Roberto Unger: Free Classical Social Theory from Illusions of False Necessity | Big Think

The central idea of classical European social theory is the idea that society is made and imagined. The structures of social life are our creation. Vico said we can understand society because we made it. So we shouldn't think of these structures in the way in which we think of the atomic structure of a natural object. They are artifacts, our artifacts rather than natural phenomena. This was the central idea of the tradition of classical European social theory. The most consummate example of which is the social theory of Karl Marx.

But this idea when taken to the hilt would lead us to the notion that all the arrangements of society are a kind of frozen politics. So these structures arise to the extent that conflict, practical and visionary conflict over the terms of social life, is interrupted or contained. Or to change the metaphor it’s like a game of musical chairs. The music stops, the music being the conflict, and then the chairs on which we sit are the structures.

This revolutionary insight in social theory was circumscribed by a series of illusions that compromised its force. These are the illusions of false necessity. The first of these illusions is the idea that there is in history a closed list of such structures. For example, feudalism, capitalism and socialism in Marx, the modes of production. There is no such closed list.

The second illusion of false necessity is the illusion of indivisibility that each of these structures is an indivisible system which to be replaced must be replaced all at once by another system. For example, feudalism by capitalism or capitalism by socialism. And this second illusion, the illusion of indivisibility has an enormous practical consequence. The practical consequence is to mislead us into the view that there are basically only two kinds of politics.

There is the revolutionary substitution of one indivisible system by another or there is the reformist management or humanization of a system. So today for example you can ask what's the project of the progressives? And the answer is for the most part they have no project. Their project is the humanization of the project of their conservative adversaries.

And they justify this abdication by appealing to the notion of revolution. The real change, the structural change, would be the substitution of one system for another. It's not in the cards and if it were it would be too dangerous. So let's make the best of the situation and humanize the system that we have, especially through compensatory redistribution by tax and transfer.

What the illusion of indivisibility disregards is that change can be structural and nevertheless piecemeal, fragmentary, gradual, and experimental. We should not associate radical change with wholesale change and gradual change with inconsequential change. The third illusion is the illusion that there are laws governing the succession of indivisible systems in history.

And if there are laws then there's no role for the programmatic imagination, for the imagination of alternatives. So think of what happens today. If I propose something that's very distant from present reality you say that's interesting but it's utopia. If I propose something close to what exists you answer that's feasible but it's trivial. And thus everything that is proposed can be derided as either utopian or trivial.

This false dilemma arises from a misunderstanding of the nature of the programmatic imagination. It's not about blueprints. It's about succession. It's not architecture, it's music. But the confusion is aggravated by our inability now to believe in any of the master narratives of historical change that we have inherited from the tradition of classical social theory.

And because we cannot rely on these narratives we fall back on a bastardized conception of political realism which is that a proposal is realistic to the extent that it approaches what already exists. What then is the task? The task is to recover the central revolutionary insight of classical social theory and to liberate this insight from the illusions of false necessity.

And if we were to take that task seriously we would then have to contest the orthodoxies that now prevail across the whole field of social sciences and humanities. In the positive social sciences, the hard social sciences, economics first among them what we find are rationalizing tendencies that explain the established arrangements in a way that vindicates their necessity and their authority.

In the normative disciplines of political philosophy and legal theory what we find are humanizing tendencies, pseudo-philosophical props to the ameliorative practices of compensatory redistribution and of idealization of the law. And in the humanities what we find is escapism. Consciousness embarks on a roller coaster of subjective adventurism disconnected from the transformation or even the criticism of society.

These rationalizing, humanizing and escapist tendencies, in fact, converge. Their practitioners pretend to be enemies but they are, in fact, allies in the disarmament of the transformative imagination. What is the central problem in contemporary social thought? The central problem is the breaking of the vital link between insight into the actual and imagination of the possible, imagination of the adjacent possible of what can happen next.

To understand the phenomenon is to grasp what it can become. Or in different words the central problem is the failure of structural imagination. Any account of how these structures are generated, of how they can be disrupted and of how we can establish alternative structures.

The project that I propose of recovering the central insight of classical social theory and freeing it from the illusions of false necessity is in the service of the attempt to contest these rationalizing, humanizing and escapist tendencies and to establish a transformative imagination at the center of our understanding of society.

Many who hear these words may be discouraged. They may think that intellectual, political and even moral projects like those that I have described can be undertaken only by geniuses and prophets, by visionaries and rebels and that are beyond the reach of an ordinary person. But part of the message is that they are not beyond the reach of ordinary people.

And that each of these tasks that I have discussed in our conversation can be translated into small practices. Into small practices that are within our grasp. So, for example, the task of rescuing the insight of social theory, of saving it from the illusions of false necessity and of defying the established orthodoxies in the social sciences and humanities need not take the form of a comprehensive theory or philosophy.

It can take the form of particular critical and explanatory practices in particular disciplinary settings. And once again in thought as in politics deep transformations can begin in small initiatives. Now I say the same with respect to the political and moral ideas that I discussed.

There too, change requires neither saintliness nor genius. What it does require is the conviction of the incomparable value of life. Nothing should matter more to us than the attempt to grasp our life while we have it and to awaken from this slumber of routine, of compromise and of prostration so that we may die only once.

Hope is not the condition or cause of action. Hope is the consequence of action. And those who fail in hope should act practically or conceptually so that they may hope.