a rare interview with jürgen habermas

7/26/2019 A Rare Interview With Jürgen Habermas

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-rare-interview-with-juergen-habermas 1/12

A rare interview with Jürgen HabermasBy Stuart Jeffries

©Getty

Portions of Stuart Jeffries’ interview with Jürgen Habermas can be found

below this profile

In January, one of the world’s leading intellectuals fell prey to an internet hoax. An

anonymous pranster set up a fae !witter feed purporting to be by Jürgen Habermas,

professor emeritus of philosophy at the Johann "olfgang #oethe $niversity of

%ranfurt. &It irritated me because the sender’s identity was a fae,' Habermas told me

recently. (ie Apple co)founder *teve Jobs, +imbabwean president obert -ugabe andformer $* secretary of state ondolee//a ice before him, Habermas had been

&twitter0aced'.

!witter closed down the fae Habermas feed, but not before the philosophy blogosphere

had become very excited. ould it be that the 12)year)old #erman thiner was 0oining

*arah 3rown and *tephen %ry among the !witterati4 "as he really trying to explain his

ethico)political theories in 562 characters or fewer4 *ome were taen in, others dubious.

7ne blogger wrote sceptically8 &%irstly, the sentence 9*prechen *ie :eutsch, bitte4’ does

not seem to be a sentence uttered by a native #erman speaer ; he would have simply ased 9*prechen *ie :eutsch4’ or said 9*prechen *ie bitte :eutsch4’'

3ut some of the tweets were authentic Habermas. %or instance, at <.=1pm on January

>?, &Jürgen Habermas' tweeted the following8 &It’s true that the internet has reactivated

the grass)roots of an egalitarian public sphere of writers and readers.' At <.62pm8 &It

also counterbalances the deficits from the impersonal and asymmetrical character of

broadcasting insofar as@' At <.65pm8 &@it reintroduces deliberative elements in

http://www.ft.com/servicestools/terms/getty




communication. 3esides that, it can undermine the censorship of authoritarian

regimes@' At <.66pm8 &3ut the rise of millions of fragmented discussions across the

world tend instead to lead to fragmentation of audiences into isolated publics.'

I fed these tweets into #oogle and found that they were all taen from footnote three to

the nglish translation of Habermas’s >22B paper &Colitical ommunication in -edia*ociety8 :oes :emocracy *till n0oy an pistemic :imension4' "hy would Habermas

cut and paste from his own paper4 7f course, it turned out that he hadn’t.

!o find out who had, I posted appeals for information on philosophy blogs from hicago

to (eiden. "ould the real creator of the fae Habermas please stand up4 After a few

wees, I received an e)mail from someone called aphael, a 3ra/ilian studying for a Ch:

in politics in the $*, confessing he created the feed. At first he used it to &inform people

about DHabermas’sE most recent publications', as a form of flattery to the man he had

admired since he was an undergraduate. 3ut one day, an Austrian professor sent him a

message asing if he was the real Habermas. &I thought that it would be funny to

pretend a little bit. !hen I Fuoted the passage about the internet and the fragmentation

of the public sphere. It was interesting to see people’s reaction.' aphael doesn’t want to

disclose his surname or where he’s studying, out of embarrassment.

3ut in tweeting Habermas’s thoughts on the internet, he succeeded in titillating many

philosophers and sociologists. !hey were intrigued by how one of Habermas’s ey

concepts, the &public sphere', which he developed in his classic 5?B> boo The

Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of

Bourgeois Society, might apply to the internet age.

!his isn’t a trivial matter8 at a time when disgust for traditional democratic party politics

runs deep and when the so)called democratic deficit maes uropean politicalintegration loo lie a scheme concocted by self)serving elites, perhaps the internet

offers hope for change. !hin, after all, of how social networing sites were used during

last year’s Iranian elections to mobilise young voters.

3ut what is a public sphere4 It’s not as obvious as you might thin. &3y the 9public

sphere’ we mean first of all the realm of our social life in which something approaching

public opinion can be formed,' writes Gthe real Habermas. &iti/ens behave as a public

body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion ; that is, with the guarantee of

freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their

opinions ; about matters of general interest.'%or Habermas, in a -arx)inflected and certainly historically dialectical account of

uropean civilisation, the public sphere briefly flourished at a specific historical

moment. Just before the industrial revolution, literary men and women met in (ondon’s

coffee houses, Caris’s salons and #ermany’s !ischgesellschaften G&table tals' for what

Habermas calls &rational)critical discussion'. &In its clash with the arcane and

bureaucratic practices of the absolutist state,' writes Habermas, &the emergent

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f61df762-5b65-11de-be3f-00144feabdc0.html

http://www.ft.com/indepth/iran-elections


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f61df762-5b65-11de-be3f-00144feabdc0.html




bourgeoisie gradually replaced a public sphere in which the ruler’s power was merely

represented before the people with a sphere in which state authority was publicly )

monitored through informed and critical discourse by the people.'

3ut that 51th)century &public sphere' was illed in its cradle. Habermas found lots of

different fingerprints on the murder weapon8 the welfare state, mass media, the rise of public relations, the undermining of parliamentary politics by the rise of political

parties. !he fact that most of us now more about Caris Hilton than post)endogenous

growth theory probably doesn’t help either. Habermas’s thining has a nostalgic tenor8

if only we were more lie all those well)read, well)informed, critically minded coffee)

house deni/ens, then democracy might have a chance in the >5st century.

Habermas addressing students in Frankfurt in 1968. He agonised over weter te student

!rotests tat swe!t "uro!e and te #S at te time were $%eft fas&ism' or( more o!efu%%y(

attem!ts to $!o%iti&ise te !ub%i& s!ere'

Isn’t this, one might thin, what the internet offers ; a hopeful space, unconstrained by

status and spin, for critical political discussion4 Habermas, when I put these thoughts to

him by e)mail during an extremely rare interview, is sceptical. Gven if he has a

reputation as a public intellectual, Habermas hardly ever gives press interviews, )

preferring instead to comment very occasionally in #erman newspapers such as :ie

+eit.

&!he internet generates a centrifugal force,' he says. &It releases an anarchic wave of

highly fragmented circuits of communication that infreFuently overlap. 7f course, the

spontaneous and egalitarian nature of unlimited communication can have subversive



effects under authoritarian regimes. 3ut the web itself does not produce any public

spheres. Its structure is not suited to focusing the attention of a dispersed public of

citi/ens who form opinions simultaneously on the same topics and contributions which

have been scrutinised and filtered by experts.'

Cerhaps social networing websites might help create that solidarity4 &*ince I use theinternet only for specific purposes and not very intensively, I have no experience of

social networs lie %aceboo and cannot spea to the solidarising effect of electronic

communication, if there is any.

&As regards its impact on the public sphere, accelerated communication opens up

entirely new possibilities for organising activities and for large)scale political

mobilisations of widely dispersed addressees. I still receive at least one e)mail per wee

from 7bama’s election team. !hese communications refer to issues and events within

the political system, which they in turn influence. However, they remain contingent on

their relation to the real decision)maing processes that tae place outside the virtual

space of electronically networed monads.'

uite so. lectronically networed monads Gor independent units cannot on their own

create a public sphere. 3ut the dream of recreating something ain to that 51th)century

public sphere, where citi/ens of a political community act as more than consumers, by

influencing each other through debate, has been central to Habermas’s thining.

©Getty

)fter te war e &a%%enged Heidegger

on is a%%usion to te $inner trut and

greatness' of te *a+is

!hat he became so temperamentally idealistic was perhaps a surprise, given the

circumstances of his early years. Jürgen Habermas should have been yet another

philosophical assandraK instead, he is more lie its Collyanna. 3orn near :üsseldorf in

5?>?, he came of age in postwar #ermany. As his *tanford ncyclopedia of Chilosophy





entry notes8 &!he Luremberg !rials were a ey formative moment that brought home to

him the depth of #ermany’s moral and political failure under Lational *ocialism.'

Chilosophy, his chosen intellectual discipline, was hardly exempt. Indeed, one of his first

acts as a public intellectual came when, in 5?<=, he challenged the great philosopher and

one)time La/i sympathiser -artin Heidegger to explain what Heidegger meant by anallusion in his Introduction to -etaphysics to the &inner truth and greatness' of

Lational *ocialism. Heidegger’s silence confirmed Habermas’s conviction that the )

#erman philosophical tradition had failed in its moment of reconing.

$nlie Heidegger, Habermas never shired the intellectual’s responsibility of engaging

with difficult moral and political issues in public ; that, after all, was how the public

sphere was supposed to wor. Andrew 3owie, professor of philosophy and #erman at

oyal Holloway, $niversity of (ondon, argues8 &In many respects, he has been, and

remains, the exemplary intellectual figure in the #erman public sphere since the 5?M2s,

as social theorist, legal theorist, social critic, political actor and as a philosopher

concerned to advocate a new direction for #erman thought after the La/i period.'

!ypical of that public engagement in the #erman press was his intervention in the

Historierstreit, or historians’ Fuarrel, about how the Holocaust should be interpreted.

rnst Lolte, in 5?1B, wrote an article arguing that #ermany &reasonably' turned to

La/ism in the face of the 3olshevi threat. Habermas too issue with this view and with

rightwing historians who contended that La/ism was a breach with #erman history by a

small criminal cliFue. Habermas argued that these historians were trying to get a nation

off the hoo for its responsibility in La/i atrocities.

His role in the Historierstreit highlighted how he felt intellectuals ought to act to

ensure that public debate was an issue of concern to every #erman citi/en. It wasperhaps the manifestation of another ey concept in his intellectual armoury, namely

&communicative rationality' Ga term developed in his forbidding 5?15 masterpieceThe

Theory of Communicative Action, whereby participants in argument learn from others

and from themselves and Fuestion suppositions typically taen for granted. In the

aftermath of one of the most brutal centuries in recorded history and with the threat of

worse to come, it sounded welcome ; lie an ongoing and global version of *outh

Africa’s !ruth and econciliation ommission.



©Getty

#n%ike ,eodor )dorno( wo mused

wit te gui%t of a Ho%o&aust survivor(

Habermas did not des!air

Habermas’s new and hopeful direction for #erman philosophy loos lie a rebellious

response to the philosophical despair of !heodor Adorno, his greatest teacher. Adorno,

philosopher of &negative dialectics', a style of thining that scorned method, held out

against creating 0ust the ind of rationally achieved consensus that has guided )

Habermas’s wor.

Adorno mused with the guilt of a Holocaust survivor on whether &one who escaped

DAuschwit/E by accident, one who by rights should have been illed, may go on living'.

Habermas went beyond his teacher’s guilt. $nlie Heidegger, he too responsibilityK

unlie Adorno, he declined to despair. $nlie his teacher, too, he has sought to develop

system and method, and to wor out how, as he describes it to me, &the citi/ens of a

political community could still exercise collective influence over their social destiny

through the democratic process'.

3ut wasn’t Adorno right to despair4 !rue, we may have left behind the !hird eich, but

we are in an era in which commitment to democracy appears to be at a low ebb. !he

notion of a well)functioning public sphere seems the barmy dream of a coc)eyed

optimist. &!here are good reasons to be alarmed,' retorts Habermas. &*ome people

already thin that authoritarian mass democracies will provide the functionally superior

model under conditions of a globalised world economy@ !oday many people are

intimidated by a growing social complexity which is ensnaring individuals inincreasingly dense contexts of action and communication.

&-y impression is that the whole world has become more conservative and shares the

attitude towards life summed up by my colleague Licholas (uhmann Dthe #erman

sociologistE in the formula8 9verything is changing and nothing wors any more.’

Habermas casts the situation in even stronger terms8 &In this mood, the notion that the

citi/ens of a political community could still exercise collective influence over their social





destiny through the democratic process is also being denounced by intellectuals as a

misguided nlightenment inheritance. (iberal confidence in the idea of an autonomous

life is now confined to the individual freedom of choice of consumers who are living off

the drip)feed of contingent opportunity structures.'

:rip)fed consumers are unable to discuss effectively serious issues that affect their lives.onsider, Habermas suggests, the public debate about 7bama’s healthcare reforms. He

seethes about the &progressive destruction of the infrastructure' that would allow a

conversation about the substance of the proposals and their relative merits, rather than

the bandying about of ideologies. &If we consider the information on the basis of which a

ma0ority of the American population demonises even modest healthcare reforms as an

outgrowth of 9socialism’ or 9communism’, we cannot assume that the public sphere and

political education are still functioning properly in western countries.'

ven newspapers are under dire threat8 &In our own countries, too, the national press,

which until now has been the bacbone of democratic discourse, is in severe danger. Lo

one has yet come up with a business model that would ensure the survival of the

important national newspapers on the internet.'

%or Habermas, even the grimmest diagnosis does not give licence for despair. He

remains committed to the dream of uropean unification ; something that in >252

loos utopian, given how the #ree debt crisis threatens to destroy the euro/one and

thus the foundation of political integration. "hy is uropean unification important to

Habermas4 In his latest boo, Europe: The Faltering Proect , he argues that the

&monstrous mass crimes of the twentieth century' mean that nations can no longer be

presumed to be innocents and thus immune to international law. Cetty nationalist pastsshould be left behind in a better, more rational organisation based on worldwide

consensus. 3ertrand ussell had a similar idea, even if he didn’t thin it through with

Habermas’s thoroughness.

Habermas’s hope is that a more unified urope could wor closely with the $* to build a

more stable and eFuitable international order. urope, he argues, should be bolstering

7bama in his international goals, such as disarmament and securing -iddle ast peace,

as well as encouraging "ashington to lead efforts to regulate financial marets and stem

climate change. &3ut as so often is the case, the uropeans lac the political will and the

necessary strength. -easured against the expectations which it encounters at the globallevel, urope is a ma0or failure on the international stage.' *ignificantly, the #erman

title of the boo is Ach! Europa.

:oes the recent #ree debt crisis doom that uropean pro0ect4 &#reece’s debt crisis has

had a welcome political side)effect,' says Habermas, snatching optimism from the 0aws

of defeat. &At one of its weaest moments, the uropean $nion has been plunged into a

discussion concerning the central problem of its future development.'

http://www.ft.com/indepth/us-healthcare-reform


http://www.ft.com/indepth/greece-debt-crisis

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7645a478-41a5-11df-865a-00144feabdc0.html



http://www.ft.com/indepth/climatechange


http://www.ft.com/indepth/greece-debt-crisis


http://www.ft.com/indepth/climatechange



3ut if Habermas believes the $ is vulnerable, one of its biggest problems, he says, is his

homeland’s renewed narcissism. Angela -erel’s #ermany is as nationalistic as

!hatcher’s 3ritain. &!he #erman elites apparently seem to be en0oying the comforts of

self)satisfied national normalcy8 9"e can be lie the others once againN’@ !he

willingness of a totally defeated people to learn more Fuicly has disappeared. !henarcissistic mentality of a complacent colossus in the middle of urope is no longer even

a guarantee that the unstable status Fuo in the $ will be preserved.'

"orse yet, uropean unification remains an elite pro0ect. (ie the internet, urope has

created no public sphere in which citi/ens can express their views freely and without

regard to status. How can this be changed4 Habermas argues that &a co)ordination of

the economic policies in the euro/one would also lead to an integration of policies in

other sectors. Here what has until now tended to be an administratively driven pro0ect

could also put down roots in the minds and hearts of the national populations.'

3ut that seems remote, especially as urope’s leaders revel in cross)border sniping. %or

instance, in -arch this year -erel told the 3undestag that it could become necessary to

throw debt)addled #reece out of the euro/one. Habermas attacs her, saying8 &*uch a

lac of solidarity would certainly scupper the whole pro0ect @ !here can be no better

illustration of the new indifference of the new %ederal epublic than her insensitivity to

the disastrous impact of her words in the other member states.'

"hy does Habermas pin so much hope on an integrated urope4 "hy not plump for a

neo)liberal networ of uropean states, each 0ust one, selfish player in a capitalistic

world4 &Aside from the insensitivity to the external costs of the social upheavals that

Dneo)liberal policyE casually taes for granted,' he replies, &what annoys me is the lac of

a historical understanding of the shifts in the relationship between the maret and )political power.

&*ince the beginning of the modern period, expanding marets and communications

networs had an explosive force, with simultaneously individualising and liberating

conseFuences for individual citi/ensK but each such opening was followed by a

reorganisation of the old relations of solidarity within an expanded institutional

framewor.' !his is typical Habermas8 instead of wallowing in the hopelessness of a

-arxist)inspired philosopher confronted with capitalism ; endlessly rampant and

utterly destructive of the ind of egalitarian politics he wants to see ; he tells a story

about the past that seems to suggest things aren’t as hopeless as he fears. &!ime andagain, a sufficient eFuilibrium between the maret and politics was achieved to ensure

that the networ of social relations between citi/ens of a political community was not

damaged beyond repair. According to this rhythm, the current phase of financial

maret)driven globalisation should also be followed by a strengthening of the

international community.'



Habermas always finds reasons to be positive, to mutate from assandra into Collyanna.

And not 0ust a uropean Collyanna, but a global one. &!oday we need institutions

capable of acting on a global scale,' he tells me. &"e can see that the noble resolutions of

the #>2 summit in (ondon on stoc maret oversight and regulation of the financial

marets remain empty words without worldwide political co)ordination. !he tentativemeasures undertaen by individual national governments in this area are condemned to

failure for obvious reasons.'

!here is an Irish story about a driver who ass a passerby how to get to :ublin. &If I

wished to go to :ublin,' comes the reply, &I wouldn’t start from here.' 3ut we have to

start from here, Habermas realises, even if we are hobbled by egotistical nation states, a

trivia)obsessed media, citi/ens incapable of forming an intelligent public sphere able to

monitor political elites. "hether the ideals he yearns for ; communicative rationality,

uropean integration, an eFuitable world order, citi/ens to share his high)mindedness

rather than tweet his thoughts ; will materialise is debatable. 3ut even in his ninth

decade, Habermas won’t yield to despair.

-emonstrators &%as wit )tens riot !o%i&e in ar& during a !rotest against government

austerity measures

The cost and challenge of the eurozone debt crisis

"#rgen $abermas%s responses in full

In &''(! you publishe) a boo* entitle) Ach! Europa +publishe) in the ,- as Europe:

The Faltering Proect./ $o0 )oes 1reece%s )ebt crisis )eepen the 0orries you e2presse)

there for the future of the European proect3



#reece’s debt crisis has had a welcome political side)effect. At one of its weaest

moments, the uropean $nion has been plunged into a discussion concerning the

central problem of its future development. !he crisis shifts the focus of public discussion

; and not only in the business sections of our national papers ; of an issue that many

regard as the birth defect of an incomplete political union stuc in midstream. A common maret with a partially shared currency has evolved within an economic /one

of continental scale with a huge populationK but uropean)level institutions with

sufficient powers to ensure effective co)ordination of the economic policies of the

member states have not been created. !hat the debt crisis and the unstable euro at least

touch upon the pivotal Fuestion could reflect a trace of the cunning of reason8 is a

stability pact riddled with holes sufficient to counterbalance the unintended

conseFuences of a planned asymmetry between economic and political unification4

!he collapse of the *panish real estate maret shows that the problem is more than a

matter of cheating by the #rees. !he commissioner for monetary affairs, 7lli ehn, has

good reasons to call for rights of consultation and intervention for the uropean

ommission in national budget planning.

1ermany%s finance minister! 4olfgang Sch5uble! has a)vocate) the creation of a

European 6onetary Fun) that coul) provi)e ai) in future crises/ Is that feasible or

)esirable3 Can Europe effectively resist the )epre)ations of speculative capitalism that

have threatene) to ban*rupt 1reece an) )estroy the euro7one3

!he current threat throws light on a fundamental problem because it affects the deeper

conflict within the $ between integrationists and, let me say, maret uropeans. At its

most recent sitting, the uropean ouncil established a &tas force' under the

leadership of its president Herman Oan ompuy, which is expected to develop proposalsfor avoiding future state banruptcies. *chPuble’s plan for auropean -onetary

%und will play a role in this process, 0ust as will the insistence of the uropean

ommission on greater influence over the budget planning of the member states. It is

important to recognise the ambiguity of both initiatives. In each case the declared

intention is only to create instruments within the framewor of the treaties to ensure

more effective compliance with the stability pact. 7n the other hand, the enhanced

inspection and control rights that would either be attached to loans or permanently

exercised by the ommission can also be understood as a starter drug for developing an

economic government, at least in the euro/one. !he $ finance commissioner wouldlie to inspect the draft budgets of the national governments even before they are

submitted to the national parliaments. *ince budgetary law is the core of parliamentary

democracy, such a prior right of inspection of the ommission would be far from

harmless and reFuire a further shift of competences towards the uropean Carliament.

Angela 6er*el tol) the Bun)estag that e2isting E, rules 0ere not strong enough to

)eal 0ith the crisis triggere) by 1reece! an) that in such circumstances it may be

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/6d331680-a9cc-11dd-958b-000077b07658.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c36bf126-2d41-11df-9c5b-00144feabdc0.html


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/6d331680-a9cc-11dd-958b-000077b07658.html





necessary to thro0 a country out of the euro7one/ Is she right3 An) 0hat 0oul) be the

consequences for the European proect3

*uch a lac of solidarity would certainly scupper the whole pro0ect. 7f course, -erel’s

statement was intended at the time for domestic consumption in the run)up to the

important regional election in Lorth hine)"estphalia. 3ut there can be no betterillustration of the new indifference of the new %ederal epublic than her insensitivity to

the disastrous impact of her words in the other member states. -erel is a good

example of the phenomenon that &gut politicians who were ready to tae domestic

political riss for urope are a dying breed'. !his is a Fuotation from Jean)laude

Juncer, himself one of the last pro)uropean dinosaurs. Admittedly, Angela -erel

grew up in ast #ermany and the hinelander Jürgen üttgers Danother :$

politicianE would not spea lie her. 3ut #erman intransigence has deeper roots. Apart

from Joscha %ischer, who ran out of steam too Fuicly, the generation of rulers in

#ermany since the chancellorship of #erhard *chrQder has pursued an inward)looing

national policy. I don’t want to overestimate the role of #ermany in urope. 3ut the

breach in mentalities which set in after Helmut Rohl has ma0or significance for urope.

"ithin the constellation following the second world war, the cautious pursuit of

uropean unification was in the country’s interests because it wanted to return to the

fold of civilised nations in the wae of the Holocaust. It looed lie the "est #ermans

would have to come to terms with the partition of the country in any case. -indful of the

conseFuences of their former nationalistic excesses, they had no difficulty in

relinFuishing the recovery of sovereignty rights and, if necessary, maing concessions

that would in any case pay off for the %ederal epublic. !his perspective has changed

since the reunification. !he #erman elites seem to be en0oying the comforts of self)satisfied national normalcy8 &"e can be lie the others once againN' I don’t share

-argaret !hatcher’s one)time fear that this &normalisation' of public consciousness

entails the return of old dangers. 3ut a total defeat connected with an inconceivable

moral corruption also created an opportunity for the following generation to learn more

Fuicly. (ooing at our present political elite, this window of opportunity seems to be

closed. !he narcissistic mentality of a self)satisfied colossus in the middle of urope is

no longer even a guarantee that the unstable status Fuo in the $ will be preserved.

4hy is maintaining the euro7one important for the future of Europe as a political

proect3 conomic unification is the core of political unification. 7n the continent, we already

experienced this during the 5?th)century processes of national unification. In complete

contrast to that time, however, uropean unification remains to this day an elite pro0ect.

"e have yet to experience a uropean election in which the outcome turned on anything

other than national topics and ticets. $ntil the -aastricht treaty, the unification

process was also, if not primarily, driven by economic interests. *ince the interests of

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7351855e-521f-11df-8b09-00144feab49a.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7351855e-521f-11df-8b09-00144feab49a.html



the &maret uropeans' were satisfied at that time, the economic impulses driving a

further deepening of the institutions have lost their dynamism. !he eastward

enlargement of the $ was an historic achievement. 3ut the arduous repairs undertaen

in the (isbon treaty revealed the limits of an elitist approach to issues of political

integration above the heads of the national populations. !he financial crisis hasreinforced national egoisms even further but, strangely enough, it has not shaen the

underlying neo)liberal convictions of the ey players. !oday, for the first time, the

uropean pro0ect has reached an impasse. Imagine the improbable scenario of a co)

ordination of the economic policies of the euro/one countries which would also lead to

an integration of policies in other sectors. Here what has until now tended to be an

administratively driven pro0ect would also tae root in the hearts and minds of the

national populations. !he symbolic power of a common foreign policy would certainly

promote a cross)border awareness of a shared political fate and bolster a further

democratisation of the $.

4hat is abhorrent to you about a neo8liberal net0or* of European states! each ust

one selfish player in a capitalistic 0orl)3

I am no expert concerning the economic controversies over the doctrine of the hicago

*chool. 3ut what annoys me ; aside from the insensitivity of neo)liberal policy to the

external costs of the social upheavals that it callously taes for granted ; is the lac of a

historical understanding of the shifts in the relationship between the maret and

political power. -ore than half a century ago, Rarl Colanyi described capitalist

development as an interplay between a functionally necessitated opening of society

followed in each case by an integrative closure at a higher level. *ince the beginning of

the modern period, expanding marets and communications networs had an explosiveforce, with individualising and liberating impacts on individual citi/ensK but each such

opening was followed by a reorganisation of the old relations of solidarity within an

expanded institutional framewor. !ime and again, a sufficient eFuilibrium between the

maret and politics was achieved to ensure that the networ of social relations between

citi/ens of a political community was not damaged beyond repair. According to this

rhythm, the current phase of financial)maret)driven globalisation should also be

followed by a strengthening not only of the uropean $nion but of the international

community. !oday, we need institutions capable of acting on a global scale. "e can see

that the noble resolutions of the #>2 summit in (ondon on stoc maret oversight andregulation of the financial marets remain empty words without worldwide political co)

ordination. !he tentative measures undertaen by individual national governments in

this area are condemned to failure for obvious reasons.

Stuart "effries is a freelance 0riter

a rare interview with jürgen habermas

Documents