Nov 18, 4:30 PM: Nancy Fraser, "Legitimation Crisis? Political Contradictions of ...

Nancy Fraser, Legitimation crisis? Political contradictions of financialized capitalism Numerous phenomena suggest a serious crisis of democracy: for example, declining electoral turnout; the rise of extremist parties; widespread disaffection with the European Union; steep narrowing of real policy differences between competing parties as nearly all rush to placate “the markets”; increased capture of public powers by private interests; growing geopolitical irrationality, reflecting the decline of US hegemony. No wonder, then, that diagnoses of political crisis proliferate: we hear now of “post-democracy,” “de-democratization,” “the crises of democratic capitalism,” and “façade democracy.” I suggest that these phenomena are best understood as expressions, under historically specific contemporary conditions, of a general tendency to political crisis that is intrinsic to capitalist societies. I elaborate this thesis in three steps. First, I propose a general account of “the political contradiction of capitalism,” without reference to particular historical forms. Then, I reconstruct Jürgen Habermas’s 1973 book, Legitimation Crisis, as an account of the form this political contradiction assumed in one specific phase of capitalist society, namely state-managed capitalism. Finally, I argue that democracy’s present travails express capitalism’s political contradiction in its current phase of financialized, globalizing capitalism.

Date: November 18, 2014
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM