Taking Back Control over Markets: Jürgen Habermas on the Colonization of Politics by Economics

Abstract

Recent developments have highlighted the tension between democracy and late capitalist economics. In the wake of the Great Recession, international market forces have increasingly taken de facto control of politics. My basic thesis is that a modified version of Jürgen Habermas’ colonization thesis, which opposes the takeover of social and political life by the forces of power (administration) and money (economics), productively conceptualizes these developments. I argue that this framework can help to both diagnose and combat the dangers associated with the overexpansion of functional systemic forces, as well as the broader instrumentalization that they promote. By drawing on his political writings on the future of the European Union after the crisis of the Eurozone, I oppose interpretations of Habermas as a pacified liberal by demonstrating that he shares Karl Marx’s commitment to combatting naturalized views of economics and material reproduction as a force that lie outside of human control.