Legitimation Crisis

Jürgen Habermas

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780745606095
• eBook ISBN: 9780745694153
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

In this enormously influential book, Jurgen Habermas examines the deep tensions and crisis tendencies which underlie the development of contemporary Western societies and develops a powerful analysis of the legitimation problems faced by modern states.

Habermas argues that Western societies have succeeded to some extent in stabilizing the economic fluctuations associated with capitalism, but this has created a new range of crisis tendencies which are expressed in other spheres. States intervene in economic life and attempt to regulate markets, but they find themselves confronted by increasing and often conflicting demands. As individuals become increasingly disillusioned, the state is faced with the possibility of a mass withdrawal of loyalty or support - a 'legitimation crisis'.

Widely recognized as a classic of contemporary social and political analysis, Legitimation Crisis sheds light on a range of issues which are central to current debates, from the decline of class conflict and the disillusionment with established political institutions to the crisis of the welfare state. It remains essential reading for students of sociology, politics and the social sciences generally.

PART I

A Social-Scientific Concept of Crisis

Chapter 1

System and Life-World

To use the expression “late capitalism” is to put forward the hypothesis that, even in state-regulated capitalism, social developments involve “contradictions” or crises.¹ I shall therefore begin by elucidating the concept of crisis.

Prior to its employment as a social-scientific term, the concept of crisis was familiar to us from its medical usage. In that context it refers to the phase of an illness in which it is decided whether or not the organism’s self-healing powers are sufficient for recovery. The critical process, the illness, appears as something objective. A contagious disease, for example, is contracted through external influences on the organism; and the deviations of the affected organism from its goal state [Sollzustand]—the normal, healthy state—can be observed and measured with the aid of empirical parameters. The patient’s consciousness plays no role in this; how he feels, how he experiences his illness, is at most a symptom of a process that he himself can scarcely influence at all. Nevertheless, we would not speak of a crisis, when it is medically a question of life and death, if it were only a matter of an objective process viewed from the outside, if the patient were not also subjectively involved in this process. The crisis cannot be separated from the viewpoint of the one who is undergoing it—the patient experiences his powerlessness vis-à-vis the objectivity of the illness only because he is a subject condemned to passivity and temporarily deprived of the possibility of being a subject in full possession of his powers.

We therefore associate with crises the idea of an objective force that deprives a subject of some part of his normal sovereignty. To conceive of a process as a crisis is tacitly to give it a normative meaning—the resolution of the crisis effects a liberation of the subject caught up in it.

This becomes clearer when we pass from the medical to the dramaturgical concept of crisis. In classical aesthetics, from Aristotle to Hegel, crisis signifies the turning point in a fateful process that, despite all objectivity, does not simply impose itself from outside and does not remain external to the identity of the persons caught up in it. The contradiction, expressed in the catastrophic culmination of conflict, is inherent in the structure of the action system and in the personality systems of the principal characters. Fate is fulfilled in the revelation of conflicting norms against which the identities of the participants shatter, unless they are able to summon up the strength to win back their freedom by shattering the mythical power of fate through the formation of new identities.

The concept of crisis developed in classical tragedy also has a counterpart in the concept of crisis found in the idea of history as salvation.² This figure of thought entered the evolutionary social theories of the nineteenth century through the philosophy of history of the eighteenth century.³ Thus Marx developed, for the first time, a social-scientific concept of system crisis;⁴ it is against this background that we speak today of social or economic crises. When, for instance, we mention the great economic crisis of the early thirties, the Marxian overtones are unmistakable. But I do not wish to add to the history of Marxian dogmatics yet another elucidation of his crisis theory.⁵ My aim is rather to introduce systematically a social-scientifically useful concept of crisis.

In the social sciences today a systems-theoretic concept of crisis is frequently used.⁶ According to this systems approach, crises arise when the structure of a social system allows fewer possibilities for problem solving than are necessary to the continued existence of the system.⁷ In this sense, crises are seen as persistent disturbances of system integration. It can be objected against the social-scientific usefulness of this concept that it does not take into account the internal causes of a “systematic” overloading of control capacities (or of a “structural” insolubility of control problems). Crises in social systems are not produced through accidental changes in the environment, but through structurally inherent system-imperatives that are incompatible and cannot be hierarchically integrated. Structurally inherent contradictions can, of course, be identified only when we are able to specify structures important for continued existence. Such essential structures must be distinguishable from other system elements, which can change without the system’s losing its identity. The difficulty of thus clearly determining the boundaries and persistence of social systems in the language of systems theory raises fundamental doubts about the usefulness of a svstems-theoretic concept of social crisis.⁸

For organisms have clear spatial and temporal boundaries, their continued existence is characterized by goal values [Sollwerte] that vary only within empirically specifiable tolerances.⁹ Social systems, on the contrary, can assert themselves in an hypercomplex environment through altering either system elements or goal values, or both, in order to maintain themselves at a new level of control. But when systems maintain themselves through altering both boundaries and structural continuity [Bestand], their identity becomes blurred. The same system modification can be conceived of equally well as a learning process and change or as a dissolution process and collapse of the system. It cannot be unambiguously determined whether a new system has been formed or the old system has merely regenerated itself. Of course, not all systemic alterations in a social system are also crises. The range of tolerance within which the goal values of a social system can vary without critically endangering its continued existence or losing its identity obviously cannot be grasped from the objectivistic viewpoint of systems theory. Systems are not presented as subjects; but, according to the pre-technical usage, only subjects can be involved in crises. Thus, only when members of a society experience structural alterations as critical for continued existence and feel their social identity threatened can we speak of crises. Disturbances of system integration endanger continued existence only to the extent that social integration is at stake, that is, when the consensual foundations of normative structures are so much impaired that the society becomes anomic. Crisis states assume the form of a disintegration of social institutions.¹⁰

Social systems too have identities and can lose them; historians are capable of differentiating between revolutionary changes of a state or the downfall of an empire, and mere structural alterations. In doing so, they refer to the interpretations that members of a system use in identifying one another as belonging to the same group, and through this group identity assert their own self-identity. In historiography, a rupture in tradition, through which the interpretive systems that guarantee identity lose their social integrative power, serves as an indicator of the collapse of social systems. From this perspective, a social system has lost its identity as soon as later generations no longer recognize themselves within the once-constitutive tradition. Of course, this idealistic concept of crisis also has its difficulties. At the very least, a rupture in tradition is an inexact criterion, since the media of tradition and the forms of consciousness of historical continuity themselves change historically. Moreover, a contemporary consciousness of crisis often turns out afterwards to have been misleading. A society does not plunge into crisis when, and only when, its members so identify the situation. How could we distinguish such crisis ideologies from valid experiences of crisis if social crises could be determined only on the basis of conscious phenomena?

Crisis occurrences owe their objectivity to the fact that they issue from unresolved steering problems.¹¹ Identity crises are connected with steering problems. Although the subjects are not generally conscious of them, these steering problems create secondary problems that do affect consciousness in a specific way—precisely in such a way as to endanger social integration. The question then is, when do such steering problems arise? A social-scientifically appropriate crisis concept must grasp the connection between system integration and social integration. The two expressions “social integration” and “system integration” derive from different theoretical traditions. We speak of social integration in relation to the systems of institutions in which speaking and acting subjects are socially related [vergesellschaftet]. Social systems are seen here as life-worlds that are symbolically structured.¹² We speak of system integration with a view to the specific steering performances of a self-regulated system. Social systems are considered here from the point of view of their capacity to maintain their boundaries and their continued existence by mastering the complexity of an inconstant environment. Both paradigms, life-world and system, are important. The problem is to demonstrate their interconnection.¹³ From the life-world perspective, we thematize the normative structures (values and institutions) of a society. We analyze events and states from the point of view of their dependency on functions of social integration (in Parsons’s vocabulary, integration and pattern maintenance), while the non-normative components of the system serve as limiting conditions. From the system perspective, we thematize a society’s steering mechanisms and the extension of the scope of contingency.¹⁴ We analyze events and states from the point of view of their dependency on functions of system integration (in Parsons’s vocabulary, adaptation and goal-attainment), while the goal values serve as data. If we comprehend a social system as a life-world, then the steering aspect is screened out. If we understand a society as a system, then the fact that social reality consists in the facticity of recognized, often counterfactual, validity claims is not taken into consideration.

To be sure, the conceptual strategy of systems theory encompasses normative structures within its language; but it conceptualizes every social system from the point of view of its control center. Thus in differentiated societies, the political system (as a separate control center) assumes a superordinate position vis-à-vis the socio-cultural¹⁵ and economic systems. The following schema is taken from a working paper.¹⁶

Pre-Political Determinants of the Normative Systems

In the analytic framework of systems theory, social evolution (which takes place in three dimensions: development of productive forces; increase in system autonomy—power; and change in normative structures) is projected onto the single plane of the expansion of power through the reduction of environmental complexity. This projection is seen in Niklas Luhmann’s reformulation of fundamental sociological concepts. I have attempted elsewhere¹⁷ to demonstrate that validity claims constitutive for the cultural reproduction of life—such as claims to truth and to correctness/appropriateness [Richtigkeit/Amgemessenheit]—forfeit the sense of discursive redeemability [Einlösbarkeit] if they are comprehended as control media and placed on the same level with other media such as power, money, confidence, influence, etc. Systems theory can allow only empirical events and states into its object domain and must transform questions of validity into questions of behavior. Thus Luhmann always initiates the reconceptualization of such motions as knowledge and discourse, action and norm, domination and ideological justification, below the threshold of a possible differentiation between the performances of organic systems and of social systems. (In my opinion this is true even of Luhmann’s attempt to introduce “sense” and “negation” as differentiating fundamental concepts.) The advantages of a comprehensive conceptual strategy turn into the weaknesses of conceptual imperialism as soon as the steering aspect is rendered independent and the social-scientific object domain is narrowed to potentials for selection.

The conceptual strategy of action theory avoids these weaknesses. However, it produces a dichotomy between normative structures and limiting material conditions.¹⁸ At the analytical level, to be sure, there exists among the subsystems a rank order of socio-cultural, political, and economic systems; but within each of these systems the normative structures must be distinguished from the limiting substratum.

Subsystems	Normative Structures	Substratum Categories
Socio-cultural	status system; subcultural forms of life	distribution of privately available rewards and rights of disposition
Political	political institutions (state)	distribution of legitimate power (and structural force); available organizational rationality
Economic	economic institutions (relations of production)	distribution of economic power (and structural force); available forces of production

This conceptualization requires supplementing the analysis of normative structures with an analysis of limitations and capacities relevant to steering. “Supplementing” is, of course, too weak a requirement for crisis analysis, since what is demanded is a level of analysis at which the connection between normative structures and steering problems becomes palpable. I find this level in a historically oriented analysis of social systems, which permits us to ascertain for a given case the range of tolerance within which the goal values of the system might vary without its continued existence being critically endangered. The boundaries of this range of variation are manifested as boundaries of historical continuity.¹⁹ Of course, the flexibility of normative structures—that is, the range of variations that can occur without causing a rupture in tradition—does not depend solely, nor primarily, on consistency requirements of the normative structures themselves. The goal values of social systems are the product, on the one hand, of the cultural values of the constitutive tradition and, on the other, of the non-normative requirements of system integration. In the goal values, the cultural definitions of social life and the survival imperatives that can be reconstructed in systems theory, are connected. Adequate conceptual tools and methods have hitherto been lacking for an analysis of this connection.

Ranges of variation for structural changes obviously can be introduced only within the framework of a theory of social evolution.²⁰ To do this, the Marxian concept of social formation [Gesellschaftsformation] is helpful. The formation of a society is, at any given time, determined by a fundamental principle of organization [Organizationsprinzip], which delimits in the abstract the possibilities for alterations of social states. By “principles of organization” I understand highly abstract regulations arising as emergent properties in improbable evolutionary steps and characterizing, at each stage, a new level of development. Organizational principles limit the capacity of a society to learn without losing its identity. According to this definition, steering problems can have crisis effects if (and only if) they cannot be resolved within the range of possibility that is circumscribed by the organizational principle of the society. Principles of organization of this type determine, firstly, the learning mechanism on which the development of productive forces depends; they determine, secondly, the range of variation for the interpretive systems that secure identity; and finally, they fix the institutional boundaries for the possible expansion of steering capacity. Before Iillustrate this concept of an organizational principle with a few examples, I would like to justify the choice of the concept with reference to the constituents of social systems.

Chapter 2

Some Constituents of Social Systems

To begin with, I shall describe three universal properties of social systems:

a) The exchange between social systems and their environments takes place in production (appropriation of outer nature) and socialization (appropriation of inner nature) through the medium of utterances that admit of truth [wahrheitsfähiger Äusserungen] and norms that have need of justification [rechtfertigungsbedurftiger Normen]—that is, through discursive validity claims [Geltungsanspriiche]. In both dimensions, development follows rationally reconstructible patterns.

b) Change in the goal values of social systems is a function of the state of the forces of production and of the degree of system autonomy; but the variation of goal values is limited by a logic of development of world-views [Weltbilder] on which the imperatives of system integration have no influence. The socially related [vergesellschafteten] individuals form an inner environment that is paradoxical from the point of view of steering.

c) The level of development of a society is determined by the institutionally permitted learning capacity, in particular by whether theoretical-technical and practical questions are differentiated, and whether discursive learning processes can take place.

Re: a) The environment of social systems can be divided into three segments: outer nature, or the resources of the non-human environment; the other social systems with which the society is in contact; and inner nature, or the organic substratum of the members of society. Social systems set themselves off symbolically from their social environment. Unless universalistic morals are developed, this can take place in terms of the differentiation between in-group and out-group morality. This problem will not be taken up here. It is the processes with outer and inner nature that are decisive for the specific form in which socio-cultural life reproduces itself. These are processes of adapting to society [Vergesellschaftung] in which the social system “incorporates” nature. Outer nature is appropriated in production processes, inner nature in socialization processes. With developing steering capacity a social system extends its boundaries into...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Introduction
• Preface
• PART I: A Social-Scientific Concept of Crisis
• PART II: Crisis Tendencies in Advanced Capitalism
• PART III: On the Logic of Legitimation Problems
• Notes
• Index