An interpretive ['verstehende'] sociology that hypostatizes language to the subject of forms of life and of tradition ties itself to the idealist presupposition that linguistically articulated consciousness determines the material practice of life. But the objective framework of social action is not exhausted by the dimension of intersubjectively intended and symbolically transmitted meaning. The linguistic infrastructure of a society is part of a complex that, however symbolically mediated, is also constituted by the constraint of reality--by the constraint that enters into procedures for technical mastery [science, instrumentalism my addition] and by the constraint reflected in the repressive character of social power relations. [iow, the political-economy [the subsystems of market and state mediated by the steering media of money [private property/ profit] and power [bureaucratic rationalization] ; iow, people make history but not in just any way they please, ma].
These two categories of constraint are not only the object of interpretations; behind the back of language, they also affect the very grammatical rules according to which we interpret the world. *Social actions can only be commprehended in an objective framework that is constituted conjointly by language, labor, and domination*. The happening of tradition in the lifeworld appears as an absolute power only to a self-sufficient hermeneutics; in fact it is relative to systems of labor and domination.
in other words, habermas does not in his Review of Gadamer's Truth and Method support any conception of language or the lifeworld as somehow undialectically related to the political economy or as developing on a logic all its own.
..the insight that understanding [interpretation]--no matter how controlled it may be--cannot simply leap over the interpreter's relationships to tradition [is certainly correct]. But from the fact that understanding is structurally a part of the traditions that it further develops through appropriation, it does not follow that the medium of tradition is not profoundly altered by reflection. ... Gadamer fails to appreciate the power of reflection that is developed in understanding. This type of reflection does *NOT* detach itself from the soil of contingency on which it finds itself. But in grasping the genesis of the tradition from which it proceeds and on which it *turns its back*, reflection shakes the dogmatism of life practices.
in other words, scientific research, systematic study and attempts to understand social phenomena develop our capacities to question the taken for granted [the dogmatism of life practices in the lifeworld]. he does not say that reflection alone changes things. he says that systematic reflection through various mechanism-- e.g. consciousness raising groups, fora like LBO, scholarship, research, debate, etc--can develop our capacity to question naturalized world views
and, furthermore, as for the relationship between theory and practice:
While the theory legitimizes the work of enlightenment [by which he *only* means theoretical/research discourse which helps understand our historical circumstances/political state of affairs], as well as providing its own refutation when communication fails, it can by nomeans legitimate 'a fortiori' the risky decisions of strategic action. Decisions for political struggle cannot at the outset be justified theoretically and then be carried out organizationally. The sole possible justification at this level is consensus, aimed at in practical discourse, among the participants, who, in the consciousness of their common interests [in terms of how to engage in political practice whether single issue or not] and their knowledge of the circumstances, of the consequences, are the only ones who can know what risks they are willing to undergo, and with what expectations. There can be no theory which at the outset can assure a world- historical mission....
and, of course, he rejects "correctness":
...while the vindicating superiorty of those who do the enlightening over those who are to be enlightened is theoretically unavoidable...at the same time it is fictive and requires its own critique in a process of enlightenment there can only be participants...
[last two quotes from _Theory and Practice_ 33, 40; first two from "A Review of G's Truth and Method" in _Understanding and social Inquiry_ ed Dallmayr and McCarthy, 354, 360]
Yoshie wrote:
This means that class conflict no longer is the motive force in history. Societies are now the bearers of evolution and individuals are integrated into them. (Nancy S. Love, "What's left of Marx?" _The Cambridge Companion to Habermas_, ed. Stephen K. White [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1995]) *****