Modernity

Conflict and Modernity Continued: Jeremy Hamilton Following Dahrendorf and Collins, Habermas continues with his own ideas of modernity. Early on in his essay Habermas initially critiques the functions of capitalism and how it exists. Habermas’ idea is to guiding the collective life through reason. This means that he wants people to be able to think and reason for themselves without the influence of ideologies (p 245). Habermas begins with defining the forms of capitalism, one being liberal and the other organized. Liberal captialism is where the state and capitalism has a lassez-faire relationship. A lassez-faire relationship between the two is where the state does not get involved and allows the competition to compete. This idea also believes that competition would bring out the best in people and develop in equal society where the presence of inequality in social class does not exist (p. 250). However two issues behind capitalism have occurred. One being monopolization, which is domination of a market or commodities to the exclusion of others, and fluctuation due to over production. Because of these two negative impacts of capitalism the state is forced to get involved and the development an “organized capitalism.” Organized capitalism has an active government that spends heavily and manages the economy. Government getting involved causes three major issues that weaken the progress of modernity. The first of the three negative causes is the crisis of rationality. Now that the state is involved in managing the economy people believe that the economies failure is because of the state and not the faults of the economy and therefore this threatens the legitimacy of the state. For example in the past 8 years our economy has declined in the united states. We as people believe that it is the fault of our previous administration. However Habermas will say that the real issue is capitalism itself, but people would believe the problem is in the state. The second negative cause against modernity is the colonization of the life world. What this means is power and money replace communications and consensus as the chief values of the world. For instance people would have more of a focus on gaining power and prestige rather then personal values, such as ethics that protect form monopolization (p. 252). The third cause that destroys modernity is what Habermas calls the reduction of the public sphere This is the notion that media uses entertainment to control the public opinion. For example BET and MTV usually play a list of songs repetitively that is dumb down for the audience. However intellectual songs are not being played and if they are they usually are played during the hours where no one is watching. Therefore the opinions of teens and other viewers are influenced on both music or even sometimes differences between right and wrong (p. 255). Hobermas also believes that the hope of social progress and equality can only be embraced through communicative action and a robust of civil society. Communication is based on several assumptions: The first assumption is that communication gives us rationality to guide our collective lives. Once communication occurs, full equality is granted and each person is seen as legitimate or a valid statement. Also status, money, and power are not used in a way to persuade members of society (p. 258). Overall Habermas believes that a civil society is most likely to develop under a liberal culture that emphasizes on education, communication, and equality. And he also believes that state’s power should be limited.