From the autonomy of politics to the autonomy of the political

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УДК 32.001

From the autonomy of politics to the autonomy of the political

I. Sheiko

The article investigates both social and scientific processes that led to an emergence of a notion `the political' and its establishment as an accepted within the political science. The main attention is devoted to theories by Jurgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, and Ulrich Beck.

Keywords: politics, the political, autonomy, autonomization, industrial Modernity, reflexive Modernity, Jtirgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, Ulrich Beck.

social political autonomy

У статті розглянуто як суспільні, так і наукові процеси, що призвели до появи поняття «політичне» і стали причиною його усталення в політичній науці. Головну увагу приділено теоріям Ю. Габермаса, Н. Лумана та У. Бека.

Ключові слова: політика, політичне, автономія, автономізація, індустріальний Модерн, рефлексивний Модерн, Юрґен Г абермас, Ніклас Луман, Ульрих Бек.

The notion “the political” plays an important role in the contemporary political science. This article tries to analyze, which scientific and social processes induced an establishment of this notion. On one hand, the paradigm of how to understand political sphere of society is changing, on the other hand, such a change reflects not only the development in the theory, but also the transformation of social reality itself. Briefly, it is possible to formulate one of the central aspects of these processes as a loss of autonomy by politics and gain of autonomy by the political; this is the main point of the article. At the first glance, the characteristic is paradoxical, but it describes the basic essence of the analyzed processes. Autonomy of politics means a certain list of themes that are attributed to the political sphere, e. g., national security or taxation. The change within the list is possible only in the course of structural transformations in society, such as politicization of problems of justice and poverty during the establishment of a welfare state. Autonomy of the political stipulates an independent schema to choose themes to be political; change of these themes is permanent within the framework of the ongoing interaction of politicization and depoliticization processes.

The lack of attention to the issue of the political by Ukrainian political science can be stated, although this is a very important and topical subject for the European and international political science during last decades. The notion of the political was thematized and conceptualized by Carl Schmitt in his best-known paper Der Begriff des Politischen (The Concept of the Political) in 1927. Though Schmitt exerted considerable yet ambiguous influence on political science [17], it was not him who brought the subject of the political into the center of the scholar attention. According to Michael Hirsch [11, p. 90], French political thought starts researching the political at the beginning of the 1980th without references to Schmitt, the main role here plays Centre de Recherches Philosophiques sur le Politique (Center for Philosophical Research on the Political), guided by Philippe Lacoue- Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy. Within the scholar activity of the Center Jean-Francois Lyotard, Claude Lefort, Jacques Ranciere, Etienne Balibar, Jacques Derrida are trying to investigate the essence of the political in itself [11, p. 90]. They broke with the idea of progressive transformation of society via democratically made laws which reflects their attention not to explicit aspects of politics, but to latent [11, p. 85] - such inner and non-explicit content is stressed by the notion of the political (Ger. das Politische, Ukr. політичне). On the whole, the political can be stated as an established and generally adopted term of European and international political science.

While modern or, after Hirsch, reformist understanding of politics is based on the strict limitation of politics by the external legal regulation of social relations in the sense of Kantian theory of law (Rechtslehre), the above formulated by the left theoreticians notion of post-reformist and post-revolutionary politics is characterized by softening (Aufweichung) and expansion (Ausweitung) of the political [11, p. 85-86]. Chantal Mouffe [14, p. 53] speaks of an “agreement on the importance of enlarging the domain of politics” between theories, formulated by her and Ernesto Laclau on one hand, and by Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens on the other. Yet this consent includes not only them, but the above mentioned French philosophers and many other contemporary theoreticians either.

Such a latent side of politics is dominant in the theory by Schmitt: it is concerned not so much about political organization (Einrichtung) of society, as about forming a political community or unity [11, p. 86]. Schmitt stresses symbolical function of political power as compared with material and factual functions (Ibid.). Hirsch [11, p. 89-90] draws a parallel between search of pure intrinsic essence of the political by Schmitt and the processes of the last quarter of the 20th century, viz., renunciation of progressive transformation of social relations via democratic reforms and an emergence of extraparliamentary grassroots democratic movements that get their legitimation by distancing from the traditional institutions of political system and legal instruments of its functioning. Feminist, green, or pirate movements could be named as the illustration.

Wide popularity of monarchy in Europe is an example for a particular significance of the symbolic function of politics in the contemporary world. It was easy to see during the celebration in Amsterdam of abdication by Queen Beatrix and handing over to her eldest son Willem-Alexander: the participants said that monarchy is an important part of Dutch identity, “a point of stability and unity” [10]. Replying to the anti-monarchists complaints that the monarchy costs too much for the taxpayers, one of the participants said: “This is not a waste of money. We all need a good party and to feel good” [10]. Even more significative are the words of an antimonarchist activist: “Monarchy is a fairy tale, but the real fairy tale is that Barack Obama can become president of the United States. That is the fairy tale of democracy” [10].

For Schmitt the political has no own subject area (Sachgebiet) [15, p. 25], but is an intensity grade of association or dissociation (Intensitatsgrad einer Assoziation oder Dissoziation) [15, p. 26]. The political as a sphere without its own subject area gains credibility and plausibility in the context of present views on society as an order without center or apex (Spitze) [11, p. 87].

Politics as a sphere of transiency and liquidity [3, p. 128] was viewed by Schmitt's contemporary Karl Mannheim; however, they both remained within the paradigm of industrial Modernity, e. g., due to distinction of everyday state life from politics [3, p. 129]. This pertains to Ernst-Wolfgang Bockenforde either. In 1972 he defends the difference of state and civil society, distinguishing public tasks that are necessary state tasks, e. g., justice, police, defense; public tasks that could be proclaimed as state ones, e. g., schools and education; and tasks, carried out exclusively by civil society, e. g., press, religion or Weltanschauung [6, p. 419-420]. Niklas Luhmann [13, p. 83], on the contrary, calls such listings of political functions unsatisfactory and defines a function of political subsystem of society as a readiness of capacity to collective binding decision (“Bereithalten der Kapazitat zu kollektiv bindendem Entscheiden”) [13, p. 84].

According to Hirsch, the political legitimation of goals and the formal-legal legitimation of state authority are being replaced by immanent ontological legitimation, since the process justifies itself and conflict becomes a goal in itself [11, p. 88]. In this sense Schmitt, Laclau, Mouffe, Derrida, and Lefort are speaking of the autonomy of the political which means that politics does not need any justification, because the political is a category of life (Lebendigkeit) and existence [11, p. 88]. Hirsch [11, p. 108] explains that Kantian enlightenment thesis towards politics lies in a strict differentiation of political (legal) and ethical (religious) communities; correspondingly, the theories of the political are striving to reject such thesis and overcome both the concentration of politics only in the procedures of democratic lawmaking and neglect of ethical, religious, and aesthetical aspects of politics.

Possibly, it was a result of Schmitt's ostracism and his negative image among German post-war scholars that the notion of the political was not so broadly present in German political science as in the French one; nevertheless, the term is used and, what is more important, the subject of the political is topical. Consequently, there is a need to investigate, how important this problematique is for the contemporary German scholar milieu. In order to accomplish this, the attention will be concentrated on three theories: by Jtirgen Habermas, Luhmann, and Beck, as theories which impact, influence, and significance for social sciences is undoubtful.

Modernity epoch is characterized by distinction of different spheres of social life. The gradual emancipation of science from theology and politics from both religion and moral takes place from its beginning. The processes of industrialization and establishment of capitalism accomplish emancipation of economy both from politics and moral. Luhmann calls such a process of separation of different social subsystems a functional differentiation. Though every function is being accomplished only by one subsystem [13, p. 76-77] and there are no functional equivalents outside every subsystem [13, p. 83], functional differentiation was not able to establish a system of autonomous equal ranking spheres at once. On the contrary, the autonomization entailed a tendency to hierarchization and struggle for domination. Luhmann states that in the process of establishment of symbolic generalized communication medium of money it was close to becoming a general code [12, p. 723] that would have determined not only economical communication, but also religious, political etc. This process led to attempts since the last third of the 18th century to describe the whole society from the specific perspective of economy [12, p. 728], the best example is Adam Smith. In his presentation “Das ZeitalterderNeutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen” (“The Epoch of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations”), delivered in 1929, and later included in “The Concept of the Political”, Schmitt describes Modernity as an epoch of struggle between different spheres of social life: theology, metaphysics, moral, economy, and technics [15, p. 74] - for the status of a neutral sphere, i.e., where there is no more struggle or conflict, while consent, unity, and openness for persuasion do reign [15, p. 81]. However, as one sphere rises to a central one in the process of neutralization, its conflicts not only do not cease, but intensify vehemently and release a new struggle for a new neutral sphere [15, p. 82].

The industrial Modernity paradigm has reflected such a situation in the concept of fundamental opposition between state and civil society that was conceptualized by Smith and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Immanuel Wallerstein [18, p. 285] derives the typical from the 19th century division of social sciences from this opposition: the dominant liberal ideology regards state and market, or politics and economy as analytically separate and considerably closed spheres, each functioning according to one's own specific logic. Since there are many phenomena that do not fit into the schema, they were united under the label “sociology”. For those folks that lived outside the civilized world, the special discipline was created, viz., anthropology. Therefore, it is to be concluded that while politics has been autonomized, there were endeavors against such a background to subordinate one sphere to another and to reduce the essence of politics to other spheres.

That is why the contemporary search for the essence of the political is a manifestation of autonomization of the political. The loss of autonomy by politics and autonomization of the political is not a linguistic game, postmodern admiration for paradoxes or philosophizing, but concerns a fundamental issue, viz., whether the political is human. It was not without reason that Hannah Arendt [1, p. 15-16], scrutinizing the issue of reductionism, raises the problem of anthropology. Sociality is considered by Western philosophical tradition as a necessary human condition from the antiquity, and there were no serious contradictions to this view; nonetheless, the reductionist approach to the political, though not necessarily denying the autonomy of politics, does not perceive politics as a necessary human condition and envisages its transiency that creates a basis for Marxist idea of politics withering away.

Such a view, being a result of identifying the political and state (Staatlich), was developed, according to Luhmann [12, p. 714], in early Modernity when political system was being outdifferentiated (ausdifferenziert) and named `state'. It is true that state is a historical phenomenon; it came into existence at the beginning of early Modernity and shows in the age of globalization some indications of losing its functions. Schmitt should be credited in this regard either, because he was one of the first to insist on necessity of clear distinction between state and the political [see 15, p. 10, 20]. Leo Strauss [16, p. 133] had good reasons to write in a letter to Schmitt that the political is human destiny. Political life indeed constitutes an inalienable part of human life.

The scrutinized process of losing autonomy by politics and gaining autonomy by the political is being manifested in more apparent social processes, e. g., a feminist movement assertion that private is political [7, p. 43], emergence of subpolitics, gaining the influence by new political actors such as structures of global civil society, transnational corporations [2], judges, public initiatives, and new social movements [5, p. 322].

Following Max Weber, Habermas [8, p. 302] perceives modernization as a rationalization of society, i. e., an institutionalization of instrumental action (Zweckrationales Handeln) [8, p. 300], in which course the market-regulated economy and authority-structured politics are outdifferentiated [8, p. 299]. Nevertheless, Habermas points out the one-sidedness of such a model, because there are different types of rationality [8, p. 315-320], in particular, the parallel process of structural differentiation is going on in lifeworld (Lebenswelt). The structural components of lifeworld, such as culture, society (Gesellschaft), and individuality, are outdifferentiated [9, p. 209]. Herewith, society in the broad sense should be regarded only as system and lifeworld together [9, p. 180]. Lifeworld is constituted of more or less vague unproblematized background beliefs that function as a source for interpretation of situations [8, p. 107]; an understanding between acting subjects is happening within this framework [8, p. 107].

Correspondingly to these two aspects of society, i.e., lifeworld and system, Habermas distinguishes social and system integration: while system mechanisms create connections between actions, tying their results into networks, the mechanism of mutual understanding coordinates action orientations of participants [9, p. 226]. However, there is a problem that system mechanisms in the course of modernization have detached from social structures that accomplish social integration so far [9, p. 230] that they started to undermine interpretative craft of lifeworld [9, p. 232-233]. Permeation of system mechanisms into spheres where they cannot substitute the coordination of actions reached via consensus, Habermas calls the colonization of lifeworld [9, p. 193]. Here Habermas describes the process of politics losing its autonomy, since while state enlarges its domain, the instrumental media of state authority and money strive for totality and absolutization.

Habermas [8, p. 9] points out that occidental rationality has lost in the Western societies since the end of the 1960th its role of being undoubtedly valid: the stability of social relations, achieved due to compromises of the welfare state, is carried out further only at the expense of growing social- psychological and cultural costs, while economic growth releases socially disintegrating side effects [8, p. 10]. Though contemporary high-complex society cannot function without system coordination of actions, such a coordination endangers the integration of the society.

What does Habermas suggest to solve the situ-ation of economic and administrative action systems characterized by hypertrophied complexity [8, p. 10]? Although an increase of lifeworld role is important, one should not forget that its significance for achieving an understanding is decreasing as in the process of lifeworld rationalization the competition between communicatively reached understanding (kommunikativ erzielte Verstandi- gung) and normatively ascribed agreement (nor- mativ zugeschriebenes Einverstandnis) arises [8, p. 108]: the farther decentralized the worldview is, the lower the need to reach an understanding on the basis of lifeworld and the higher the necessity in interpretative efforts of participants to reach a risky (as it demands rational motivation) understanding [8, p. 107-108]. Consequently, besides the system and social integration, contemporary society demands an institutionalization of discourse practices. At this point the second component of this inquiry is found, viz., the autonomi- zation of the political.

As discussed above, in 1981 Habermas writes about the side effects of modernization that has become a central theme of Beck's monograph Risikogesellschaft (RiskSociety), published in 1986. Same as Habermas, Beck [5, p. 301]regards political-administrative and technical-economic system as outfifferentiated in the modern society. However, since the 1970th it is possible to discern manifestations of a transition toward risk society [5, p. 27], where those phenomena that were nonpolitical (unpolitisch) are turning into political ones, in particular, with the purpose to subdue the causes and effects of the modernization process [5, p. 31]. For example, because of environmental threats, politics intrudes into an `intimate' sphere of enterprise management [5, p. 31]. Risks, being effects of the modernization process itself, are gaining significance [5, p. 26], launching thus some tendencies to dedifferentiation (Entdifferenzierung) of social spheres [5, p. 93].

The sharp distinction between politics and non-politics (Nichtpolitik) was a manifestation of the differentiated society [5, p. 301], yet this distinction loses its unequivocalness in reflexive Modernity; that could be seen in an emergence of the phenomenon of subpolitics (Subpolitik), thematized and conceptualized by Beck. This means that nonpolitical spheres, i. e., economic and scientific- technological gain a political aspect in the sense of discourse-compliancy (diskursfahig) and requiring legitimacy (legitimationspflichtig) [5, p. 304]. The following subpolitics are being established: scientific subpolitics (the dependence of political decisions in high tech issues on science) [5, p. 307308], judicature (Rechtsprechung), media publicity (Meidenoffentlichkeit), privacy (Privatheit) [5, p. 322]. Why does Beck call these spheres subpolitics? The answer is: by penetration of the political into other subsystems of society [5, p. 308]. Beck shows a contrast between the conventional understanding of politics as a defense and legitimation of ruling, power, and interests and the contemporary understanding of the political as a formation (Gestaltung) and transformation of social relations [5, p. 311]. The fact that there is an emerging space for making and implementing decisions concerning shaping and transformation of society permits to qualify such spheres as subpolitics. That is why it is possible to speak in this regard about the autonomization of the political and parallel loss of autonomy by politics.

One of the central points for the distinction between the paradigms of industrial and reflexive Modernity Beck calls boundaries, which are being constantly drawn and affirmed anew in reflexive Modernity [2, p. 94]. Such a formulation corresponds to Luhmann's view of the boundaries between functionally outdifferentiated subsystems of society: the further evolution inside every subsystem is possible, yet only restrictedly; viz., while the subsequent differentiation is possible, a new form of differentiation cannot come to existence, because such a development requires change of the whole system [12, p. 611-612]. Therefore, the emergence of subpolitics is a secondary differentiation within the outdifferentiated political system.

Luhmann has radically reformulated system theory: the operationally impenetrable border between a system and an environment does not mean that the system is independent from its environment or became its master [12, p. 617]. Same as at the beginning of functional differentiation the permeation of coding from one system to another was widely spread, the increase in complexity by guaranteed autopoiesis makes possible an attachment to the subsystem of communications that do not take part in its autopoiesis [13, p. 90], e.g., not all communications of the political subsystem are coded by power [13, p. 90], although power operationally closes the political system [13, p. 89]. As a result, the political subsystem is dependent in keeping its complexity level on such parapolitical operations that are as well characterized by a tendency to expand [13, p. 91]. Besides, one should remember that the difference of system and environment is being constantly produced and reproduced within the system and by the system with the help of recursive operations [13, p. 105].

It could be illustrated with an example of family life which was private, i. e., completely nonpolitical, in industrial Modernity: the decision to get married or not to was exclusively private and had consequences only for the private life. The same decision in reflexive Modernity gains a political dimension and influences the form of such social structure as family, turning thus into subpolitics of privacy. Together with his wife Elisabeth Beck- Gernsheim, Beck has conceptualized this subject matter in the book Individualization: Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences [see 4] Decisions, whether to enter into a marriage or just leave together, who earns for a living and who looks after children etc. cannot be attributed to the political subsystem of society, but they carry an aspect of the political. Using Habermas' terminology, this situation could be described as a rationalization of family component of Lebenswelt, its evasion of system coercion (both of politics and economy), and opening for discourse, i. e., politicization. Within the framework of Luhmann's theory it is possible to speak about permeation of political coding into the series of communications that earlier were exclusively coded by the medium of love and are now enhanced with a dimension of contingency. As a result, although decisions, made within the boundaries of such communications, are not collective binding decisions per se, their condensation in system memory can beget political decisions.

To conclude, the erosion of the autonomy of politics is going on in reflexive Modernity, yet this process does not mean vanishing of functional differentiation, only its modification, which manifests itself as the autonomization of the political. In science such a process is described and theorized by French academics, connected with the Center for Philosophical Research on the Political, scholars, working in Great Britain (Mouffe, Giddens), and German theoreticians as Habermas, Luhmann, Beck; all this permits to speak of the paradigm of the political in reflexive Modernity.

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