Skip to main content

"It is not capitalism that is the problem in Habermas’s Europe, but its management. What is wrong with the Europe of monetary union, Habermas implies, is not that it is pro-capitalist, or subservient to capitalist interests, but that it is – contingently – non-democratic, thereby subverting the struggle against the real enemy, nationalism. Democracy is to correct this by making the demands of ordinary people heard as decision makers attend to ‘systemic demands’, refilling the system’s supply of legitimacy. No need to confront the increasingly insatiable demands of the profit-dependent classes for precedence of their interests over those of the rest of society. In fact class interests do not really appear in Habermasian European theory, only biased cognitions of decision makers in need of democratic correction." 

A critique of Jürgen Habermas's democratic Europe

Comments