The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays by Jürgen Habermas

Author:Jürgen Habermas [Habermas, Jürgen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2015-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

IV

I will begin by distinguishing between four positions on this question, according to the degree of support for a postnational democracy: Euroskeptics, Market Europeans, Eurofederalists, and proponents of “global governance.” Euroskeptics see the introduction of the euro as a fundamental mistake, or at least as premature. Market Europeans grudgingly accept the unified currency as a necessary consequence of the end of domestic markets, but do not want to go any further than that. Eurofederalists work toward transforming existing international treaties into a political constitution, in order to build a basis of legitimacy for the supranational decisions of commissions, ministerial councils, the European Court of Justice, and the European Parliament. Last come the representatives of the cosmopolitan alternative, who regard a Federal States of Europe as the initial basis for constructing the regime for a future “world domestic policy,” to be secured through international treaties. These four positions are the consequence of responses to a series of already established questions, and I will thus take up four of these questions that are decisive for framing the terms of the current debate.

First (a) is the thesis of the end of the labor-based society. If within the framework of normal labor relations, employment loses its formative power to structure society at large, then the recreation of a “full employment society” is no longer plausible as a political goal. But wide-ranging reforms of the employment system cannot be expected to succeed within the limits of national borders; they would require a coordinated effort through agreements and procedures on the supranational level. The question of the European Union also begins a new round in the old battle (b) between social justice and market efficiency. Neoliberals are convinced that global markets can both make economies more efficient and meet demands for redistributive justice; otherwise the option favored by Market Europeans, a loose union of existing nation-states integrated horizontally via a unified market, would lose all its plausibility. Third (c) is the question of whether the European Union can even begin to compensate for the lost competencies of the nation-state. As a test case, I will look at aspects of redistributive social policies. This question of the competence to act depends on another, analytically distinct question, (d): whether political communities form a collective identity beyond national borders, and thus whether they can meet the legitimacy conditions for a postnational democracy. If these two last questions can't be answered affirmatively, then a Federal States of Europe is ruled out, and with it the basis for any broader hopes.

The key terms that I use here can at best only help to characterize a discourse whose outcome cannot be predicted, and to assign a certain division of the burdens of proof. Only in this connection could one judge a “cosmopolitan” position, which calls for a renewed political closure of an economically unmastered world society.

(a) The trend toward increased productivity, which we can observe in all industrial societies, has continued in postindustrial societies as well; ongoing rationalization of production processes is

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