to general information. Here the objects remain stable even when they circulate: they are always the same (they do not have any cultural biography), and at most they will show no more than a few signs of wear over time. They are rational artifacts that have instrumental relevance in the manner of a tool; they are a means to an end that vanishes as soon as its purpose has been fulfilled or the means itself is no longer suitable. Beside the commodity, accordingly, the second main example of general objects is the machine. A machine is not only produced in identical copies; it also produces identical copies of goods. As an object type, the machine is a general piece of infrastructure for fabricating the general.
We now come to subjects, who are produced within the framework of classical modernity “doing generality” and also form themselves in this context. They are all trained to have the same competencies and to exhibit identical, or at least similar, manners of behavior. The competencies and activities of subjects here contribute to formal rationality. One model for such a general subject is a type of character driven from within by a sense of morality or utilitarianism – a character that accordingly follows a set of principle or acts according to cost–benefit analyses. Another model is the “socially adjusted person,” who strives to meet intersubjective expectations and to be “normal” or “average” (in the non-pejorative sense).18 The first model implies a static and stable sort of uniformity, while the second entails a dynamic sort of uniformity that is always readjusting to new social demands. In both cases, the subject becomes an object of social discipline. Any deviation from the standard is thus sanctioned for seeming abnormal.
Within the framework of classical modernity, of course, there are also subjects with special characteristics. Such cases are not examples of singularities in the strict sense, however; they are rather instances of the general-particular – that is, they represent differential positions within the framework of a general order.19 This was typically a matter of either differences in specialization or gradual differences in performance. Subjects are encouraged to develop specialized competencies and roles. Above all, within a given set of professional qualifications, these activities are standardized and aligned to suit different sorts of jobs. While engaged in professional (or educational) activities, subjects in classical modernity are in turn evaluated according to what is called their achievement. The latter involves systematic differences that can be measured against a general and “objective” standard, either according to a qualitative scale of better or worse (the classic example being grades in school) or according to a quantitative scale of more or less (the classic example being production targets). In other words, the social logic of the general also allows for “individualism,” but it is defined by every subject having the same rights and obligations, behaving in the same self-responsible manner, and fulfilling his or her duties and requirements in the same way. In the social logic of the general, “individualization” thus presents itself as individual differences in achievement along prescribed scales of evaluation.20
Within the rationalistic logic of the general, the spatiality of the social involves the replication of identical or similar spaces.21 In this case, space is extensive and serial to the extent that it allows identical structures – series of the same thing – to extend beyond local contexts. What is more, rationalistic spatiality integrates a sort of container model into social reality by clearly assigning particular types of spaces to particular activities. Industrial cities, for instance, are characteristic of seriality and its container-like nature. In the sense of “serial construction,” their components are in part even identical, so that they can literally be exchanged with one another.22 Here, spatiality is functional and oriented toward the directive of technical (and normative) rationality. It accordingly entails a rigid spatial separation of individual activities (work, habitation, leisure, etc.).
The social logic of the general functions in an analogous way on the level of temporality. In classical modernity, time was rationalized, and this involved the standardization of comparable synchronized intervals.23 Here it is characteristic that social praxis comes to be structured according to repetitive acts in time (the paradigmatic example of this is at the workplace) and that spaces of time are filled up in equal ways (thus the working week standardizes working conditions). The mode that shapes time in such a way is thus not the event but rather the routine; it is not a matter of occupying a given moment but rather one of reducing time’s emotional qualities. It should also be noted that this sort of time is future-oriented: the present is only instrumentally interesting as a contribution toward achieving a future goal, whereas the past is closed off and seems obsolete. Time thus becomes the central object of future planning, which is understood in terms of progress, improvement, or growth. On the level of the lives of subjects, this corresponds to the model of linear biography.
What sort of collectives are produced by the rationalistic logic of the general? More revealing, perhaps, is the sort of past collectives that this logic is oriented against: traditional communities based on personal connections. These were replaced by the organization – that is, by an objectifying and impersonal collective formed to achieve a given purpose (the organization is thus an expression of the general principles of formal rationality).24 At their heart, classical organizations are based on clear technical-normative rules and hierarchized responsibilities, on membership and qualifications, and on predictable decision-making. The bureaucratic state is thus just as paradigmatic of modern organization as are capitalist and socialist firms. Within the framework of the social logic of the general, organizations are typically structured in the same way regardless of their respective purposes, and they are thus experienced by subjects as similarly designed entities (as organizations, hospitals are more or less the same as schools, government agencies, corporations, etc.).
Finally, the rationalistic logic of the general and its formal rationality also manifest themselves in the overall form of social praxis in which subjects, objects, spaces, temporalities, and collectives participate. Here there is an overarching mode of praxis. In the latter, all practices tendentially take the form of instrumentally rational or normative-rational activity, so that they are explicitly oriented toward pursuing objectives or following social rules. The instrumentally rational treatment of objects and normatively regulated interactions (between those present or absent) are paradigmatic of this, and the conceptual pair “labor and interaction” can thus be said to designate the rationalistic mode of praxis as a whole.25 The result is that, for the most part, activity here is no longer habitual but is rather routinized; in other words, it is now based on the sedimentation of explicitly and consciously refined, optimized, or perfected rules.
Industrial Modernity as a Prototype
Generally speaking, the history of Western modernity can be divided into three phases: bourgeois modernity, organized modernity, and late modernity.26 Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and North America, bourgeois modernity gradually ousted the traditional feudal and aristocratic society. During this stage, a social logic of the general came to prominence in various sectors of society on account of early industrialization, the philosophy of the Enlightenment,27 the rise of science, the emergence of transregional commodity markets and capitalist structures of production, the gradual establishment of democracy and the rule of law, urbanization, and the formation of the bourgeoisie (with its proclaimed self-discipline, morality, and productivity) as the leading cultural class. Technical, cognitive, and normative rationalization came to assert itself everywhere. That said, this first version of modernity was still relatively exclusive, and the social stratum from which it takes its name – the bourgeoisie – was still relatively small.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, formal rationalization underwent a qualitative and quantitative shift. Bourgeois modernity was then replaced by the second iteration of (classical) modernity: organized or industrial modernity. If one wants to understand the social logic of the general in its prototypical form and in all of its historical and empirical plasticity, it is necessary to look first of all at the organized or industrial modernity that reached its zenith between the 1950s and the 1970s.28 During these years, this logic
