Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Alessandro Pinzani: Habermas and Capitalism

New essay by Alessandro Pinzani:

"Habermas and Capitalism: An Historic Overview" [PDF]

(Cadernos de Filosofia Alemã, vol. 27, no. 2 (2022), pp. 51-68)


AbstractThe article reconstructs Habermas’ view of capitalism from the 1970s to his most recent writings. It takes its starting point from Wolfgang Streeck’s claim that Habermas has failed to acknowledge that the real enemy of democracy is not bureaucracy but capitalism and that, therefore, he underestimates the role of capitalism in shaping the global order. It first returns to the diagnoses of late capitalism that Habermas developed in the 1970s and early 1980s and then moves on to some of his later writings. This will reveal that there was indeed a shift of emphasis from a critique of capitalism to a critique of technocracy, but not because of Habermas’ unawareness of the role of capitalism in shaping reality. Rather, he has come to objectify capitalism while looking for legal and political tools for reining it in instead of looking for possible alternatives to it.

Alessandro Pinzani is a professor of ethics and political philosophy at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil. He is the author of "Jürgen Habermas" (München: C.H. Beck, 2007), and (together with Walquiria Leão Rego) "Money, Autonomy and Citizenship. The Experience of the Brazilian Bolsa Família" (Basel: Springer, 2019).


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