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A Heroic Reconciliation of Freedom and Power: On the Tension between Democratic and Social Theory in the Late Work of Franz L. Neumann
Author(s) -
Buchstein Hubertus
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
constellations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1467-8675
pISSN - 1351-0487
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8675.00326
Subject(s) - democracy , von neumann architecture , power (physics) , work (physics) , citation , sociology , law , political science , mathematics , pure mathematics , politics , physics , quantum mechanics
Franz Neumann’s late writings offer today’s reader some of the most interesting and enigmatic connections of all his works. From 1949 to 1954, against the background of his experiences of the Weimar Republic, National Socialism, and emigration to the US, he could devote himself in depth to theoretical questions that for him had become particularly in need of answers. Thus were Neumann’s last years, which came to an abrupt end with his accidental death in fall 1954, ones of unusual openness and theoretical curiosity. At the center of his intellectual searching was a major question: how does democracy stand in relation to modern society? Neumann had a question in view that is once again being discussed by political scientists with particular concern. Despite this point of contact, however, the present day potential of Neumann’s late writings should not be overestimated. They are less suitable as a model for current attempts to link democratic and social theory than they are instructive in their weaknesses. In the following I would like to point out the problems and inconsistencies that Neumann encountered in his attempt to integrate his reflections on social and democratic theory in four steps. First, Neumann’s canonical assignment to Critical Theory affords an opportunity more closely to reexamine his position in the context of contemporary currents of Marxism (1). In the second part, I sketch Neumann’s reflections on democratic theory. His thesis is that democracy is the form of political rule that can reduce political alienation to a minimum (2). His diagnosis of modern democracies, however, stands in strange contrast to this optimistic view. Here Neumann describes a long-term crisis scenario for democracy and foresees an increase of political alienation as well as the erosion of the civic competencies constitutive of a functioning democracy (3). In the last step, I ask how Neumann tries to solve the dilemma of his democratic-theoretical and social-theoretical reflections. As my subtitle indicates, I take Neumann’s way of solving this problem to be unsatisfactory and contradictory (4).