01 Arnason (jl/d)

4/10/00 1:28 pm

Page 1

GLOBALISM, IDEOLOGY AND

TRADITIONS
Interview with Jrgen Habermas

Johann P. Arnason: I would like to discuss some themes and issues

in your most recent work, with particular reference to the German background. We might begin with the point that Germany is the only case of a
nation-state reunified after the collapse of communism and the end of the
Cold War. Our view of this development will, of course, depend on more
general assumptions about the contemporary world, with regard to the global
context as well as the prospects of the nation-state. On the former issue, you
seem on the whole to side with those who accept a strong version of
globalization theory and argue that a left alternative to currently dominant
policies can only be envisaged within a global framework. There are,
however, some reasons to question the conventional wisdom on globalization: as the work of critical analysts (especially David Held and his associates) has made clear, the most widely accepted ideological constructs
exaggerate the novelty of present trends, ignore the internal contradictions
of the global transformations in progress, and oversimplify the relationship
between global dynamics and the nation-state. Would it not be appropriate
to see globalism as a new ideological formation particularly effective in
imposing conformist premises on the critics of neoliberalism? And how far
can the traditional approach of critical theory serve to clarify the sources and
roles of this new ideology?
Jrgen Habermas: In many contexts, globalism functions indeed as
an ideology. Never before has an epistemic community had an impact like
that of the Chicago school on policy making across the world. The neoliberal
influence on setting the agenda for national governments is obvious. Within
the OECD world, there is hardly any government refusing the usual mix of
deregulation, in particular deregulation of labour markets, of lowering taxes,
balancing public households and trimming welfare-state regulations. This
package is sold to the broader public with the argument that the pressures
Thesis Eleven, Number 63, November 2000: 110
SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Copyright 2000 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Pty Ltd
[0725-5136(200011)63;110;014384]

01 Arnason (jl/d)

4/10/00 1:28 pm

Page 2

Thesis Eleven (Number 63 2000)

from global competition and international financial markets do not leave any
other choice. So, the balance of power keeps shifting in one direction in
favour of players participating in the global game, leaving the usual suspects
on the losing side. One might call the influence of neoliberal ideas ideological, in so far as the reference to the inescapability of market pressures
not only prevents people from countervailing actions, but even discourages
attempts to maintain at least the existing capacity for political intervention.
The disarming move is disguised as an appeal to emancipation the market
promises to unleash the imagination and the initiative of the individual from
the entanglement in all sorts of constraints.
The ideological core of neoliberalism is the tacit reduction of democratic
constitutionalism to the implementation of economic liberties. The substitution
of the private autonomy of producers and consumers for the political autonomy of citizens proceeds in tandem with the replacement of political regulation by the imperatives of deregulated markets. There is not only a growing
disparity of the opportunity structures of winners and losers, but the growing disparity in actual living conditions between players and those who are
no longer participating in the game at all the marginalized and superfluous
sections of the population.
At the same time, a new mental attitude is spreading, which is an
equivalent for the kind of fatalism we know from ancient empires. The old,
religiously based fatalism of the illiterate masses of peasants penetrated the
whole of a patterned life; the new, secular fatalism of the present crowd of
young, beaming, dynamic and well-educated rational choosers is only the
reverse side of a mobile and highly individualized, yet privatistic lifestyle,
bolstering a deferential attitude to the contingencies of fatefully shifting
market forces on which the ranges of options depend.
However, there are at least three reasons for not going ahead with a
reanimation of the good old critique of ideology. The present situation is, in
a way, so transparent that there is, first, no need for a suspicious disclosure
of concealed truths you need not even read the Financial Times or the
Frankfurter Allgemeine, every middle-brow local paper contains on the front
pages the necessary information. It should be clear for everybody, that the
recent or not quite so recent acceleration in transnational trade, direct
investment and flow of capital is the intended result of political agreements
that have led via several Gatt Rounds to an economic regime which is
represented by institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund, etc. That means, secondly, that globalism is not only an ideology. We in fact observe a shift in the structure of
capitalism from an international to a transnational disposition. As I read it, the
recent work of David Held and his collaborators (especially the collective
work on global transformations, published last year by Polity Press) supports
the view that we should take a variety of trends towards globalization seriously.

01 Arnason (jl/d)

4/10/00 1:28 pm

Page 3

Habermas: Interview

In connection with rather optimistic perceptions of that transformation,

a new mentality emerged, now spilling over even into normative political
theory. This is my third reservation: the normative standards of old-style
ideology-critique are no longer taken for granted. The kind of egalitarian universalism that expressed the moral and practical self-understanding of the
West since the late 18th century is under attack from postmodern liberals and
old conservatives alike. Instead of more critical deconstruction, we rather
need constructive efforts for which the Left if there is anything left is not
very well prepared. This is not a plea for straight normative political theory.
I am pleading for a mix of political economy and political theory opening a
perspective from which we not only learn how to adapt to, but also how to
cope with the undesired consequences of globalization processes. There is
something to Hobsbawms diagnosis of the Golden Age. During a brief
social democratic period, following World War II, a precarious balance
between the media of political power, money and solidarity has been established only of course within the favoured region of the happy few nations.
How is it possible to reestablish a similar balance beyond the nation-state on
a transnational scale without running too quick too far ahead towards too
abstract an idea of global democracy? In The Postnational Constellation, I
have argued for such a research perspective.
Johann P. Arnason: As for the nation and the nation-state, your position seems based on a strong version and an evolutionist reading of the distinction between ethnic and civic nationhood: the symbiosis of the
constitutional state with the nation as a hereditary community was a transitional phase that can and should be overcome, and in the German context,
constitutional patriotism would be the only adequate response to postunification problems. Here it is tempting to suggest that a closer look at the
ongoing debate on nationalism might complicate the picture. The massive
growth of theoretical and historical scholarship on nationalism in the 1990s
has in many ways modified earlier approaches to the field. The stark contrast between civic and ethnic images of the nation has been called into question: the contextual and often unacknowledged aspects of civic models, as
well as the complex relationship between ethnic origins and historical processes of nation formation, make it difficult to defend a polarizing model (be
it in the sense of geocultural alternatives or evolutionary phases). At the same
time, the contested character of the national community the struggle
between rival images and interpretations has been highlighted, and the
adaptability of nationalist attitudes to changing ideological and political patterns is now more widely understood. In light of these results, should we not
allow for the possibility that German nationalism might reassert itself in ways
that would differ from both constitutional patriotism and the uncompromising particularisms of the past? Some observers outside Germany have speculated on the idea of a green nationalism: do you see this as a serious
suggestion? When a Green foreign minister invokes Stresemann as a partial

01 Arnason (jl/d)

4/10/00 1:28 pm

Page 4

Thesis Eleven (Number 63 2000)

role model, is it inconceivable that the European corrective could in the long
run turn out to be a detour towards a more considered affirmation of the
nation-state?
Jrgen Habermas: Maybe I am just too old. But from reading the
recent literature on liberal nationalism I havent got the impression that there
is so much new to learn. Of course, within different national contexts, and
on different historical paths, the interaction of state and nation building took
different courses, producing different patterns for the mix of ethnic and civic
elements. But from a normative point of political theory, and that was my
viewpoint in Inclusion of the Other, the stark contrast between civic and
ethnic images of the nation is simply a matter of conceptual clarity.
Nationalist reactions to the decomposition of the Soviet Empire, as well as
disastrous religious and ethnic conflicts in other parts of the world certainly
need explanations, yet in most cases the familiar types of explanation will
work. On the other hand, the ubiquitous trend towards heterogeneity in the
ethnic and religious composition of national populations, the trend towards
pluralism in modes of life, ethical orientations and world views constitute
a challenge for both the post-secular culture and the politics of constitutional states.
Traditional religions undergo a transformation into what Rawls calls
reasonable comprehensive doctrines while reasonable means that they
must provide, from an internal perspective of the believer, sufficient conceptual space for a self-reflexive relation of ones own belief to competing
religious as well as to secular knowledge claims. And democratic governments are pressed to adopt a politics of recognition including some constitutional patriotism. This is just another term for the common core of a
liberal political culture that has become decoupled from the majority culture
as far as it is necessary for allowing all citizens equally to identify each other
as members of the same political community. Constitutional patriotism is not
exhausted by a rational agreement on a set of abstract principles: it also
requires an emotional identification with the spectrum of competing interpretations of constitutional principles from within the thick context of the history
of ones own nation. The American, French or German kinds of patriotism
do not differ in the core of principles, but in the content of the narratives for
which these principles provide the points of reference.
As for the German case why should we opt for an alternative to the
kind of unexcited constitutional patriotism that fortunately has been developing in the end, at least in the old Bundesrepublik up to 198990? This year
marks a threshold, indeed, and not only for Germany. There was a discontinuation of political traditions also in the West, which has led 10 years later
to the rather artificial attempt of proclaiming a Berlin Republic or a Berlin
Generation. But this was no more than a short-lived media strategy of some
advisors for the newly elected RedGreen government. Joschka Fisher, the
present minister for foreign affairs, is immune against nationalist temptations

01 Arnason (jl/d)

4/10/00 1:28 pm

Page 5

Habermas: Interview

and knows very well that our national self-understanding should not lead
back to the Bismarck Reich, as some sentimental intellectuals of the New
Right advocate without much resonance. He knows that we can gain national
self-confidence only by looking forward to deeper connections with an
emerging European identity. Stresemann, who supported the Vlkerbund, is
a good model for that and not for the roving national emotions of some
nuts.
Johann P. Arnason: The historical varieties and vicissitudes of
nationalism are linked to changes in other dimensions of modernity.
Growing awareness of diversity within the modern world has led some
authors to speak of multiple modernities or varieties of modernity. In this
regard, the implications of the eastern European transformation are ambiguous: on the one hand, the demise of the Soviet model has put an end to the
rivalry of two alternative global modernities; but on the other hand, the
widely varying paths of post-communist development have drawn attention
to the importance of different historical legacies. In your Theory of Communicative Action, you developed a model of two main patterns of
modernization, but the comments on deviations from each of them could
perhaps be seen as an opening towards a more pluralistic approach. Does
your present agenda include a reexamination of this problematic? Once
again it might be seen as particularly relevant to the German situation: no
other country is faced with the problem of integrating the legacies of two
fundamentally different patterns of modernity, one of them defunct and the
other undergoing a difficult process of adaptation to changing global conditions, with the disastrous experience of a third abortive one still looming
large in collective memory.
Jrgen Habermas: The idea of multiple modernities does have an
appeal, if we look at striking cultural variations of social modernization processes. It always depends on the level of abstraction whether you perceive
more shared or more dividing features. In general, I suppose, we can expect
more convergence in some dimensions of social development than in cultural domains. Since after World War II we observe, particularly in western
societies, a convergence on similar infrastructures in trade and production,
traffic and communication, mass education, urbanization, etc. Even the
transformation of class and family structures follow the same pattern. But
with their expressive features national societies have at the same time preserved their own unmistakable physiognomy. The modes of life and the
mentalities reveal now as obvious as before the imprint of national history,
specific language and tradition. Cultural pluralism is not only a surface
phenomenon, it also shapes and colours the institutional framework of a
nation in general.
A new approach in political economy exemplified by the impressive
collection Contemporary Capitalism, edited a few years ago by J. R.
Hollingsworth and R. Boyer concentrates on the varieties of domestic

01 Arnason (jl/d)

4/10/00 1:28 pm

Page 6

Thesis Eleven (Number 63 2000)

arrangements for the economy. Globalization notwithstanding, national traditions and constellations seem still to have a heavy impact on the organization of firms, on labour institutions, forms of competition, monetary regimes,
etc. The model of our Rhenan Capitalism which recently has come under
severe pressure is just one example of regional differences in the mode of
institutionalizing markets an example of differences only within the Western
paradigm of capitalism. The differences between cultures are even more striking. The comparison between the embedding contexts of the economies in
the US and Japan was the beginning of a type of comparative intercultural
research that has rapidly extended onto other regions.
Your own studies have contributed to a field that has made us more
sensitive to the phenomena of multiple modernities. But the horizontal differences between cultures should not detract us from equally important differences in the vertical dimension of developmental stages. Comparisons in both
dimensions must be combined if we study, for example, the great divide we
in Europe face between Russia and the West a West including the centraleastern European countries that are candidates for inclusion in the EU.
You remind me of the theory that I published in the early 1980s. There,
in TCA, I mentioned two patterns of modernization prevailing at the time,
one of which is now defunct. Isnt the deeper problem that once lay behind
the Cold War competition between those two socioeconomic regimes still an
open problem for the surviving turbo-capitalism? I see the limitations of the
book elsewhere: it was still guided by the implicit assumption that national
societies, societies framed by a nation-state, provide the model for societies
in general. That view has rightly been challenged. The relevance of the postnational constellation is especially clear in view of the German situation. The
pressing problems arise not from internal, but from external challenges, the
adaptation to changing global conditions and the Europeanization of the politics of national governments. How we solve these problems will decide the
course of alternative futures. Whether you regret it or not, the transformation
of the society of the former GDR followed the path of a forced assimilation
to the economic, social and political patterns of the Bundesrepublik, a path
that did not leave any space for an integration of two legacies.
Johann P. Arnason: The problem of totalitarianism the concept and
the phenomenon is one of the questions reopened by the debate on multiple modernities. At the same time, global circumstances have changed and
our knowledge of intellectual history grown in ways conducive to more balanced discussion. The two types of regimes in question have both run their
course and can therefore more easily be compared than when one of them
seemed to be a going concern; reconstructions of prewar debates have made
it clear that the idea of totalitarian domination as a new kind of dictatorship
emerged, first and foremost, among the German Left in exile, and that the
main aim of those who pioneered the new approach was to develop an
interpretive framework that would allow an unprejudiced comparative

01 Arnason (jl/d)

4/10/00 1:28 pm

Page 7

Habermas: Interview

analysis of Nazism and Stalinism (cf. especially William D. Jones, The Lost
Debate). The dominant postwar theories of totalitarianism were based on
limited knowledge and one-sided use of these prior efforts. You have in the
past been consistently critical of all theories of totalitarianism; do you now
in light of changing perspectives and the present see any need to reconsider the issue? Given the twofold German background (direct experience
of two dictatorships, admittedly very different in both strength and kind, as
well as an early and decisive contribution to critical reflection), this question seems likely to be of interest to German theorists and historians for
some time to come.
Jrgen Habermas: I do not know the book you mention. The term
totalitarianism has fascist origins; in the early 1930s Ernst Forsthoff for
example made an affirmative use of it in his dissertation on the totalitarian
state. Soon afterwards Herbert Marcuse published a critical review of that
whole literature in one of the first issues of the Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung.
It is no surprise then that German scholars in exile developed a theory of
totalitarianism the Dialectics of Enlightenment is only a philosophical version
of it. I am telling you. But I would not regard the main authors of those
approaches that later on became most influential in the field as belonging to
the German Left neither Morgenthau, nor Friedrich or Hannah Arendt.
As for my own position, I am not hostile to the theory of totalitarianism across the board. I have in fact participated in the discussion on how to
come to terms with our double past (in A Berlin Republic). In these two essays
you will discover that I use the concept of totalitarianism equally for both
sides. What I am resisting is the oversimplified version of a Totalitarismustheorie that in an overly abstract fashion classifies political systems
according to four or five institutional criteria. As a student in the early 1950s,
I first became familiar with that version as an integral part of Cold War
rhetoric. At that time, the advocates of an antitotalitarian consensus simply
meant anticommunism. In the context of postwar Germany this term never
acquired the symmetric meaning it claims. I had not read Hannah Arendt
before I started writing Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. But
her analysis of totalitarian regimes in terms of the peculiar deformation of
communication structures has left visible traces in my own work. But it is not
until recently that I have seen beyond Furet the beginnings of an instructive, more or less unbiased comparison between Nazism and Stalinism, e.g.
by Ulrich Herbert (the Freiburg historian who has written a famous study on
Werner Best).
Johann P. Arnason: Although your work after 1989 has not returned
to the question of alternative modernities, it reflects the post-communist condition in other ways. Your reflections on political theory and the philosophy
of law, emphasizing the consubstantiality of human and civic rights and
defending a vision of radical democracy as the inbuilt telos of the Rechtsstaat,
are obviously inspired by a wish to vindicate the self-reforming capacities of

01 Arnason (jl/d)

4/10/00 1:28 pm

Page 8

Thesis Eleven (Number 63 2000)

Western societies, against those who draw conservative or regressive lessons

from the apparent triumph of the West. It might be suggested that this
approach reflects a broader redefinition of the divide between left and right.
On the one hand, streamlined neoliberal images of the victorious West have
gained a global ideological ascendancy and been exported to the post-communist world, often with disastrous results. On the other hand, reorientation
on the left often leads to a new understanding of possibilities of reform or
resistance, built into the institutional framework of the really existing West
(as distinct from its neoliberal projections). This rethinking may focus on the
unrealized potential of democracy, of European integration, or of the nationstate as an indispensable counterweight to global transformations. In a sense,
this trend continues an older tradition of leftist critique from Franz Borkenau to Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort turning against the myths
and mirages which had paralysed a large part of the Left, and towards a reinterpretation of the Western trajectory, with a view to rescuing its unfulfilled
promises from oblivion. Such reflections seem to presuppose a civilizational
perspective, whether explicit or not: the questions of the uniqueness, selftranscending potential and internal pluralism of the West or of successive
Western constellations reappear on the agenda. Do you see a need to relate
your work more explicitly to this context and perhaps to take issue with
those who have tried to revive civilizational theory as a framework for sociological analysis?
Jrgen Habermas: I could not do better than you in describing my
idea of radical reformism. This is exactly the orientation of a left social democrat of one more often than not to the left of the social democratic party
itself that I have had since many decades. I tend to see more of a continuity than you seem to imply.
Now, whether I should turn to a more explicit civilizational perspective depends on what you mean by the term. Theory of Communicative
Action provides at least the conceptual space for it. There I have introduced
culture on a par with society and personality structure as the constitutive
elements of the lifeworld. But your suggestion is right. The problematic
future of the European Union, the lack of a European public sphere and the
question of a common political culture or European identity push me much
more in the direction of an historically informed study of the cultural
resources and, maybe, unique potentials for a self-transformation that European countries now jointly face as their challenge. The confessional split
resulting from the Reformation has been a goad to mental developments and
political innovations, for new modes of reflexivity, which now gain an
exemplary value for post-secular societies for modern societies where
religion does not go away and where Weltanschauungspluralismus in
general has become a persisting feature. Well, this might be one reason for
what I plan to do returning to a comparison of world religions.
Johann P. Arnason: Your work on modernity has been accompanied

01 Arnason (jl/d)

4/10/00 1:28 pm

Page 9

Habermas: Interview

by critical reconstruction of philosophical and sociological traditions. A recent

text, summarizing earlier discussions, seems to place a particularly strong
emphasis on the internal logic of the German tradition, from Kant and Hegel
through Weber and Weberian Marxism to Heidegger. Webers starting point
is explicitly compared to Hegels: both are concerned with the loss of
meaning brought about by the dissolution of traditional world views, but
instead of the Hegelian quest for reconciliation through reintegration, Weber
opted for a radicalization of Kantian perspectives. This led him to thematize
the conflicts and paradoxes which Marxists drawing on his work first hoped
to overcome (Lukcs) and then reinterpreted in a more extreme vein (Adorno
and Horkheimer). Heideggers radical detranscendentalizing turn, resulting in
the absorption of reason by its other, appears as an offshoot of the same tradition (later revived by the postmodernists). The whole narrative centres on
a progressively discovered, repeatedly misconstrued but potentially selfcorrecting dialectic of the Enlightenment. Would it add something to the story
or make it significantly different if we were to think of it as an ongoing
but fragmented dialogue between Enlightenment and Romanticism? A wellknown line of interpretation suggests that Kants third critique could be seen
as an opening move onto the terrain later explored by the Romantics; an
early reception of Romantic themes was crucial to the intellectual development of both Hegel and Marx; and is not the peculiarly aporetic and inconclusive character of Webers work in part due to an ambitious but incomplete
engagement with Romantic countercurrents?
Jrgen Habermas: For me, the powerful ideas of early romanticism
are a complement of, rather than an opposite to, the main current of the
Enlightenment or the dominant tradition of German Idealism from Kant and
Hegel to Marx. What Axel Honneth has described as an heritage of Lebensphilosophie in Adornos work goes in fact back to motives of the Frhromantik. I do not think that Adorno ever looked at my PhD thesis, but he
knew of it and was pleased by the fact that I had been working on Schelling.
Adorno liked to trace his own idea of an Eingedenken der Natur back to
Schelling. By the way, I think that Schelling is closest to the revolutionary
potential of romanticism neither in his early philosophy of nature nor in his
later philosophy of mythology, but during the intermediary phase especially at two points. In his System des transzendentalen Idealismus from 1800,
Schelling explains the cognitive role of the work of art, as the organon of an
intuitive grasp of the absolute, with the help of the conception of the unconscious long before Freud. While our dreams express unconscious contents
of the human soul, works of art articulate a kind of higher unconscious to
which we submit in contemplation. And 10 years later, 1810, is the only time
that Schelling develops, in his Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen, a radical, almost
anarchistic view of the state as a repressive agency that is to be overcome.
With regard to that heritage I am, however, more in agreement with
Adorno than with Benjamin. You can see in their correspondence during the

01 Arnason (jl/d)

10

4/10/00 1:28 pm

Page 10

Thesis Eleven (Number 63 2000)

1930s, how Adorno again and again points out to Benjamin the ambivalence
of those romantic motives, the reverse side of which reminded him of Klages
and other counter-enlightenment thinkers. I am fascinated by this dialogue.
To some people I appear as a pale rationalist and a bloodless neo-Kantian
problematic clichs anyway. You do not share this distorted image, but you
will perhaps need a piece of reassuring evidence. For this purpose I would
like to refer you to the last sentences of an article that I wrote in 1988 in
view of the coming bicentennial of the French Revolution:
Another kind of transcendence is preserved in the unfulfilled promise disclosed
by the critical appropriation of identity-forming religious traditions, and still
another in the negativity of modern art. The trivial and everyday must be open
to the shock of what is absolutely strange, cryptic, or uncanny. Though these
(experiences) no longer provide a cover for privileges, they refuse to be assimilated by pregiven categories. (Between Facts and Norms, p. 490)