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Habermas, J. (1986).

The new obscurity: the crisis of the welfare state


and the exhaustion of utopian energies. Philosophy & Social Criticism,
11(2).
[we are not witnessing an overall change from modernity to postmodernity.] it is
not the utopian energies in general that are retreating from historical
consciousness. What had reached its end is rather a specific utopian idea, which
in the past chrystallized itself around the potential of a society based on social
labor. (3)
[the current predicament he conceptualises as follows:] the program of the social
welfare state, is losing its capacity to project future possibilities for a collectively
better and less endangered way of life. (5)
The lever for the pacification of class antagonism remains [] the neutralization
of the conflict potential built into the status of the wage labourer.
[this is achieved] by way of welfare-state legislation and collective bargaining to
set wage scales.
[] the welfare-state compromise and the pacification of class antagonism are to
be achieved through employing democratically legitimated political power to
foster and to tame the quasi-natural process of capitalistic growth. [it still relies
on the remains of the utopian idea of a labouring society] The presupposition
here is that state intervention can insure a peaceful co-existence between
democracy and capitalism. [he wants to discuss not the changed circumstances
since the 1970s, but the internal difficulties that have arisen in the social state as
result of its own success] (6)
[two questions: can the interventionist state keep the economic system in check;
i.e, can capitalism and democracy be accommodated? And second, is the use of
political power the right method for attaining the substantial goal of promoting
and securing emancipation. Can new forms of life be brought about through
bureaucratic means?]
[as to the former: there is a basic contradiction: in the crisis of the welfare state]
we can see clearly the structural limitations within which the social welfare state
compromise has to be worked out and maintained. Because the social welfare
state must leave uncontested the economic systems mode of functioning, there
is no possibility for influencing private investment activity other than through
interventions that conform to the economic system. And it lacks even the power
to do that, since the redistribution of income essentially is limited to a horizontal
reshuffling within the group of those dependently employed and barely touches
the class-specific structure of property []. (7)
[] the social welfare state comes into danger of having its societal base slip
away. [the consensus for social democratic parties wanes and trade unions loose
power]

[there is a second problem:] the advocates of the welfare state project always
looked only in one direction. The foreground was occupied by the task of taming
the economic power of capitalists and warding off the destructive consequences
of crisis-prone economic growth []. Government power attained by
parliamentary means appeared as both a harmless and an indispensable
resource []. The active states intervention not only into the economic cycle,
but also into the life cycle of its citizens was seen by the reformers as totally
unproblematic [] (8)
[] inherent in the project of the social state is a contradiction between goal and
method. The goal is the establishment of forms of life which are structured
according to egalitarian standards and which at the same time open up arenas
for individual self-fulfillment and spontaneity. But apparently this goal cannot be
achieved directly through a legal and administrative transformation of political
programmes. Producing new forms of life is beyond the capacities of political
power. (9)
The utopian content of the communication community shrinks to the formal
aspect of an undamaged intersubjectivity. Even the expression ideal speech
situation leads to error insofar as it suggests a concrete form of life. What can be
normatively brought into relief are necessary but general conditions for a
communicative praxis of everyday life and for a process of discursive willformation which would put participants themselves in a position to actualize
concrete possibilities for a better and less endangered life, in accord with their
own needs and insights, and on their own initiative. (17) [good enunciation of
Habermass limited utopianism]

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