On the colonization of the environment

In this article, I apply the colonization thesis from Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action to capitalist societies’ relationships with their natural environment. Resolving the fixation of his critique of capitalism on the so-called lifeworld (Lebenswelt) to include questions of the environment (Umwelt) opens up new vistas in the ongoing ecological reorientation of Critical Theory. If we think about the exploitation of the natural environment in Habermasian terms, the paradoxical irrationality of the expansion of instrumental rationality from the market mechanism becomes evident, providing us with normative leverage against the systemic devastation of external nature. The conversed colonization thesis calls for promoting the ecological preconditions for self-determined societal development through the collective containment of capitalist dynamics: since it undermines the enabling capacities of the ecosystems based on which the ‘project of modernity’ thrives, economic instrumentalization of nature can no longer proliferate.

environment in an inadequate, truncated way.Early on, critical theorists like, for example, McCarthy (1978, pp. 110-125) and Whitebook (1979, p. 59) argued against his Knowledge and Human Interests from 1968, criticizing that the human cognition of nature is epistemologically restricted to an instrumental grasp.According to them, a crucial shortcoming of Habermas lies in presupposing technical control over the natural environment as a fixed condition of every human form of life and, as a consequence, in not adequately questioning problematic ways of approaching the environment.Even after the publication of a short reply (Habermas, 1982, pp. 238-250) and his magnum opus, The Theory of Communicative Action from 1981, these and similar objections have not gone away.In addition to McCarthy (1984, p. 188), who has developed his criticism further, Benhabib (1986, pp. 386f.) and Eckersley (1990), among others, now also take up the ecological question and contradict the view that only an objectifying approach to the natural environment is productive in theory.
Furthermore, even outside the discourse on the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, voices have been raised that judge Habermas's theory of society as unsuitable for analysing and criticizing the relations between modern societies and the natural environment.Representatives of this criticism include, for instance, Luhmann (1989, p. 74), who from the perspective of social systems theory identifies a sociocentrism as the main obstacle in Habermas for examining ecological issues, and Latour (1993, p. 60), who from the perspective of actor-network theory criticizes Habermas's theory of society for its dichotomous distinction between human societies and the natural environment.With the publication of his thoughts on legal and democratic theory in Between Facts and Norms in 1992, the impression has finally taken hold that Habermas's model of social theory does not and cannot sufficiently take into account the relevance of nonhuman entities for the core social-theoretical questions of how social order is possible in descriptive terms, and how it should be shaped in normative terms.Since then, a growing number of social theorists have joined the chorus of critics, such as Becker and Jahn (2016, p. 425) from the field of social ecology and Rosa (2019, p. 351) against the background of his theory of resonant world relations.
The criticism enumerated represents merely a prominent selection from the vast reception of Habermas's theory.The inquiries differ in the theoretical position from which they stem and in the aspects of his work they address.However, what unites them across all differences is that they accuse Habermas of a lopsided picture of the relations between societies and their members and the natural environment.His essays and monographs show that Habermas himself could have done more to counter this impression and dispel the criticism of a lack of attention to ecological matters.Admittedly, in some places in his writings, we can find references to the role of environmental movements in the public sphere and possible societal dangers posed by environmental crises (e.g.Habermas, 1987Habermas, , p. 394, 1996, p. xlii), p. xlii).One cannot dispute that these references and the reply mentioned above attest to a certain degree of sensitivity to ecological issues.However, Habermas did not make any significant effort to analyse ecological problems extensively in terms of social theory. 1 The turn to the discussion about eugenic interventions in the inner nature of human beings in The Future of Human Nature from 2001, his preoccupation with a weak naturalism (Habermas, 2008, Chapters 6 and 7) and natural history (Habermas, 2017, pp. 49-52) have not compensated for that gap.
Against this background, it is not surprising that, for some time now, we can observe a resumption of the thinking of the so-called first generation of the Frankfurt Schoolnamely of Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer and especially Theodor W Adornoagainst whom Habermas introduced his intersubjective theoretical model.An anthology edited by Biro (2011) is a clear expression of this revival of the ideas of early critical theorists.But the attempt to make Marcuse's, Horkheimer's and Adorno's thinking fruitful for the investigation of ecological questions goes back even further than this, as studies by Leiss (1972) and Go ¨rg ( 2003) demonstrate.This endeavour has been advanced in more recent years by a constantly rising number of theorists, such as Cooke (2020), Cassega ˚rd (2021) and Hogh (2021), to name just a few.Overall, there is a clear renaissance in Critical Theory of the concept of the domination of nature in the sense of the early Frankfurt School, and the underlying subject-object paradigm more generally.
Yet, before denying the applicability of Habermas's intersubjective social theory to the critical reappraisal of ecological crises, we should follow up on an important clue from his newer book Also a History of Philosophy.In a pertinent passage, Habermas reconstructs the critique of capitalism by Karl Marx.He lays out its crucial point in terms of his own colonization thesis from the Theory of Communicative Action, after which the uncoupling of the capitalist system from the social lifeworld reverberates in the form of a penetration of the lifeworld by the system.In the first section of this article, I will go into more detail about what we have to understand under this paradoxical development.It can however already be inferred from this passage that Habermas (2019, vol. II, p. 656; my translation) has in mind, or at least suggests, an extension of his original colonization thesis: Marx traces this colonization of the environment by the capitalist system primarily in social terms, that is, with regard to the lifeworld of the class from whose labor power, in his view, surplus value is squeezed.However, he also mentions this effect in ecological terms, that is, with regard to nature whose "resources" are exploited for free.
Habermas notes that Marx has castigated the running wild of the capitalist system in terms of both its social and its ecological consequences.And because he regards his critique of society as a 'critical development of basic Marxist assumptions' (Habermas, 1987, p. 302), there is some reason to believe that it need not remain toothless concerning the ways in which capitalist societies treat the natural entities around them.By connecting the colonization thesis with the natural environment, Habermas, in any case, introduces the assumption that the capitalist system (which he says consists of the market economy and the administrative state) generates adverse effects beyond the social lifeworld. 2It is the guiding idea of this article to follow this clue in order to push Habermas beyond Habermas.I want to apply the colonization thesis to the relationship between modern societies and the natural environment.With this extension of the Habermasian critique of society, I intend to provide a useful tool for the project of a critical theory of society and its environment and open up the intersubjective theory of society to the pressing ecological issues of our time.
The article approaches the transformation of the classical colonization thesis into a thesis about the colonization of the natural environment in three steps.The first section gives a short account of the colonization of the lifeworld by the system, as put forward by the Theory of Communicative Action.The second section shows that the adaptation of the colonization thesis to the natural environment cannot rely on any notion of an intrinsic value of nature, but instead on the contradictory character of the capitalist exploitation of the environment.The third section draws key conclusions as to how we should cope with this ecological colonization, both in practical and theoretical terms.

The three components of the colonization thesis
In this section, I reconstruct the major features of Habermas's colonization thesis.For this purpose, three different processes that follow each other chronologically and causally have to be expounded: the rationalization of the lifeworld (a), the uncoupling of the system from the lifeworld (b) and the colonization of the lifeworld by the system (c).Although the critical quintessence lies in the third component, it has its thrust only through the inclusion of the preceding two processes.That is to say, colonization becomes paradoxical only because it disintegrates its preconditions.It therefore makes sense to begin the reconstruction with the question of how the colonization of the lifeworld through the system can emerge in the first place.What processes precede the confrontation between the system and the lifeworld?
(a) Habermas characterizes the 'rationalization of the lifeworld' as a historical shift of social problem-solving mechanisms from authoritative problem-solving by adherence to traditional worldviews to discursive problem-solving by agreement, based on continuously renegotiated grounds of validity.Whereas before rationalization the appeal to conventional sources of norms served to solve disputes, in the process of rationalization, they are more and more often settled by the exchange of arguments.Problem-solving becomes more 'rational' since it is no longer a traditional and possibly outdated custom that determines how people respond to social problems, but rather 'the authority of the better argument' (Habermas, 1987, p. 145).The rationalization of the lifeworld hence allows for more progressive approaches to difficulties.That is the social-evolutionary advantage this historical shift brings about, according to Habermas.However, at the same time, it produces a severe side effect, through which a reversal of the rationalization sets in.
Social problem-solving through reference to given worldviews had in its favour that emerging difficulties could be dealt with quickly, provided the invoked authority was uncontroversial for the most part.In contrast, Habermas sees the discursive problemsolving procedure, in which reasons are being argued about, as prone to disturbances and tending to be more protracted.The parties involved in collectively tackling problems would first have to agree on which reasons should carry the most weight.Such an exchange can go as far as to cast doubt on the validity of even those arguments that were believed to be certain before.Under these conditions, a consensus or even a compromise on how to deal with a particular problem is often, if not always, the result of in-depth discussions.In the prior procedure of ad verecundiam, on the other hand, the grounds of validity themselves were not subject to scrutiny.Therefore, Habermas (1987, p. 262) says, 'the need for reaching understanding, the expenditure of interpretive energy, and the risk of disagreement are all increased'.The approaches to overcoming problems may be better in parts, but developing them is almost certainly more cumbersome.With an increasingly dense network of interactions, the problem-solving procedure of discursive settlement, which puts normative standards up for disposition from the ground up, must ultimately be disencumbered.According to Habermas, this triggers the second of the above-mentioned processes.
(b) The 'uncoupling of the system from the lifeworld' is a reaction to the overload of discursive problem-solving.Instead of addressing every problem by considering reasons and counter-reasons, a subset of problems is outsourced gradually.These problems are then dealt with separately by a self-controlled system, which consequently replaces the initial problem-solving method of the lifeworld.For this reason, Habermas (1987, p. 339) attributes an 'intrinsic evolutionary value' to it.According to him, the mechanism through which the system operates differs fundamentally from the discursive procedure within the lifeworld.While the rationalized lifeworld rests on consentoriented action, the system reproduces itself through success-oriented action.In the first case, the modus operandi is designated to the production of agreement, in the second case, to the coordination of strategic behaviour.Accordingly, society breaks down into two halves, the lifeworld being reproduced via linguistic cooperation, while the system functions via delinguistified media.In Habermas's view, the media that steer the coordination of the numerous success strategies through incentives are money in the economic subsystem and power in the bureaucratic subsystem.He argues that they interlock the strategic action in the economy and administration into an extensive functional unit that runs (as if) by itself: 'Delinguistified media of communication such as money and power, connect up interactions in space and time into more and more complex networks that no one has to comprehend or be responsible for' (Habermas, 1987, p. 184).
Like an automaton, the bipartite system synchronizes individual cost-benefit calculations without entangling the agents in conflicts over normative principles.However, the problem with this uncoupling of the system from the lifeworld is the following: the system, Habermas (1987, p. 331) claims, generates 'irresistible inner dynamics'.Yet, except for some brief references to the Marxian analysis of capitalist forces of exploitation and class domination, this assumption is not substantiated.I will return to this lacuna in Habermas's argument towards the end of the article.According to him, at any rate, the system's momentum develops expansively and threatens to destabilize the lifeworld.The third and last component of the colonization thesis, which contains his pivotal critique of capitalism, describes this adverse effect.
(c) Habermas defines the 'colonization of the lifeworld by the system' as the expansion of the system at the expense of the lifeworld.This intrusion or penetration occurs when pressure from the economic or bureaucratic subsystem rises to such an extent that success-oriented rationality seeps into the lifeworld.Outhwaite (2009, p. 77) captures the overall development in simple terms: At the same time as communicative action in the lifeworld, the pursuit of agreement in language, becomes increasingly a matter of rational argumentation and discursive justification, the mechanisms of market and administrative state power also become more sophisticated and tend to undermine the scope of communicative action and the pursuit of agreement.
As the part of society that relies on linguistic interaction, the lifeworld reproduces itself through consent-oriented rationality.That is why Habermas considers it disruptive when the success-oriented rationality cultivated within the capitalist complex of market economy and administrative state pours into its operations: communicatively structured practices envision agreement to cope with upcoming difficulties, but the pursuit of agreement suffers as soon as strategic calculations get the upper hand.Depending on whether the infringement originates from the economy or the administration, this is, in Habermas's words, either a 'monetarization' or a 'bureaucratization' of the lifeworld.He judges both processes to endanger the lifeworld's integrity because they undermine the integrative logic peculiar to it.Moreover, Habermas points out that these colonization processes can also go unnoticed.The whole repercussion is to be understood as a 'paradox of social rationalization' as far as capitalism, which could only develop as a result of the rationalization of the lifeworld (of the historical shift from the adherence to given worldviews to the orientation towards fallible claims to validity), affects this very rationalization by displacing its orientation towards agreement: Rationalization of the lifeworld makes it possible to convert societal integration over to language-independent steering media and thus to separate off formally organized domains of action.As objectified realities, the latter can then work back upon contexts of communicative action and set their own imperatives against the marginalized lifeworld.(Habermas, 1987, p. 318) Regarding the development of the Frankfurt School, it is noteworthy that Habermas does not, like Horkheimer and Adorno, extend the notion of second nature, designating a state of affairs in which social processes arising from the interactions of the members of society seem to be based on unchangeable laws of nature, to society as a whole.He reserves it for a part of society that becomes independent and invasive.As the above passage illustrates, he directs his critique against the proliferation of the market economy and administrative state system.Instead of incriminating modern societies in their entirety for a kind of quasi-naturalness, he zooms in on dynamics, which dissolve consent-oriented rationality as the glue of the lifeworld, undermining its integration.In order to prevent this self-demolishing feedback loop, Habermas demands democratic self-determination to cut back on the excessive expansion of the system, as we will see in more detail later.For now, however, I will not elaborate further on this outline of the three components of the canonical colonization thesis.Instead, I will turn to its actualization in the face of ecological crises.
Despite its productivity, there is indeed a deficit in the critique of society of the Theory of Communicative Action.As seen from today's perspective, Habermas has not fully grasped the significance of the natural environment.Compared to his two predecessors, the magnum opus of the head of the intersubjective turn in Critical Theory misses a sensorium for the disintegrative effects of the exploitative domination of external nature.With Horkheimer and especially Adorno, it is thus necessary to bring the border zone between societies and the natural environment more to the fore, linking the intersubjective paradigm with the subject-object paradigm.To do so, I will readjust the colonization thesis in the following section so that it incorporates the capitalist (mis)use of the ecosystems.According to my account, this 'ecological colonization' has its cause in treating the natural environment as a supposedly free resource for the capitalist accumulation process.To be more precise, since the market mechanism systematically externalizes the costs that economic interactions induce in ecological terms, environmental crises regularly unsettle the relationship of modern societies with external nature, which in turn calls into question the functionality of the market mechanism.

The contradictory character of ecological colonization
Since its formulation, there have been controversial discussions about Habermas's colonization thesis.For example, some authors asked whether his critique of society still represents a Marxist programme designed to overturn capitalism as a whole (Postone, 1993, Chapter 6), while others asked whether it neglects the gender question and whether the division between system and lifeworld is not predicated on a gender bias (Fraser, 1985).I will, however, take a hitherto unexplored research direction instead of expanding on these legitimate questions.In contrast to the original thesis from the Theory of Communicative Action, the problem here does not revolve around whether the social lifeworld suffers colonization through the capitalist system but whether the natural environment is colonized, and if so, how. 3 Following Habermas, I intend to examine colonization processes, but I want to realize this aim in ecological regards, thus going beyond him.The challenge is that of how to reconfigure a theorem that 'accepts the rationalization of the lifeworld and explains its deformation by the conditions of material reproduction' (Habermas, 1987, p. 148) in such a way that it directs its critical thrust not only against deformations of the lifeworld but furthermore against the wear and tear of external nature.In other words, how to speak critically about the domination of nature with Habermas?In order to reorient his intersubjective critique of society in this direction, I will link a normative consideration (a) with a functionalist explanation (b).
(a) Like every kind of critique, a critique of the domination of nature requires a basis from which it can make judgments about 'good' and 'bad' states of affairs and developments.Of what can such a basis consist in the case of the colonization of the environment?An obvious strategy would be to use a normatively charged understanding of nature as a foundation.That would mean claiming nature itself as the relevant source of normativity.Accordingly, nature as a whole or in its parts has a substantial intrinsic value, and if humans disregard this value in their interaction with it, they would be guilty of a reprehensible treatment of nature.However, that is not a foundation on which a critique of society in the tradition of the Frankfurt School can stand.This is because the 'primacy of the social' opposes the method of tying social criticism back to norms supposedly inherent in nature: what humans see in nature and what they think is commanded by it ultimately depend on the kind of social orders of which they are a part.Humans, who qua their humanity are never not socialized, cannot lift the veil of the image at Sais to look nature directly in the face.In the words of Lukács (1971, p. 207), the most influential spokesperson for Marxist thinking in this regard: 'Nature is a societal category'.The proposition that nature possesses this or that intrinsic value can therefore be no more than a (hidden) projection.
The romantic association of the natural environment with a promise of anarchic freedom helps to illustrate the primacy of the social and the problem of projections.Only against the background of, as Habermas would put it, an increasingly colonized lifeworld in which system constraints close off more and more scope for freedom, does the seemingly wild nature outside take on the character of an auspicious realm of freedom.When someone feels too confined indoors, as it is colloquially known, he or she tends to be drawn outside -'into the open'.Following Vogel (1996, pp. 88-90), we can understand nature as a hieroglyph that can enlighten us about the prevailing societal order as soon as we recognize our handwriting in it.A critique of the colonization of the natural environment, which takes the social construction of nature seriously, must therefore not derive its standards from what is allegedly natural.It has to find another basis for problematizing incidents of domination of nature as objectionable.
The normative backing of a Habermasian critique of ecological colonization becomes even more challenging because Habermas judges the instrumental handling of the non-human environment as a fixed presupposition of the human condition.For him, what people see in nature is always socially mediated and thus subject to inevitable variability.But in spite of this attribution of manifold meanings, he thinks that there is one constant since the reproduction of human societies remains dependent on the ploughing over and under of the natural environment for an unforeseeable time.To some extent, humans must approach the natural world surrounding them as the mere object of their work.This view seems reminiscent of Marx, who predicted that even if the societal metabolism with the natural environment should one day be regulated socialistically: 'Just as the savage must wrestle with nature to satisfy his needs, to maintain and reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production' (Marx, 1981, p. 959).As long as humankind has to ensure its subsistence through a metabolism with the environment, there will be a sector in every society that obeys imperatives of mere necessity.In Habermas's social theory, the subsystem of the market economy represents this area.This is where the instrumentalization of external nature finds its legitimate place as far as it counts as being indispensable for the material reproduction of modern societies.But by conceding such a critical status to the exploitation of nature, he seems to pull the rug out from under the critique of the domination of it.For, if the systemic exploitation of natural resources is necessary for the survival of the human species, are objections to it not in some sense hostile to humankind?
That does not have to be the case.One does not need to deny the necessity of a metabolism between societies and their environment in order to be able to turn the colonization thesis against the exploitation of external nature.This reorientation becomes possible by disclosing the expansion of the economic subsystem as an ecologically self-contradictory process: if the capitalist utilization of the natural environment undermines its purpose -that is, the material reproduction of modern societies -then we might judge this utilization to be problematic.In the sense of an immanent critique, it follows from such a contradiction that the capitalist mode of reproduction points beyond itself or even necessitates its overcoming.However, making this argument requires more than purely normative consideration; it is the functionality of the economic subsystem that must be scrutinized, after all.Therefore, it is logical to develop the functionalist explanation of the capitalist economy which we find in Habermas's theory of society further in exactly this direction.
(b) In what way, then, are systemic dynamics in the Habermasian sense and ecological devastation interrelated?As we have already seen, in The Theory of Communicative Action, the economic subsystem represents one of the two areas of society that coordinates success-oriented actions.In it, the countless utility calculations of the members of society become interconnected without their becoming involved in normative controversies.The entire system arose sociogenetically from the need to counteract the overburdening of the pursuit of agreement and to replace the exchange of arguments with the automatic linkage of individual success strategies.According to Habermas (1987, p. 150), it ranks among 'systemic mechanisms that stabilize nonintended interconnections of action by way of functionally intermeshing action consequences'.He thereby adopts a functionalist explanation of the market economy.Where different actors with diverse needs meet, there is uncertainty as to whether a transaction can take place that sufficiently satisfies the interests pursued by each of them.It is money, in its function as a medium of exchange, that ensures that the benefit required for the completion of the transaction accrues to every participant, without this mutual satisfaction of interests necessarily being intended by them.Functionally speaking, the market operates as an 'ethically neutralized system of action' (Habermas, 1987, p. 178).It produces a nonintended conjunction of preferences.
For Habermas, however, the fact that the systemic regulation of interactions through money is normatively discharged does not mean that this automatism is immune to objections.On the contrary, the subtitle of the second volume of the Theory of Communicative Action is not by chance Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason.For this critique of functionalist reason, Habermas brings his colonization thesis to bear.According to him, the functionalist analysis cannot capture the endangerment of the lifeworld due to systemic colonization processes.However, to translate his critique into an ecological dimension, it is not necessary to go so far as to assume such a lifeworld perspective.The market mechanism can be convicted of an inherent dysfunctionality from the system perspective alone.To expose this dysfunctionality, I refer to the notion of external effects.
The economic notion of external effects was first formulated in The Economics of Welfare by Arthur C Pigou (1932) and later updated in The Social Costs of Private Enterprise by Karl W Kapp (1950).It states that the steering mechanism of the market is defective in that it does not take into account all costs incurred.To be exact, prices determined via intermeshing individual strategic actions do not mirror costs that the agents involved have not included in their cost-benefit calculations.These hidden costs, also known as negative externalities, are side effects of economic interactions that do not directly affect the interacting parties.The market does not regulate these effects on third parties by itself.While The Theory of Communicative Action keeps quiet about this issue, it is addressed in Also a History of Philosophy, where Habermas, as mentioned in the introduction, suggests an application of the colonization thesis to the natural environment, 'whose "resources"', as he says, 'are exploited for free'.An example can illuminate the underlying thought: when households or businesses consume fossil fuels such as oil, gas or coal, they emit carbon dioxide, thereby contributing to the pollution of the atmosphere.However, the resulting costs of these environmental influences fall on the broader public, often only in distant regions of the world, and, if at all, only indirectly on the actual emitters.That is why they are not fully factored into the oil, gas and coal prices by the money-mediated mechanism of the economic subsystem, which relies on rational egoism.The market mechanism fails because the prevailing prices do not cover the true costs.
Tremendous ecological side effect cascades are likely to result from this underpricing, as ecosystems appear available for bargain prices or, in fact, at no charge.Recent socialtheoretical diagnoses confirm the explosiveness of this problem.Lessenich (2019, p. 146), for example, defines modern societies as 'externalization societies' and observes critically: 'The externalization society has reached a tipping point beyond which its effects will no longer be controllable and its self-destructive consequences no longer held at bay'. 4 In the same vein, Fraser (2022, p. 83) argues as follows in her latest book, entitled Cannibal Capitalism: More than a relation to labour, then, capital is also a relation to nature -a cannibalistic, extractive relation, which consumes ever more biophysical wealth in order to pile up ever more "value," while disavowing ecological "externalities."What also piles up, not accidentally, is an ever-growing mountain of eco-wreckage: an atmosphere flooded by carbon emissions; climbing temperatures, crumbling polar ice shelves, rising seas clogged with islands of plastic; mass extinctions, declining biodiversity, climate-driven migration of organisms and pathogens, increased zoonotic spillovers of deadly viruses; superstorms, megadroughts, giant locust swarms, jumbo wildfires, titanic flooding; dead zones, poisoned lands, unbreathable air.Systemically primed to free-ride on a nature that cannot really selfreplenish without limit, capitalism's economy is always on the verge of destabilizing its own ecological conditions of possibility.
Even though the functionalist explanation of the assumption 'that capitalism harbors a deep-seated ecological contradiction that inclines it non-accidentally to environmental crisis' (Fraser, 2022, p. 105) shines through in this excerpt as well as elsewhere, Fraser remains on the surface of it. 5She does not tap the full potential of immanent criticism.Instead of keeping a safe distance from economic explications, it is, in my opinion, more productive to recognize functionalist reason as an actually existing and extremely powerful rationality -in order to overcome it from within.The spread of the economic subsystem, which is supposed to serve the material reproduction of modern societies, is contradictory in that it interferes with the development of ecosystems and destabilizes the ecological preconditions of modern societies.In other words, when the mechanism that categorically disregards the ecological implications of economic activities finds a wider scope of application, destructive environmental interventions following from it lead to increased ecological crises, both in number and magnitude.Anthropogenic climate change is a good example for an externality accumulated in the long term.It is caused by actors whose economic activity has fatal effects mainly on remote regions of the planet and on future generations, without these effects figuring into the relevant costbenefit calculations.Due to this fundamental imbalance, capitalistically spurred modernity indeed floods the atmosphere with carbon emissions.Thus, the hypertrophy of the capitalist economic system provokes not only, as Habermas argued, the decomposition of the preconditions of the lifeworld but also the disturbance of societal material reproduction.A single subsystem undermines the enabling capacities of the ecosystems based on which the 'project of modernity' thrives (Habermas, 1997).

Coping with the colonization of the environment
Before turning to the consequences of the analysis, let me recap the basic idea of the previous section.The goal was to demonstrate that the colonization of the environment is subject to self-contradiction.From a normative point of view, this contradictoriness is of relevance because it allows for a critique of colonization processes free of any non-universalizable attributions of value to nature.Suppose capitalism develops a dynamic that is detrimental to its proper functioning.In that case, we can conclude -independently of all other criticism -that its transformation is functionally necessary, to say the very least.In connection with this, I then provided a functionalist explanation of why the capitalist market economy drives the exploitation of the natural environment.Since profits systematically increase at the expense of third parties suffering under ecological side effects, the externalization of ecological costs fuels the demolition of ecosystems.The outcome is that, by destabilizing ecological circuits, the capitalist market economy undermines the material reproduction of society and runs counter to its raison d'être.Now I want to shed light on the central consequences of this analysis, to begin with, in practical terms (a) and, on the top of that, in theoretical terms (b).
(a) In a nutshell, the problem with the colonization of the environment consists in the unhinged economic subsystem shaking the reproduction of society due to the overexploitation of natural resources.One can also link the ecologically converted colonization thesis to the discourse about the Anthropocene.Accordingly, the so-called age of man results from the ecologically disruptive expansion of the capitalist economy.Furthermore, with Habermas's theory, one can elucidate a tension between two conflicting rationalities and pressure for social change resulting from it (cf.Habermas, 1986). 6 On the one hand, a reifying way to think and act may become more and more widespread in the wake of colonization processes such that, in the case of ecological colonization, the environment appears to an increasing degree like an object of exploitation.In the words of the first generation of the Frankfurt School: nature-dominating (Adorno), instrumental (Horkheimer) or one-dimensional (Marcuse) reason may in fact gain the upper hand.On the other hand, these processes become caught up in an increasingly severe paradox.After all, the supremacy of capitalist imperatives of material reproduction of society undermines, of all things, the material reproduction.By destroying the integrity of ecosystems, the economic subsystem runs counter to its function, thus triggering its transformation.This tension between the preponderance of system rationality on the one side and the reaction that systemic excesses spark on the other is, to some extent, inevitable.The suppression of rationality potentials, which might imply a more sustainable metabolism with the natural environment, leads to precisely these potentials eventually erupting.As the 'maintenance of the material substratum of the lifeworld is a necessary condition for maintaining its symbolic structures' (Habermas, 1987, p. 151), we can expect a rising counter-pressure against ecological colonization from the lifeworld's areas of cultural reproduction, social integration and socialization.Now let me move to the main practical consequences of my analysis.They differ depending on whether one sticks to a functionalist response to ecological colonization or takes a more radical stance.From the functionalist perspective, the inadequate pricing of ecological costs on the market makes an internalization of such costs necessary, at best.The response would be to correct the market failure without touching the underlying mechanism.In contrast, the critique of colonization after Habermas calls for a more transformative solution to the ecological crises triggered by capitalist exploitation.It is instructive to point out this difference in more detail.Those who want to counter the effects of ecological colonization by internalizing negative externalities into the economy start with the symptoms to remedy the problem.Pricing in external costs resigns itself to cushion particular effects every time the capitalist system is about to wreak havoc.The functionalist strategy attends to destabilizing system dynamics without addressing their deeper cause.As a matter of fact, the cause of ecological crises -namely the encroachment of the economic subsystem -is countervailed with more of the same.Instead of breaking with the system's logic, those entities not yet usurped by it are to become incorporated as well.If, say, intact natural habitats are not yet commodified and not accessible to capitalist utilization, they must, according to the method of internalization, be converted into monetary values. 7 The critique of capitalism Habermas develops from Marxist premises offers an alternative to this functionalist strategy.It does not call for the alleviation of symptomatic outbreaks.Instead, it tackles the roots of the syndrome of the various crises, from the littering of land areas and the sealing of soil surface to the acidification of oceans.With Habermas, while simultaneously going beyond him, one can advocate a rigorous containment of the monetarization of the natural environment.This conclusion follows from the analogy with the protection he envisages for the lifeworld against colonization processes.As outlined earlier, he regards the hypertrophy of success-oriented rationality as dangerous to the integration of the lifeworld.To motivate its defence, Habermas (1987, p. 345) emphasizes 'the primacy of a lifeworld in relation to the subsystems separated out of its institutional orders'.Sociogenetically, he bases this primacy of the lifeworld on the fact that the subsystems spin off from the lifeworld's rationalization.Normatively, he justifies it with the fact that an intact lifeworld enables the members of society to achieve individual as well as collective self-determination; societies should curtail the proliferation of subsystems for the sake of autonomy.
From this, it does not follow that we have to abolish the subsystems entirely.However, these have at least to be confined to their role of mere social subsystems whose imperatives are not permitted to impact other parts of society.According to Habermas, the main challenge lies in unleashing the already endangered resources of the lifeworld to set in motion a robust democratic dynamic that effectively repels encroachment by the system.Areas which must not come under the influence of systemic imperatives should enjoy protection through collective action.He captures the essential point about the role of democracy in the following way: 'The normative meaning of democracy can be rendered in social-theoretical terms by the formula that the fulfillment of the functional necessities of systemically integrated domains of action shall find its limits in the integrity of the lifeworld' (Habermas, 1987, p. 345).The question of how such a democratic limitation of the system's power could actually succeed is one that cannot be dealt with in the scope of this article (cf.Dryzek, 1992).
Concerning the colonization of the environment, the practical consequences will be similar.Ecosystems may be resilient to some degree, 'shielding' themselves from human interventions or rebounding fairly easily, but more and more often, that is not the case.This vulnerability is because the exploitation of natural resources has become ever more geographically extensive and technologically intensive.Suppose you agree with this assessment and accept the ecological colonization thesis.In that case, you must concur that modern societies should carve out parts of the natural environment and protect them against monetarization as a matter of principle.Accordingly, today's societies would have to deal with the dysfunctionality of the colonization of external nature by confining the self-propelling economic subsystem and not by further commodifying natural entities.A Habermasian critique of ecological devastation aims at conserving and reinforcing the necessary ecological conditions for an autonomously steered societal development through collective self-determination.To put it another way, to ensure the flourishing of the first nature around us, as a precondition of the successful material reproduction of modern societies, second nature can no longer run rampant.
(b) Now that the practical implications have been made clear, I want to present theoretical inferences from the ecological conversion of the colonization thesis.The point I focus on is the following: after the departure from the subject-object paradigm of early Critical Theory, the thesis of a colonization of the natural environment brings the relations of humans to external nature back into the paradigm of intersubjectivity.Without having to renounce the unique logic of communicative socialization, which Habermas spells out, we can assert an interdependence between human societies and their natural environment, which is risky on both sides.Just as the system becomes only relatively dissociated from the lifeworld and remains dependent on it, societies are also not completely uncoupled from the environment, but stand in a continuous reciprocal relationship with it.More precisely, the thesis of ecological colonization describes how expansive dynamics emanate from the realm of intersubjective relations and concuss the natural environment by destabilizing its reproductive cycles, thereby endangering societal integration.Thus, there is an indication that Habermas's social theory is at least partly applicable to current ecological questions.The criticism of McCarthy, Whitebook, Benhabib, Eckersley, Luhmann, Latour, Becker, Jahn and Rosa depicted in the introduction -that Habermas's model of Critical Theory is more or less inapt for analysing and criticizing problems in our relations to the natural environment -can therefore be valid only to some extent.A brief comparison with the model of his predecessors, Adorno and Horkheimer, helps to illustrate this point.
The current renaissance of the concept of domination of nature from the founding generation of the Frankfurt School and especially from the Dialectic of Enlightenment reflects the urgency of factoring the societal relations with the natural environment into our social theories.Adorno and Horkheimer's interpretation of the myth of Odysseus sailing around the island of the Sirens seems particularly suited for this purpose.According to them, the myth mirrors the origination of a type of subjectivity that builds on the gagging of inner nature for the sake of subjugating external nature.They believe that we must transform this subjectivity through 'remembrance of nature within the subject' (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002, p. 32), also called self-reflection or Selbstbesinnung in later writings of Adorno (1973, p. 397).Solipsistic reflection on our nature-bound self is supposed to make us aware of the intertwinement of our subjectivity with the encompassing order of nature, ultimately leading to the overcoming of the drive to dominate the natural world.
To be sure, it is not the task of this article to go into detail about the strengths and weaknesses of the problem diagnosis and the transformation perspective of the Dialectic of Enlightenment.Nor is it to conflate Habermas's model of Critical Theory with that of Horkheimer and Adorno.In this context of the history of ideas, the ecologically transformed colonization thesis demonstrates no more and no less than that the sensorium for the dire effects of the exploitation of nature does not inevitably vanish with the paradigm shift to a more intersubjective approach.The Frankfurt School tradition does not have to come full circle to the original subject-philosophical framework with its primary (and too solipsistic) focus on the subject-object relation in order to account for the relevance of the natural environment regarding the questions of how social order is possible and how it should be shaped.Since Habermas himself does not think through the colonization of the environment to the end, he does not draw this theoretical conclusion.Therefore, we must surpass his theory of society, which, in this regard, is not comprehensive enough.
Then again, the Dialectic of Enlightenment can also complement the ecological colonization thesis in one respect.While reconstructing the original colonization thesis from the Theory of Communicative Action, it has been observed that Habermas does not make capitalism's expansive dynamics completely plausible.To close this gap, we can consult Horkheimer and Adorno's explanation of why instrumental rationality expands incessantly.Here, a closer look into what Habermas understands as the capitalist system helps.How does the natural environment appear to us from the system perspective, and how is it treated within the system?Following Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of reason, naturedominating or instrumental rationality does not accept anything different from what conforms to its logic.What this rationality cannot calculate, control and commodify is the driving force of more domination.Applied to the subject at hand, this means that as long as the natural environment is seen as wild, resistant or 'non-identical', the kind of rationality cultivated in the capitalist system will seek to strip off its nonconformity and make it entirely disposable and exploitable.For that reason, we can conclude that an almost irresistible colonization dynamic unfolds.Emerging from the capitalist economy, it turns ever more parts of the environment, from the elementary to the planetary level, into mere objects of exploitation.In the words of Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason, the natural world degenerates into an 'object of total exploitation that has no aim set by reason and therefore no limit' (Horkheimer, 2004, p. 74).Put like this, the subject-philosophical and the intersubjective approaches to Critical Theory can inform each other about the accelerating exploitation of the natural environment, both coming into their own.

Conclusion
In this article, I applied the colonization thesis from Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action to the natural environment.In the first of three steps, I reconstructed the basic idea of the thesis, according to which the capitalist system has a damaging impact on the integration of the lifeworld after becoming uncoupled from it.In the second step, I combined the normative consideration that the application of this thesis to the natural environment cannot rely on an ascription of value to nature in itself, on the one hand, with the functionalist explanation for the market -that is to say, the economic subsystem of capitalism -notoriously externalizing the ecological costs of economic interactions and thus destabilizing the ecological conditions of the reproduction of societies as a whole, on the other.Illustrated by the example of climate change, by not including the side effects of their actions in their strategic cost-benefit calculations, market actors contribute to a cumulative warming of the atmosphere that imperils not only the integrity of ecosystems due to natural tipping points but also the stability of societies due to societal tipping points in their material reproduction.In the third and last step, I drew two conclusions from the transformed colonization thesis.From a practical point of view, I concluded in continuation of Habermas's critique of capitalism that the unsettling of the ecological foundations of autonomous societal development must be countered by means of democratic self-determination and not, as a functionalist strategy suggests, by internalizing previously externalized costs.From a theoretical point of view, I concluded that a social theory of Habermasian character could capture problems in the ecological relations of modern societies with their natural environment.To this end, however, the Habermasian paradigm, linking the horizontal relationship between communicatively socialized subjects with a vertical reference to the objective world, must place greater emphasis on the inverse dependence of the social dimension on the natural order.The crucial but challenging task for Critical Theory in the Anthropocene is to do justice to both the epistemological primacy of the social and Adorno's ontological primacy of the object.

Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article.