Luhmann, the Cosmopolitan intelectual

Walter Mignolo has consecrated himself through his analysis in his Dark Side of Renascence on

how the historical movement of humanism was based materially in the exploitation of the same

humanity through its colonies. A similar concept to the one he develops on his Dark Side of Modernity,

where he speaks of the necessity of re-conceptualizing as the other side of the coin of coloniality:

Modernity/Coloniality, where he speaks of the need of not just of expanding the geopolitical approach

of theory, but the theories geopolitical enunciation. To elaborate on this, he speaks of the locus of

enunciation, a concept he establishes with his Local Histories/Global designs. By this he means the taking

of conscious that the position of production of knowledge rarely integrates what he calls subaltern

positions or the savage intellectual, the last one severely criticized by the kinds of Lund, pinpointing the

not so subaltern position of an academicism that might belong to marginalized countries, but that

occupy roles in well-established academies. The interesting part of intercrossing Luhmann and

Mignolo, is that the vocabulary and epistemological framework of the Argentinean theorist, is at the

same time assumed in the production of Luhmann while possibilitating a new dimension through

which to avoid the bionomic, sometimes Manichean conceptualization, that imprisons more than

motivates. In this sense, we will follow by expounding not only how Luhmann can be considered a

cosmopolitan intellectual, but also how at the same time through his Theory of Society produces a base

to which neomarxist and poscolonialist can support themselves in.

To begin with, a portrayel of Luhmanns carrer as a Sociologist might at first give the

impression that he is at the other extreme of what Marx considered a Intelectual to be, as a commited

individual to the reality that surrounds him. More in to mind comes Balzac writing at his house his

Comedia Humana or Walser going into long walks by himself in to the Woods. His personal

production also seems to indicate this, with more than 70 books and nearly 400 scholarly articles
published. With a career that seems to sustain this, not moving outside Germany for his pedagogical

career except for a relatively small intermission to Harvard. However, this hermetic biography, might

hide what is a cosmopolitan epistemology in fabricating, which few of those committed and travelled

intellectuals might share. We don’t have to reread Saids Orientalism and its mentions of Flaubert to

understand that travelling and intellectual production are not synonyms with an cosmopolitan

epistemology.

In this sense, to trace the intellectual roots of some of his most important concepts takes us

to read with new eyes the maps of intellectual production. Even in his most theoretical work, we can

find conexions between his own production and an epistemology located in Latinamerica. In the main

conepts, as for example one of his most famous elaboration, Autopeisis, which refers to a systems

capacity of being of reproducing and maintaining itself, was introduced in 1972 by Chilean

biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of

living cells. Also in the details and metaphors, we can find that Borges reappears in several of his

articles, as for example when speaking on the Judiciary system and the paradoxes that underlines the

sometimes restricted bynome of judiciary/anitjudiciary, or when X. Also in this material examples, as

when Luhmann, in his study The Reality of Mass Media, two years before the publication of his Theory of

Society, showed a deep knowledge of the material situation of Brazil centering on the on the figure of

the then Ministry of Finance Ricupero and the road to the elections of 1994, expanding on his concept

that truth is not even expected in the public debate scene, but that is relegated to the private arena.

His attention to the Brazilian sociopolitical circumstances, apparently is not a capricious circumstance.

And we want to focus in this particularly because is through his mention of socioeconomically

environment in Brazil in his article Beyond Barbarism that we can breach the neomarxist theories with

his theory system developed in Theory of Society

 To the surprise of the well-meaning it must be ascertained that exclusion still exists, and it
exists on a massive scale and in such forms of misery that they are beyond description. Anybody who
dares a visit to the favelas of South American cities and escapes alive can talk about this. But even a
visit to the settlements that were left behind after the closing of the coal mines in Wales can assure one
of it. To this effect, no empirical research is needed. Who trusts one’s eyes can see it, and can see it so
impressively that all explanations at hand will fail.
We know there is talk about exploitation, or about social suppression, or about marginalidad,
about an increase in the contradiction between center and periphery. But all these are theories that are
still governed by the desire for all-inclusion and therefore are looking for scapegoats: capitalism, the
ruling alliance of financial and industry capital with the armed forces or with the powerful families of
the country…
With a certain nostalgia we can now think back to the barbarians or to the other ethnicities,
the pagans, the savages. They were left with their own social order. We did not have anything to do
with it. We were free to convert them or to enslave them, or to cheat them when exchanging goods.
And they were our concepts, European concepts, when we spoke of humanitas, of ius gentium, of
humankind or of human rights. All this is no longer adequate in the situation modern society finds itself
in—not to speak of concepts such as societas civilis or communitas that we are getting from our
basements like Sauerkraut to enjoy them reheated.
If this diagnosis is only roughly correct, society can neither expect advice nor help from
sociology. But it could make sense to search for theories that do more justice to the facts than the
optimistic-critical traditional ways of thought within our discipline –justice to – justice to those facts
with which society constructs itself (269-272)

By reading this extended quote one can not only see that what we have exposed is not just a

collateral or forced reading of Luhmann, but that these problematics, the Savage against Eurocentric

intellectuality, the center and periphery, the socioeconomically realities of Latinamerican, are also

present during the construction of his Theory of Society, being this article published in 1995, two years

before his magnus opera. Some even go beyond and argue that his radical position of system theory first

and critic of the previous understanding of the Theory of functional differentiation, appeared publicly for

the first time in the preface Luhmann wrote in 1992 for a book of Marcelo Neves, Verfassung und

Positivität des Rechts in der peripheren Moderne: Eine theoretische Betrachtung und eine Interpretation des Falls

Brasilien, who had criticized him before for his “intellectual regionalisim”. Pedro Henrique Ribeiro

even states that it through this intellectual exchange that his final Theory of Society reformulated itself to

distance itself from the classical theory of functional differentiation : “É possível argumentar que essa

revisão conceitual - e a importância "do pensamento social periférico" em impulsioná-la - podem ser

remetidas a dois momentos: 1) o ano de 1992, quando o autor buscou responder às críticas de Marcelo

Neves à amplitude dada pela teoria luhmanniana ao conceito de diferenciação funcional; 2) a

incorporação do autor da realidade "além de descrição" das favelas sul-americanas nos anos seguintes”;

or as Andres La Cours more directly states: “The body of Luhmanns work bears now the impression

of the communication produced in the Favelas”.

Althoug we dont share the enthusiasm of Ribeiro or La Cours, its true that in that preface he

writes to Neves, we find a question that might underline his future production: “This [Neves's

criticism] points to problems that neither the Marxist or post-Marxist class theory of provenience nor

the usual concept of functional differentiation of society know how to answer. Are these theories,

therefore, refuted? But how, if not by another theory?”. Our hypothesis is that Theory of Society is that

“other theory”. This has a double theoretical implication because it means that this theory looks both

to respond to the limitations of Systems theory (Functional differentiation), but also to Marxist or

Post-Marxist questions. Besides this intersectional point that his theory for us enable, what we are also

going to develop in the future sections is that he is both right and wrong, as the borgean paradox

which he likes to quote. The neomarxist production has evolved from that scapegoat mentality he

describes and is far away from only focusing on that “ruling alliance of financial and industry capital

with the armed forces or with the powerful families of the country”. While at the same time, his

proposal complements these new perspectives by offering a new language and geography where to

base themselves.
 The postmarxist in the Favela

We are not going to dehelve into the new currents of postmarxist propositions or branches

that have been growing for the past years. However, we will do a double movement that needs on the

elaboration of some of the current ramifications of the school. Not only is Luhmann despective in a

explicit (maybe to explicit) manner on the insufficiencies on postmarxist scholars when focusing on

these new extreme circumstances, but also how at the same time how Luhmanns Theory of Society might

be the needed compliment that this new schools need to overcome for what they are critized for.

Let’s just focus on the phrase “capitalism, the ruling alliance of financial and industry capital

with the armed forces or with the powerful families of the country”. It would be hard to find a

postmarxist that would repeat this enunciation as it is written. In any case, it seems more a Weberian

analysis of Capitalism (armed forces + powerful families, financial and industry) than a postmarxist.

To demonstrate this we will just simply glance over three instances which are criticized here: “armed

forces”, “industry capital”, “family aliances”, “Country”.

It’s been decades since the famous affirmation by Weber that the State is the owner of

legitimate violence. Howerver, since then lots has change. There is even a current of political thought,

lidered by Eric Hazan, a student and collaborator of books with Bourdieu, who after doing a genealogy

about inserrecutions and revolts, identifying the failure of most movements when faced with the

armed forces, says: “Si la defection des forces de lordre est la condition du success de toute

insurrection, les revolutionnaires doivent exploiter les contradictions au sein de ces forces. Por les

faire eclater, il faut faire monter la pression jusqu au point ou une partie du corps policier ne supportera

plus la haine qu on lui porte”. So it’s not anymore conceived as part of the alliance, but the whole

possibility of a successful revolution.

Such a revision can also be done about the “powerful families”, which still hold an

fundamental part in the control of societies, bu are no more the main objectives and points of critic
that post-marxist are directing themselves at. The economical transnacional economical elites: “We

increasingly live in divided, fragmented, and conflict-prone cities. How we view the world and define

possibilities depends on which side of the tracks we are on and on what kinds of consumerism we

have access to. In the past decades, the beoliberal turn has restored class power to rich elites…As of

the end of 2009 (after the worst of the crash was over), there were 115 billionairs in China, 101 in

Russia, 55 in India, 52 in Germany, 32 in Britain, and 30 in Brazul, in addition to the 413 in the United

States”. As we see, there is much more than just families consecrating power for generations.

On the other part of the balance, the reference to the “industry capital” also seems to imply

the vision of a structured industrial presence which subsumes and exploits the workers. However, to

do reference to an industrial oligarquy which belongs to the aristocracy also seems a bit ahistorical,

although still influential. In this sense, Guy Standing, studying the effects on a globalized spectrum,

has innovated with his concept of the Precariat and has changed the way many countries perceive the

working relationships: “The precariat was not part of the ‘working class’ or the ‘proletariat’. The latter

terms suggest a society consisting mostly of workers in long-term, stable, fixed-hour jobs with

established routes of advancement, subject to unionization and collective agreements, with job titles

their fathers and mothers would have understood, facing local employers whose names and features

they were familiar with. Many entering the precariat would not know their employer or how many

fellow employees they had or were likely to have in the future. They were also not ‘middle class’, as

they did not have a stable or predictable salary or the status and benefit is that middle-class people

were supposed to possess”.

To even speak of a single country now is a bit reduced for postmarxist. Baribar even suggest

that the classic ideology of classes has craque with its dependence of a Nationalistic approach, with

what he calls a historical mimetism. In his opinion, if there is any chance for the continuation of the

class struggle, its geographical limits must be reconceptualized: “donce il faut que lideologie des
clasesses o de leur lute, sous quelque nom, qu’ elle se prèsente, reconstitute son autonomie tout en se

dègageant du mimètisme [with Nationalism]. Oú va le marxisme?: nulle part, à moins d’ affronter ce

paradoxe dans toutes ses implications” (p.244). An idea that can even be found in Thomas Hylland

Ericksen, who through the concept of “overheating”, speaks of the over acceleration of economical

and cultural phenomenons that are sustained transnacionally.

The mentions and references could go on and on, as a borgean laberynth. The industrial

ovrier being completely reinterpreted by Ranciere and his partition of the sensible in his great book

Parole Ovrier, Hazan criticizing the Avant-Garde by going into the archive of the French

Revolution to find out that the ones who began and lead where not intellectuals but ebanist and

shoemakers, Laclau and Mouff reducing the discourses of the political into empty signifiers, the

poscolonial and its reconceptualization of the History of Capital and its supposed universalistic

model, between others. However, what I want to point out is not so much the differences, but the

similarities. How much have the postmarxist have in common with Luhmanns appreciation of the

situation. Maybe Luhmanns seemingly outdated criticism is a reason why they seem to oppose.

Most of the postmarxist work and focus on the increasing differentiation between social groups,

picking apart the class structures, exploiting the contradictions and the paradoxes that seem to

unite more than separate the groups and systems.

Hybris