Modern Normativity and the Politics of Deregulation

Jucrgcn Habermas has recently made considerable strides in his understanding of the operations of late-capitalism and the types of political activities that are needed to transform the bureaucratic welfare state into a discursively mediated post-capitalist society. He attempts, nevertheless, to ground this program in normative standards that have developed coevally with the economic and political modes that he harshly criticizes: those of modernity. In the following paper 1 will argue that modern normativity is multi-dimensional, a feature ignored by Habermas that confounds the type of political agenda that he prescribes. In response I will suggest several reasons why a de-regulated form of politics is in order given his account of the late modern condition. 1 will also briefly highlight the main features of this model. * Habermas utilizes a theory of social evolution that demarcates three main phases: tribal, traditional and modern (TCA:2 156-172). The transition into the modern phase is characterized by decentralization of action orchestration through the development of both governmental and non-governmental subsystems. This is due partly to the emergence of a capitalist economy and the standardization of a monetary currency that serves as a medium of exchange between subsystems. The economy, as such, functions both as a medium of exchange between subsystems. The economy, as such, functions both as a subsystem and an interconnective substrata that coordinates relations within the subsystemic network. The state comes to rely on this coordinating mechanism which "forces it to reorganize and leads, among other things, to an assimilation of power to the structure of steering media: power becomes assimilated to money" (TCA:2 171). Hence, political power and economical power become inseparable. On the positive side this frees action coordination from the confines of traditional norms, creating the condition for rational-discursive political legitimation. On the negative side, the efficiency mandates of the capitalist economy lead to a delinguistificd mode of action coordination. Rather than discourse (as defined by Habermas), modernity is "steered" by the media money and power (TCA:2171-172). The prominence of steering media as coordinative devices weakens the capacity of the lifcworld to provide social integration. In Habermas* terms, the economic-political system is uncoupled from the