Habermas and the Politics of the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Habermas’s analysis of the problems resulting from the welfare state “taming” of capitalism were formulated in the 1970s and early 1980s. The world has, of course, dramatically altered its trajectory since then. The collapse of communist regimes in Europe, the deepening of the ties of the European Union, and the global unleashing of neoliberal policies by the International Monetary Fund and other agencies present new issues that displace the previously analyzed ones from attention, albeit without eliminating them. Habermas explores these developments in his contemporary political writings, articulating a political project, now on an international scale, that would protect the advances of the welfare state without corrupting the dynamic of a global market economy. Although he retains his ambivalence regarding the welfare state, with the collapse of state socialism he considers this option “the only one remaining.”¹