first realize that it is founded on something more essential, namely a dualistic comprehension which implies the "naturalization" of dominated individuals who, have under the system of production been relegated to a "natural" condition. The opposition inherent in the nature-culture imbalance or integration cannot be understood if we consider it solely at the level of technology or "official" culture. We must first start from the mode of "human beings" produced by that culture which animated technology, through science, and made it possible to reduce the rest of mankind to a status where they were considered expendable for the sake of the development of production. This already appeared compatible with "culture". To speak then of "integration of nature and culture" certainly does not mean to integrate the "idea" of nature with the "idea" of culture, but to under stand the disintegration brought about in reality by a system of production, where the two separated aspects, which commend themselves to our reflection pre~ suppose the fact that we too belong to a system which separated the two aspects in the very reality of a productive process, since it took its development as its basis. The development of the system is thus linked to the continuance of that separation, and the forces in motion on which the system depends pre-suppose that separation as a necessary condition of their duration. The "abstract" scientific élite and the "illiterate" masses are produced ty the same system, both within ‘the developed countries and in those which are subjected to under-development, as human forms necessary for the continuance of the systems. The counterpoising Ti) Scheler makes a distinction between the man who is merely a man, defined by his vital being, and the person, as defined by that which is spiritual. He then speaks of a gradation whereby some men, and necessarily not all - there are some who are "blind to the values" which are most lofty in the hier- archy - rise to this spiritual rank of person. They only succeed in doing so to the extent that they harbour an "ordo amoris" an affective order of their preferences directed towards the highest values in the hierarchy established by the spiritualist as absolute and coinciding perfectly with the hierarchy of values of Christianity and the developed countries. This explanation enables Scheler to consider murder as being only the act of Killing a person, not a human individual defined by his vital being. "It is thus perfectly understandable ~ and nothing is more logical - that in cases where men have been put to death who were not "taken'' or "considered" 8s persone, the putting to death never implied murder." (Le formalisme en gthique et 1'éthique matériale des valeurs, French edition, p.323. This con= firms the Roman maxim that said "the slave is not a person"',SHC-71/CONF.1/4 = page 15 of science and culture enables us to understand science as a product of the culture ‘to which it 1s counterpoised. This presupposes not recognizing previously at the outset, the common ground which produces them as separate, when in reality it 1s a product of their very contradiction. This, then, leads us to ask ourselves at what level should the contradiction in culture be sought. ‘The criterion would be the same as that which governs the sciences, but takes in an ontological sense i.e, the universality to which men attain within it in becoming persons. In other words, it would be a definition of man by a relationship which was not contradictory in itself. 2, THE SCIENTIFIC ELITE AND CULTURAL ILLITERACY: REACTION OF THE MASSES By putting the question this way, the very Juxtaposition implies a moral judge~ ment: illiterates would seem to be illiterate by choice, or out of Nuncultured" opposition to the rationality of science. Separation and opposition at the des- eriptive level are real, however, to the extent that membership in the scientific lite, as we have seen, is produced by the system itself as a condition of its own existence. ‘The scientist "thinks" within the ideological field opened up by the system of production. He does so therefore within the limits which the social division, supported by the technostructure, imposes on him and which he assumes as if they were the limits of his individuality, like those of science itself. ‘Thus he conceals within himself the universality towards which science, in the very con- ception of objective truth, tends. ‘The scientist is a privileged individual in the system. To make manifest the meaning of universality implies throwing his ow privilcge into relief. But according to the area analysed, the scientist always encounters the social residuum, which the system has not assimilated; in other words, ‘those who do not enjoy this privilege of access to culture which is his. ‘Thus the masses which have not been assimilated by the rationality of science, but which are nevertheless the result of the system within which science is projected as techno- logy and production, appear as an irrational residuum, both to the scientist himself who disregards and fails to integrate them, and vis-a-vis the system of production Which produces them as a necessary part of its process. Where then are we to look for the "scientific illiteracy" of the masses? ‘The system opposes the sole rationality involved in the experience of the masses them selves from which scientific truth might become evident to them, 1.e. the rationa~ lity of the historico-social process which produces them as masses. “This soien- title rationality is excluded from the field of imoviodge made available to the masses. Ti) When the integration of the capitalist in the system is advocated, it must be based on two points: (1) on racialism, in the sense that in order for the blacks to be able to progress they mist participate in the same electoral politics as the whites, and accept and practise the same culture as the whites. (2) If we were integrationists, this would mean that we were working to main- tain the ensiavement of the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin Anerica to North Amevican imperialism and neo-colonialisn. As’ for culture, we maintain that ‘the only culture worth preserving is revolutionary culture. Hence, culture woud change from day to day as the struggle developed." As regards the re~ Jection of science and developed culture: We insist on the right of the black people to be Judged by a Jury and to appeal; we demand for the black people the right to enjoy the best possible standard of living in the world; we demand an education which teaches the black people the true nature of the Gecadent and ractalist soctety of North America, one which will educate us about our historical development in the world, and which will help us to understand our true historical position in the world of today". (op.cit, p.101).‘SHC~71/CONF.1/4 = page 16 ‘The rationality of science to which they have access is only a partial and fragmen- tary rationality, the external appearance which the system offers then. This is ‘clear in automation where science relies on the machine (result) or on the tech- nician (controlling action) but not on the worker. Thus the sciences appear to the masses as contained within the rational limits which the system itself imposes and which participation in collective work restricts. But this situation is the same as that of many scientists vino work in the field of the particular sciences where one region - that of their specialty - is accentuated at the expense of ignorance of ell the others. The regional field which represents the ambit of knowledge is limited by the ideology of the system, and this is not an object of scientific analysis for the scientists themselves. The only point of scientific rationality in which both scientists and the masses appear to be united in a common ignorance is in that of the unawareness of the rationality of the process of production which produces them. There is therefore a level of rationality which includes the masses and is the only one which can restore to them the awareness of their creative fimction, and that is an understanding of the rationality of the system of production in which they are integrated to a limited extent, without the aid of science either as regards knowledge or in actual participation in the collective work which they perform. That scientific rationality, which makes manifest the social organization that governs partial science and technology, and which corresponds therefore to the object of Imowledge which the masses themselves constitute, does not form part either of the field of sciences or of the field of knowledge of the masses. The "conventional" sciences organize the sphere of the real in terms of the system of production. But they do so on the basis of not organizing scientifically, from the point of view of a truly human science, the contradictory rational field which is the system of pro- duction. Here truth, which is so sought after in the definitions of humanism, does not succeed in converging towards its object. Tins science, from which they are divorced in the system, in so far as it is projected into a technology into Which they are integrated as mere "instruments" for production, finds its confirma- tion in the "conventional" human sciences, from which they are also divorced as individuals. In these sciences also that rationality which would explain and understand this exclusion is repressed and excluded from the conscience of scien- tists and their acts. "Scientific illiteracy" is thus not a privilege of the masses alone; it is also shared, on the plane of the human sciences, by the scientists themselves who are in the service of the system and whose scientific illiteracy with respect to the rationality and contradiction in which their activities take place should also, and a fortiori, be noted. ‘Thus then consciousness of this difference between “illiteracy of the élite" and "illiteracy of the masses" arises from the opposition maintained by the political and economic power which keeps science in its service; it mist not however show the other extreme of the contradiction which forms part of the sciences themselves, but which the scientist mst exclude from his range of knowledge in order that the system may allow him to continue enjoying the privilege of being a scientist. In contrast to this conventional scientific rationality, in relation to which ‘the masses appear illiterate, it would be necessary to define the réle of the masses in the creation of a historical rationality the determining level of which is, we feel, more important.SHC-71/CONF.1/4 ~ page 17 3. CULIVRAL CHANGES: REJECTION OR ASSIMILATION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ‘Thus we have seen that in collective work the aim is not determined by the objective truth of all that is human, but by the unavowed aim of the system in ‘the service of a single class. That aim is what 1s hidden under the fallacy of ‘technology which, instead of remaining a mere means, succeeds in establishing itself as an end. The quantitative ends of technological development coincide with the quantita~ tive ends of the subtraction of collective work by the ruling classes: the human factor is excluded from both and the goods factor predominates. Hence the instrumental réle which technique plays is analogous to the instrumental réle played by men within the system. We cannot speak of technology or science unless we first define the contra~ @ictory human sphere wherein technology and science are means of transformation. Wherever the capitalistic system of production holds sway, the means of production are private property: the "social brain! is converted into "private brain", while "social wealth" is converted into "private wealth". ‘The finalistic meaning of hunan work remains hidden, and if it emerges it does so as a contradiction, not within technology or science, but in other fields: in the contradictions whose interpretation is to be found in the political and social upheavals of the system. Thus the coherence or incoherence of technology and science are judged true or false by the collective reaction in which the irrational residua of the system again introduce the margin of rejected humanity. We find the contradiction of science and technology in the historical contradiction of the system of produc- tion, in the way in which its universality is realized in the totality of the field which it includes. But to keep within our topic, we may say that if distribution and consumption are determined ty the system of production, the production of mowledge and its consumption likewise depend upon the way in which it is produced and distributed by the ruling system. This system, as we have seen, does not impart knowledge about its own processes but about the partial and abstract complexities which enable its structure to subsist. ‘The problem is more serious in the human sciences if we start from a defini-~ tion of the capitalistic system of production as a contradictory system because in the human sciences the "technique" of history is political. It involves the transformation of the system of production in accordance with the determinations imposed on it by knowledge, as projected into the technique of transforming reality. But all political practice which tends to rely on the true legality of the historical sciences is considered "illegal" by the system and contrary to the contradictory rationality within which it may appear as a practice based upon science, 1.e., as e new technique with an objective and human end. The science which the masses need they do not get. We have seen, on the contrary, that: (1) the masses are excluded from the sciences and only serve technology which preserves science in machines or, in a fragmentary way, in the technicians who operate them, for example. ‘The activity of the workers is more rationalized in the system, but it does not follow that they therefore have access to science; aLSHC-71/CONF.1/4 ~ page 18 (2) the true science which the masses need is, as we have seen, rational understanding of the system which forces them to remain masses. But that science, the science which would give them a consciousness of ‘their situation and an understanding of the paths to their liberation, is excluded from collective knowledge. 4, CRISIS IN EDUCATION OR CRISIS IN SOCIETY? It emerges from the foregoing that the crisis is necessarily a crisis in the collective organization of the productive process. Hence to analyse the situa- tion does not mean to put emphasis on education. ‘The crisis in education reflects the crisis in society, not the reverse. Tt is not a question of an educational problem. What would scientists who are dependent on the technostructure teach the masses? To adapt to the system, to conceal its inconsistencies and imbalances, or to defend them, Nevertheless, the process mist be understood. And the path- ways of true science, that science which is projected into political trensforna~ tion, do not have their origin in conventional science but in areas outside that science, which that science refuses to take into account. ‘Thus the misunderstood, non-integrated "irrational element" is introduced into history with a necessity which the conventional sciences cannot foresee, occupying with its violence the place that 1s repressively denied it in reality. This violence measures its true relation to reality and indicates the exact extent of the repression brought into play to keep it from arising. This eruptive violence may come from within or from without culture itself, introducing into it that margin of irrationality which official culture and official science fail to introduce. In the "developed" countries, whose well-being is based upon colonial domination, this historical educational process re-introduces into culture an element which it had formerly put out of sight, but from which it drew its livelihood. ‘The imbalance, "expor~ ted" beyond 1ts ow boundaries, suddenly reappears and throws into relief the spurious foundations on which the repressive equilibrium was based. Here the masses in the countries "without science", but not without reason, are the ones who tell the truth about oppressive systems, which the conventional sciences of the oppressive systems, masters of reason, did not tell. And they tell it in a language where the conventional separation between science, technology and politics disappears: here significance is one with the human reality of the signified. The human factor, and the human community, always appear here as determining the meaning of any statement. It is no longer a question of what the conventional sciences assert in their symbolic expression of what apparently only holds true in the realm of logic or partial research to which the man of science, in his compartmentalization, is limited. Here it immediately becomes a part of the field of human significance and social transformation, and unites the extremes that had been separated and disintegrated by the technostructure. This inclu- sion of truth within the range of human objectivity reveals what the conventional sciences conceal, namely that there is in reality only one area where true compre- hensive science speaks, and that is where it is projected into a practice which transforns the imbalance experienced, in other words where science can speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. But men who proclaim this truth on behalf of those who are inarticulate are kept on the fringe of the social structure. And conventional science is not exercised or worried about how those men on the fringe - for whom scientists on the fringe are concerned ~ may succeed in negating those who negate them. Official science is outside this realm of the truly thinkable. Conventional science is in the service of the system which supports it, and the man of science finds in the "culture" which shaped him as an individual all the categories and the rational and affective shifts which enable him to avoidSHC-71/CONF.1/h = page 19 ‘thinking about what 1s really worth thinking about. Precisely because thinking about that is painful it implies the possibility of punishment and confrontation, and may even mean death. This risk of death which science faces when it realizes the truth about the system is what the scientist shuns, Freud would say, by reducing it to mere tech- nique. He shuns it by leaving death outside of science for others to receive, not he. That margin of frightened subjectivity 1s what conventional science eschews: that which is subjective in others, which implies a sense of privacy, must not be allowed to upset the neutral and pure objectivity of science. But it is in this unreleased subjectivity, considered as something other than a field for science and truth to develop, that the link with truth is precisely to be found. For that reason comprehensive truth falls outside of science. And it appears to speak the one language which culture, astounded by its own limits, casts out and seeks to keep at a distance from itself. But everything is cul~ ture. And that which appears not to be a part of it does not stand aloof from it out of opposition to some pure science which, being true beyond that which is humanly verifiable, would be valid in se. The science which is rejected is the one which does not stand alone, the one which forms a system with the system of domination. What the conventional scientist does not see, and what the oppres- sed individual does see, is what appears outside the field of science as violence, or as violent reason, as rationality in action, as integration of the subjective into the objective, as the rescue of man who goes beyond his individual body and puts his meaningfulness at stake in a life and death gamble on the outcome of which all his subjected fellows depend. Thus, paradoxically, the development of the true rationality of the system appears outside the ambit of official development of science, i.e. outside both cultural academicism and the technostructure. It takes place in revolutionary groups and bodies which are excluded from power. This science-power circle of ‘the technostructure can only be broken when political determination assumes that margin of rationality wherein the true life-blood of history circulates. IV. A SOCIALIST SOLUTION: THE USSR When we considered the capitalist countries, we took the United States as an example. Now we shall refer to a model socialist country, the USSR in this case, to see a new expression of the contradiction between culture and science. Socialist régimes first appeared in Burope in the less developed countries, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, and their appearance is associated with ‘the USSR. ‘They claim to show us how the transition can be made towards a solu- tion where, specifically, the "goods" factor is not the prime consideration in ‘the production of wealth, and where economic relations are not based on the private possession of the means of production. It would seem that here at last we find a system in which the factor "nan" is consciously taken as the regulator of the productive process. ‘This would imply a development of science geared to a cultural aim in which, consequently, it would not seem that the requisites of ‘the technostructure alone were what determined the system, in the final analysis. Origin of the Revolution, Capitalism in Russia was a century behind that of England, France and Germany, since it still had deep feudal roots. Against those who felt that "economic" and technological conditions were not ripe for a revolutionary process, Lenin successfully argued that cultural considerations akSHC-71/CONF.1/l = page 20 were superior to then, Thus political and cultural trensformation became the determining factor in economic transformation. Opposing the mere technical conception of the development of the economy, Lenin argued that an essential con~ dition of economic transformation was the participation of all the inhabitants of the country in the building of socialism. The participation of everyone in the process became a basic requirement for the triumph of the revolution. This inclusion of the entire population in the revolutionary process ~ “complete victory is not possible" said Lenin, "unless the entire population takes part in the management of the country" - amounts to a scientific require- ment of cultural universality and objectivity which coincides with the basic Marxist idea of history. Socialism is concerned with recovering and opening up the field of actual practice where that real universality can develop creatively. If we define the revolutionary political activity by this need io give all men access to the development of the objectivity of a system, it is because revolu- tionary prectice is the field within which the meaning of science and of know- ledge applied now to the transformation of human relations becomes apparent and real. Lenin's successors identified the aims of socialism with the first phase of the socialist struggle to accumilate. Once again there was a cleavage between socialist economy and socialist politics, as if the premise of universality "from ‘the bottom up” Were irrelevant and, ultimately, amounted to no more than sn excess or luxury with which economic and technological development could readily dispense. We wish to stress that if this premise is forsaken, the same consequences will turn up as a defect in what follows, i.e. the loss once again of the human significance of wealth as it seems to be positively defined by Marx. Rapid industrialization meant that the masses had to have a political awareness of the social goal, but ten years later this political force, which industrialization itself generated, was transformed into a repressive force to be used against it. It was necessary to have recourse to violence in order to achieve goals which it was no longer thought necessary to justify or have accepted. Again there was a cleavage be- tween objectivized labour and the subjective significance of the person perform ing it. Even human beings were considered in the process as mere means to achieve goals which they had not determined. Capitalistic alienation was creep- ing back into socialism and labour was becoming an object distinct from the worker. Thus the subjective component of labour and the political determination which gives meaning to production disappear. The collective subjectivity of all men is replaced by the hierarchy of the Party which operates as if it were the true source of objectivity. This consequently determines the direction that the entire cultural process is to take. All collective activities, from economic pursuits to the most specific "cultural" and artistic manifestations, become organs of the central apparatus. And this takes place parallel to the economic growth at a rate which is unknown in capitalistic countries. This growth would seem to bear out the thesis of economics, with the sole difference that this is not Marxist economics, because it separates the production of things from the production of men. Here again it is the sense of human wealth thus produced which will show us how far repression is going to have to go in order to subject cultural reality, which aspired to be of another order to this impoverishment. So it is that the Marxist theory, for want of development and fulfilment, becomes converted into an apologetic instrument. Autocratic wilfulness takes the place of the creative initiative of the masses through forced labour and re-education. Force becomes‘SHO-71/CONF.1/4 = page 21 ‘an economic agent. ‘The Party speaks on behalf of the working masses, but 1t imposes its directives on them from above. The universal tenets of Marxism are reduced to a rhetoric devoid of meaning. Thus economic development, which is only one of the premises of the socialist process, becomes the specific feature of the European model of socialism. Consequences at the level of the sciences and art ‘The development of wealth implies a dialectic between form and content, in this case between the new relationships of production, i.e. socialist relationships, and the development of productive forces. But identification of economic form and the State with the development of industrial production, as though the latter were the entire content of the new form, implied a breakdown in the dialectic. The scientific quality of Soviet socialism thus split on the transformation of nature, the latter being separated from the historical reality which gives it meaning, Just as technology lost its human significance. In fact, the presumption of its scientific charecter which Soviet soctalisn claims because it is a "sciontific socialism" is modelled in accordance with natural science not human science. Although, its scientific quality seems to guarantee not only the development of technology, nevertheless, as scientific socialism, it is presumed to be organizing also the development and integration of men in’the universality of a single field. Hence where the State is identi- fied with the realization of the socialist ideal, the sciences of man would no longer have to be developed since there would no longer be any contradictory content to be understood and integrated into the scientific understanding of the development of the socialist form. Thus in the name of a static Marxism, scien- tific formalism restricts the development of Imowledge which, to the extent that At opposes the dictates of policies defined as socialist, appears to be non- scientific. This hiatus between form and content, where "the form of everything appears as if it were the whole itself" (Hegel) indicates the historical distance ‘that mist be travelled in order to breathe life into Soviet formalisn once again and rediscover the contradictory content that has been left out of the develop- ment of the human sciences. Thus the distance between the real and the ideal, between the actual and the possible, which Soviet socialism has not succeeded in integrating as a dimension to be used in collective transformation and inthe human sciences, takes refuge in art and literature. Philosophy, the field where this distance is noticeable, disappeared with State control of ideology to which it had to con form. Censorship therefore turned on art. Soviet art became realistic and conventional social reality at the present time appears to be one with the artis- ‘tic content. ‘Thus all elaboration disappeared from the field of art and art now confines itself to reflecting the given status or extolling it. And this hap- pened because once the development of its contradictions was stricken from reality, the repressive forces necessarily had to eliminate all art which expres- g.d them, as if it were counter-revolutionary. Here too art and literature throw ato relief that which technology and the sciences, even though developed, do not on tat account include, namely the development of a deferred content, one vinich has been banished from the reality which they claim to transform, that area where excluded subjectivity breaks with repression, embrecing clandestinely ‘the deferred content to which that very culture, indeed, gave rise. The factor man, subjected subjectivity, appears included only implicitly, by definition, in the productive process. It is as if the economic objective andSHC-71/CONF.1/4. = page 22 technological transformation in their tendency towards universality, already con- tained the objective realization of the human elements. ‘The political Justifica- tion which accompanies production is then only an external addition which official truth has made in its manipulation of nature. But the other levels of human reality are not consequently transformed. Discussion and progress in the human sciences and art, which are the fields where culture is consciously developed - culture tazen in its broadest sense as the production of wealth in human form ~ do not operate on the contradictions which the system itself produces in producing men, that deficit which is necessarily present in the productive process. For security reasons, the system cannot allow all the density which this process brings with it to filter through into the field where cultural subjects are developed. ‘aus we may conclude that in the USSR the sciences of man, as well as art, have not reached the specific dimension of historical truth in the production of men. And this is true despite the extraordinary development of the natural sciences and the technology derived from them. If the criterion of objectivity continues to be merely a regional one, and does not spring from the collective field which includes the recognized totality of human beings who are developing objectivity in its contradictory relations, that scientific objectivity is then a partial objectivity. Specific nature of the culture-science contradiction in Soviet Socialism ‘These contradictions which have been outlined are established by comparison with those existing in the capitalist countries, at a different level. They are based on fundamental premises already admitted, such as the necessary and accepted opening up of a new field of universality for the first time 1.e. the nationalization of the means of production, the recognized accession - as an unrenounceable goal - of all men to the field where wealth is produced and shared. The level at which ‘the contradiction arises between culture and science 1s therefore different from that which we find in "Western" culture, because it implies that the material conditions of production have already cleared the material field of a fundamental impediment which existed both without and within its own productive field. This impediment that has been cleared away is the necessary exploitation of other Peoples on which capitalistic development 1s predicated. Confirmation of socia~ list technology and science, extended into the field of international relations, 4s to be found in the collective support and reaffirmation of the peoples who oppose the power of imperialism. Despite the contradictory position of the USSR, despite its bureaucracy and its strategists, the penetrating strategy of socialism is looked upon as the strength and support of régimes which seek to free themselves from dependence. Despite the bureaucracy, because the thread of meaning of the socialist revolutionary process requires such independence yet must prevent it from taking root. Between the effective liberation and the partiality of that liberation appear the boundaries of the objectivized contra~ diction of the Soviet socialist system viewed internationally. Yet despite its contradictions, it has become a mighty power factor - which no capitalist country whatsoever can or could achieve - without whose aid the colonized countries could not defend themselves against the power which holds them in subjection, as in Viet-Nam, Cuba, etc. ‘Thus it is that, despite all the above-mentioned defects, the contradiction which gives ane pause with regard to Soviet culture, irrepres- sibly leads to a new field which presupposes the opening out of another form of life, other values and another political organization, as well as enother meaning of science and culture. Even bureaucracy, considered as a power, gives rise to a dialectic which is different from the one proffored ty the military techno- structure of the capitalist countries. The ultimate meaning of present-day science and technology, whether we like it or not, becomes apparent in all its drama fromSHC-71/CONP.1/4 = page 23 the vay in which they serve one side or the other. In Viot~Nam, they are used either to support or massacre a people; in Cuba, they either make independence possible or they impede it with a military, technological and scientific blockade. Hence, the contradiction in Soviet socialism extends beyond its frontiers and reverts to it within the interior, laden with a significance that 1t may have been possible to repress to a large degree inside the country but not outside. It comes from the countries where socialism is fighting and up in arms, thus repre senting an extreme which is coherent but opposite to that of the USSR, a dimen~ sion which tends to be forgotten in peaceful economic emilation. The revolution which began in "a single country", and sought to confine itself to that country, manifests pacific contradiction as combative contradiction. The dissociation of technology, science and culture Soviet socialism 1s a contradiction which is con- trary to the premises on which socialism is based. In the capitalist countries, on the other hand, as the case of the United States shows, this dissociation is its persistent objective inclusion in the field of international competition, which is quite congruent with the capitalistic system of production. ‘Thus the transformation brought about by the revolution established the objective premises of socialization and consequently an initial qualitative break was produced with the systems in which private ommership of the means of production held sway. This was a new system, and hence the opposition between culture and science Was expressed differently. Development of the content of culture and science is implicit under this new system but in order to achieve it a number of obstacles mist be overcome which appear in an objective way as the development conditions facing any socialist country (e.g. low economic level, encirclement by capitalistic countries, lack of democratic traditions, slight cultural advancement, etc.) And this necessarily poses the question of the relationship between econo- mics and politics, which 1s nothing but another form of the separation of culture and science. ‘Therefore the solution to the problem through a purely economic approach - i.e. worker management - 1s not the solution. Contradictorily, this remains the case in socialist society, as if the science on which it clains to be based, namely historical materialism, were not its starting point, as if the pro- duction of things were not always determined by the production of men. Political determination does not appear to be included in worker management, and therefore consistency in the production of things may continue to obtain without including consistency in the relationship between men. By "political" we mean that the significance of the system cannot be excluded from the consciousness of those men who form part of the process without ultimately excluding its socialist efficiency at the level of developed production. For want of such development, the sciences, and especially the natural sciences, become prolonged as mere technology conducing to the thing-factor but not to the man-factor. Their political consequences are clear: they transform relationships and lead indirectly to a crisis in the productive process. Conscious political determination, which presupposes a scientific awareness of the contradictions in the system, appears in socialism as a condition of production and a condition of the meaning of production. 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