Related Theories and Concepts
Instrumental action plays a huge role in social labor. There is a lack of living social communication that is replaced by rationally organized systems of action. Habermas concentrates on the distinction between work and interaction in regard to instrumental and communicative action. The execution of instrumental acts within social production play the same role as capitalist exchange.
Habermas uses Arnold Gehlen's concept of work and anthropological theory of action. Gehlen's basic idea is that,
"the system of drives, the chronically over stimulated perceptual system and the essentially shapeless motor system with which man is physically equipped, force him to engage in goal-oriented activity, which shapes his needs and structures his perception" (Honneth p.51).
Instrumental action is the "medium within which a system of drives reorganizes itself" (Honneth). Each individual controls his activity according to the success with which he can manipulate things to achieve a previously determined purpose (Honneth p. 51). "In socially organized work processes, these instrumental acts are then coordinated among the individual working subjects according to rules of cooperation developed in the interest of the common goal of production" (Honneth p. 51).
Instrumental action is also connected to Habermas' Lifeworld. Lifeworld deals with lived experience of everyday life in which the interactions amongst people are coordinated through speech and validity-claims. In this there are real patterns of instrumental action instantiated by money and power. Through instrumental action the state "colonised the lifeworld and dried up the natural reservoir of communicative action. Hence capitalist societies give rise to institutions, policies and laws which cannot find reasoned public agreement" ( ).
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