The Aesthetics of Free Speech: Rethinking the Public Sphere

286 Pages·2003·1.13 MB·English

by  John Michael Roberts (auth.)

The Aesthetics of Free Speech
Also by John Michael Roberts
CRITICAL REALISM AND MARXISM (editor with Andrew Brown and
Steve Fleetwood)
REALISM, DISCOURSE AND DECONSTRUCTION(editor with Jonathan Joseph)
AFTER HABERMAS: New Perspectives as the Public Sphere
(editor with Nick Crossley)
The Aesthetics of
Free Speech
Rethinking the Public Sphere
John Michael Roberts
Lecturer
Department of Sociology and Social Policy
University of Leeds
© John Michael Roberts 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-1-4039-0566-6
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ISBN 978-1-349-50985-0 ISBN 978-0-230-51301-3 (eBook)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roberts,John M.(John Michael)
The aesthetics of free speech :rethinking the public sphere / John Michael
Roberts.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-50985-0
1. Freedom of speech. 2. Democracy. 3. Discourse analysis.
4. Marxian school of sociology. 5. Political sociology. I. Title.
JC591.R63 2003
323.44¢3 – dc21
2003054762
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction: Digging and Levelling the Capitalist
Public Sphere 1
2 Abstracting Dialogue 30
3 Consummating Aesthetics 58
4 John Stuart Mill and the Search for a State of Cultivation 94
5 Jürgen Habermas and the Search for a State of Competency 122
6 The Capitalist Form of the Public Sphere 162
7 The Intuitive Form of Free Speech in the Proletarian and
Bourgeois Public Spheres 195
8 The State of Free Speech 217
Notes 259
References 260
Index 275
v
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Acknowledgements
I have been extremely fortunate in my relatively short academic career
in meeting and working with a talented number of sociologists and
social theorists. The work of Bob Jessop has been a lasting influence on
my own way of looking at the world and it was my good fortune to
have been taught by him as an undergraduate student in the Depart-
ment of Sociology at Lancaster University (1990–93) and then to have
worked with him (1994–95). His phenomenal output in deepening our
understanding of contemporary forms of capitalism will provide a
lasting legacy for the strengths of Marxist theory. I hope he finds some
interest in what I have written in this book. Another lasting influence
has been the work of Anthony Woodiwiss, especially his innovative
development of a Marxist theory of legal discourse. I am grateful to
Anthony for commenting on some of the work that appears in this
book. Next are Barbara Adam and Ian Welsh. They were my PhD super-
visors when I was a postgraduate student at Cardiff University. They
provided expert guidance all of the way and I will be eternally indebted
to them. Also at Cardiff I would like to thank Paul Atkinson, Sara Dela-
mont and Huw Beynon for help and support.
I would also like to thank the collective output of the Conference of
Socialist Economists(CSE). The various articles which have appeared over
the years in the CSE journal, Capital and Class, along with numerous
books and articles written elsewhere by those affiliated to the CSE, have
had a substantial impact on what I have to say here. I am proud to have
served as an editorial board member of Capital and Classand as an exec-
utive committee member of the CSE.
Andrew Brown got me thinking about the relevance of Hegel to Marx
(and a lot more besides), while Jonathan Joseph has provided a constant
source of debate and discussion on the relationship between critical
realism and Marxism. Thanks to both of them. Other people who pro-
vided invaluable support, feedback, guidance and friendship during my
time in academia are Sara Williams, Dawn Price, Suzette Heald, Jon and
Barbara Banks, Dave Sleightholme, Ufuk Cakmakci, Kevin Yelvington,
Kate Currie, Paula Black, Steve Fleetwood, Nick Crossley, Howard Engels-
kirchen Fiona Devine and Peter Dwyer. Matthew, an old friend from my
school days, still has me in fits of giggles when we meet up once a year
for a drink. I find that our meetings sober up my theoretical inclina-
vii
viii Acknowledgements
tions by bringing me back to an earthly reality. I would also like to
extend my gratitude to Heather Gibson, formerly of Palgrave Macmil-
lan, who first commissioned this book, and to Jennifer Nelson, who saw
it through to its completion. Finally to my family. Without their support
I would never have got to this stage. It seems fitting therefore to dedi-
cate this book to them.
* * *
I am grateful to the following publishers for permission to draw on
material I have written elsewhere:
Blackwell Publishers for ‘Spatial Governance and Working Class Public
Spheres: The Case of a Chartist Demonstration at Hyde Park’, Journal
of Historical Sociology, 14, 3 (2001), 308–36.
The Conference of Socialist Economists for ‘From Reflection to Refrac-
tion: Opening up Marxism’, Capital and Class 78 (Autumn 2002),
87–116.
Routledge for ‘Critical Realism and the Dialectic’, British Journal of Soci-
ology, 52, 4 (2001), 667–85 and ‘Abstracting Emancipation: Two
Dialectics on the Trail of Freedom’ in A. Brown, S. Fleetwood and
J. M. Roberts (eds), Critical Realism and Marxism (2002).
1
Introduction: Digging and
Levelling the Capitalist
Public Sphere
Levellers, diggers and the liberty of opinions in the
capitalist public sphere
At a church in Putney, London, during November 1647 an astonishing
number of meetings took place. Known today as the Putney Debates,
these meetings were a singular historical event for two reasons. First, as
Wood and Wood (1997) note, they signal a radical redefinition of demo-
cratic theory. Second, they represent an early example of the contra-
dictory and ‘multiaccentual’ (i.e. the conflicting utterances of different
social groups) nature of the capitalist form of the public sphere and the
claims of rights and freedom within it. The result was the construc-
tion of a distinctive ideological entity which was to prove a landmark
in the constitution and subsequent struggle between bourgeois and pro-
letarian public spheres. Underlying this struggle was a conflict over the
enclosure of land.
Capitalism emerged first in the English countryside through agrarian
social relations. Before the advent of agrarian capitalism, as Robert
Brenner (1985) notes, feudal class relations were marked by a growing
contradiction between the development of peasant production and the
relations of surplus extraction. Specifically, the lord’s mode of surplus-
extraction (rent) was defined by the heavy appropriation of peasant
income above subsistence, which also provided a barrier to the mobil-
ity of individuals across land. Both facets contributed to a downward
turn in the funds necessary for the replenishment of peasant holdings.
Lords preferred to engage in conspicuous consumption rather than
invest in productivity. This meant that peasants would often organise
to protect their own interests (Brenner 1985: 31–5; cf. Brenner 1989).
However, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we see the
1
J.M. Roberts, The Aesthetics of Free Speech
© John Michael Roberts 2003