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[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]