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TheIntellectualsattheEndofHistory?
TheIntellectualsattheEndofHistory?
byHaukeBrunkhorst
Source:
PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:3+4/1990,pages:251260,onwww.ceeol.com.
THE INTELLECTUALS - AT THE END OF
HISTORY?*
Hauke Brunkhorst
What is now gradually emerging as the foreseeable victory of the West in
the Cold War has been accompanied by three theories, each of which has
acquired a widespread following, particularly among conservative and post-
modern intellectuals.
(1) Socialism is dead, both as an idea and as a reality.
(2) The victory of capitalism marks the end of history, or at least the end of
the modern age which has always drawn its cultural sustenance from
the substance of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment and
Romanticism.
(3) There is no such thing as a Third Way: the choice is bureaucratic
socialism or pluralistic capitalism.
I believe that in one major respect these three theories are true. Yet all
shades of conservative intellectuals, from Francis Fukuyama or Andre
Glucksmann to Karl Heinz Bohrer, Joachim Fest or Hermann Liibbe, have a
false understanding of these essentially correct theories.
Let us begin with the third theory.
1. The ideology of the Third Way
The ideology of the Third Way was a typical product of post-war Germany
and was, at the time, the great illusion nurtured by the left-wing and liberal
intelligentsia. The fact that it has now been flourishing, at least for a short
time again in the East, can probably be explained by the fact that the free
public discussion which has at last become possible in the GDRoften picks up
the threads of an argument at the point where they were so militantly cut off
40 years ago.
The ideology of the Third Way is an idiosyncratic amalgamation of
romantic Youth Movement reveries of a special combined way with a leftist
universalism. It can most certainly be characterized as a variant of Hegel's
utopia of sublation and mediation: the Third Way was supposed to lead us
out of our disunity and our self-alienation, out of a modern world
characterized by economic alienation and cultural dissatisfaction. It was
supposed to liberate us from the temptations of money and power, be it in the
guise of capitalism, which had fallen from grace, or iron-handed
* This text was written in January 1990. Some of it has now become history, particularly in view of the
'unification' of the two Germanies.
Praxis /nternational/O: 3/4 ()ctoher 1990 & January 1991 0260-B448 $2. 00
Praxis International 251
Bolshevism. To those who considered themselves to be following the Third
Way, New York and Moscow appeared like distant stars, cold and strange.
Thomas Mann, himself an influential ideologue of the Third Way, had many
years previously already characterized this ideology as "power-proof
introspection. "
If we disregard the passionate, essentially anti-enlightenment aversion
towards all teachers and educators so peculiar to the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung newspaper, then we are bound to agree with Karl Heinz Bohrer's
polemic against the quiet blue wallflower which blossomed forth with such
freshness and inner beauty, albeit scantily and without an opinion of its own,
in the shadow cast on the East Berlin side of the Wall. The intellectuals'
dream of a happy, shadowy existence between "star and flower, intellect and
clothes, love, pain, time and eternity" (Clemens Brentano), of a pure and
simple life, unspoilt by AIDS, profit and drugs and all the other vices of the
great whore Babylon is hopelessly provincial. Just as is, incidentally, the
terror of many Greens at the prospect of over-high skyscrapers. "What the
East Germans have yet to experience," Bohrer writes, "is the discovery of
America: that unprecedented moment when the American soldiers - to use
the phrase coined by the Italian writer rvlalaparte - set foot on the shores of
Europe like Greek gods and the 20th century really began. This was not the
case in the East." 1 Indeed not. However, Bohrer draws completely false,
nationalistic conclusions from this otherwise accurate diagnosis.
For all that would have been necessary in order to ensure that not only the
Babylonian vices and confusions but also all the other winds of Western
freedom finally blew eastwards, rather than being filtered through TV, was
the unconditional opening of the borders on the one hand as well as the
internal forces of political autonomy and self-determination, of popular
sovereignty and the constitutional rule of law on the other. However, it is of
utterly secondary importance whether the idea of western freedom holds
sway in one or in two states between the Rhine and Oder rivers. If, however,
the national question is declared a precondition of the democratic question -
and that is the tack taken by Bohrer and the Frankfurter Allgemeine - then it
is almost logically consequent to transform the democratic movements into
nationalistic politics. The question of freedom would then be subordinated to
the identity of the German people. Indeed, the extreme consequence would
be precisely that which conservatives and liberals have always, with some
justification, accused Rousseau of propagating. Once popular sovereignty
and the national spirit of a people become identified with one another, what
usually emerges is that which Hermann Liibbe terms "identitarian
democracy" when attempting to denounce democrats.
At that moment when the masses in Leipzig found their own voice and, in
order to demolish a wall and rid themselves of a dictatorship, stated with the
productive force of the first four words they had in common: "We are the
people," at that moment the fortress crumbled at the sound of this call
2
, and
the people were indeed sovereign. This was not the civil society of the current
Parisian philosophers, it was the Jean-Jacques Rousseau they dread so much:
the exalted voice of the revolution, a late triumph of the ideas of 1789.
3
Access via CEEOL NL Germany
252 Praxis International
In the 18th century the absolute monarch made use of the royal "we" in
order to identify his own anointed body with that of the people. In like
manner, the Party functionaries summarily declared their interests to be one
and the same as those of the people in order to be able to speak of the people
while actually meaning the nomenclature. When, however, the masses on the
streets make a more natural use of the term of identification "we" and the
"people" than do their rulers, then in the act of saying "We are the
people" they become the actual sovereign. They disclose for themselves a
new world of democratic freedom. They do it by saying it publicly.
Yet this time it was only a matter of a few days before the "long shadow of
Rousseau,,4 came following on the heels of this appeal to popular
sovereignty. A minimal semantic operation transformed the revolutionary
appeal into a nationalist call for unity: "We are one people." Popular
sovereignty became the national spirit of a people. In its gradual
transformation into a question of nation, the semantics of democracy
approaches its "identitarian" self-misconception.
"We are the people." A society requires this much Rousseau in order to be
free. "We are one people." This is precisely the semantic inversion which
transforms equal freedom for all back into Liibbe's "contingent historical
identity," into the particular "facticity" (to use Heidegger's expression) of a
collective destiny. These facticities do indeed exist and we have to take a
position on them whether we like it or not. Whether we accept or reject our
historical identity, we cannot simply put it aside like a wet raincoat. This is
precisely the reason for the violent reactions to Kohl's remark about the
"blessing of having been born late." The simple fact of our language and of
that which sociologists term a "destiny of socialization" result in our
belonging to collective units, to nations, peoples, religious and linguistic
communities. It comes as no surprise that these self-same sociologists are
currently under fierce attack - Bohrer goes so far as to talk of the "bulldozers
of a new sociologism" which are spoiling the "specificially 'irrational'
tradition of romanticism" in our "colonized consciousness.,,5 Language is
always historically and idealistically speaking the Spirit of a people. Out of
the facticity of such a spirit into which we find ourselves thrown we must,
however, still project our own identity into the future. Yet, we usually remain
bound throughout our lives to a collective identity, even though there are
numerous such identities which overlap within the space of a lifetime. If, to
quote an example from the sociologist Talcott Parsons, a "mid-20th-century
American" were to be converted to communism and desert to China, he
would - even disregarding the biological features - always remain "the
American deserter" or the "convert". He would never become Chinese. A
"mid-20th-century American" is what constitutes his identity.
6
This
historical determination is what Freud terms "the power of the past" and
Marx "the nightmare of all dead generations" that weighs down upon the
minds of the living.
However, whereas our historical identity is part of that which the early
Heidegger termed "thrownness," that freedom which is the sole purpose of
democracy is a thing of our own respectively individual design, our own
Praxis International
253
construction. Freedom, as we are told in Sophocles' Antigone, is a life lived
"according to our own laws." Rousseau and Kant referred to this as
"autonomy" or "self-legislation." In this modern understanding of the term,
freedom is individual self-determination, which, as we know, is only
delimited by the freedom of all the others. Our historical identity precisely
does not play a constitutive role in this kind of freedom, which is rather
determined by that limitation. The whole point behind the modern idea of
freedom lies in this sharp contrast to all other limitations which are merely
factual and contingent. The spirit of modernity becomes free by "tearing
itself free" (Hegel) of its historical origins, which constantly catch up with it
again. Thus, despite being obliged to live with our contingent identity, it is
our ability to overstep its limitations, to liberate the spirit from its own,
home-made particularity, that is the quintessence and the only measure of
our freedom.
These somewhat abstract deliberations have an important bearing on a
theory of democracy. The institutions of the modern constitutional state exist
exclusively in order to safeguard and maintain equal freedom for all.
This is the sole basis of its legitimacy. The modern state cannot be founded
on God, the Kaiser, the unity of the nation or even, as Bohrer would wish, on
a "German teleology" stretching back to the "legend of Armin, Leader of the
Cherusci.,,7 The sole source of its justification is the idea of freedom.
The constitutional state must not under any circumstances be identified
with a particular force of destiny to the extent that it is defined and limited by
this idea. In the interests of equal freedom for all, a distinction must therefore
be upheld between the particular identity of the nation and the universal
power of institutions designed to guarantee freedom. And it must be adhered
to even in cases where state borders and linguistic borders happen by chance
to coincide. An anti-conservative insight of Hegel's was that the modern state
must adopt a cold and heartless, an aloof and abstract attitude toward the
question of national identity and all other "holy bands of friendship."
To blur such distinctions as those between party and state or between state
and nation, however, is to play with the fire of "identitarian democracy",-
even if it is Social Democrats who shuffle the pack. Unity ultimately stifles
freedom wherever national unity, no matter how subtly, is allowed to bar the
gates to freedom. For national unities, owing to their inevitable particularity,
cannot constitute the unity of reason: this is why the primacy of freedom
applies here as elsewhere.
8
Identifying popular sovereignty with the
emphasis of the nation was the only really disastrous mistake made by the
French Revolution, the paradigm of all modern revolutions.
It is an important yet secondary question, which chiefly concerns the
administrative economic details, whether or not unification actually
happens; whereby the foreseeable bickering about the contractual mechanics
of the unification process could ultimately become the alienating force that
ensures that the two Germanies remain a confederation. However, imbuing
its symbolic and libidinous properties with the heart and spirit of the nation
represents a danger to freedom because they unite the free spirit with the
particularist spirit of the extreme patriotism of the erstwhile German
254 Praxis International
refugees from Eastern Prussia and national descent. This can only be at the
expense of freedom. It would not be the price of freedom, but its total
surrender.
Although Bohrer of all people certainly does not want this, the iron logic of
his own argumentation forces it upon him. Bohrer believes that Western
freedolTJ can only flourish in the Eastern part of the country if we liberate the
spirit of German modernity from Kant to Kafka, from its Rhenish
provincialism in order then to return it by political decree to the geography of
its powerful origins, namely Leipzig, Jena and Berlin. This could only be
acommplished by shifting the centre of power back to Berlin, the former
capital of the Third Reich.
9
Let us assume for the moment that this daring
construction could indeed be propped up; it would automatically invalidate
Bohrer's vehemently repeated declaration of the inviolability of the Polish
and Russian borders. If the productivity of the spirit of German modernity is
to be made dependent on returning it to its original geographical sites, then
there is absolutely no reason why Germany should not demand the return of
such sites as Kaliningrad and Prague, not to mention Vienna.
However, the modernity of the German spirit - and this is, quite rightly,
Bohrer's sole concern - would, of course, be destroyed if the recent confusing
combination of the power of this spirit, a power which is indeed identity-
giving, as represented by figures ranging from Mendelsohn to Heidegger,
from Fichte to Hannah Arendt, from Marx to Freud, with the question of a
unified German state were to be upheld. And the threat to this modernity
does not emanate from Bonn's provincialism and ineptitude. The truly
obscene side to Bohrer's proposal that we should become a unified nation
state once again immediately emerges when we remind ourselves that the
Jewish element is an essential part of precisely the modern German spirit,
which would be indeed unthinkable without it. Precisely because of this and
despite it, I would go so far as to maintain that Bonn's provinciality has been
responsible for ensuring that the German modernity which was forced by the
Nazis to flee has long since been scattered throughout the world. It is more
productive in California and Paris than in Berlin or Munich. Today, although
dispersed throughout the world, we speak with one tongue. Even if English is
usually the language spoken, it is not only the accent which reveals our
origins. This is why it is becoming increasingly frequent for many tongues to
be speaking in one place.
If we are to talk about "spirit" and "modernity," then in terms of the
principle that all national spirits become independent of a particular
geography, native soil or state to an extent exactly proportional to their ability
to liberate themselves to embrace modernity. The urbanee) places at which
they fleetingly touch each other in flight and become concentrated in a
sudden intensity have long since become multicultural. In the interests of its
own modernity, this spirit must resist the renationalization of the national
spirit called for by the apologists of unity. It is as least as close to New York
and Paris as it is to Frankfurt or Bielefeld, not to mention the protestant
Prussian provinces.
Rather than coming to rest in a unified state and nation, wherever it dons a
Praxis International
255
national dress the restless spirit of modernity is utterly without a geography,
and yet wherever it has a location it is utterly cosmopolitan and multicultural.
Thus at the end of this story, the lofty enactment of the great phantasm of
nation turns out to be no more than a shoot of the little blue German
wallflower.
Yet is history itself at an end? This brings me to the second theory.
2. The Victory of Capitalism
Capitalism has triumphed. But what does this mean? Fukuyama follows
Hegel and Kojeve in believing that this would finally be the long desired good
end of history, the final "rule of Reason," its identification with the modern
Western state. 10 If this version of the old story about the end of history were
really true, then the end could not be a good one. It would be more like
Adorno's "All's bad that ends badly." However, the story about the end of
history is of course not true, but rather a mere (Platonic) story, nothing more
than a fiction made up by philosopher-kings living a yuppy lifestyle.
Let us assume that the western societies were really as marvellous, as
productive and liberal and egalitarian as Fukuyama portrays them. Even
then, the end of history could not be a good end. For the very notion of a
possible end of history already entails the total loss of our freedom. Ends are
always paradoxical. The definitive realization of a free society would at the
same time be the end of its freedom. No one perceived this as clearly as Max
Weber in the diagnosis of his age with which he concludes the "Protestant
Ethic',.11 He does not paint a rosy picture of a good end, but rather a
nightmare vision of "cold skeletal hands of rational orders" which stifle all
life; alluding to the sinking of the Titanic, he speaks of a future "polar night of
icy darkness and hardship," or of the much-quoted "iron" "cage of obedience
to the future" which is utterly "inescapable.'" Here Weber was by no means
referring merely to ancient Egyptian fellahs and the modern slaves of the
labor society. He too already had his sights on what is for us perhaps the more
pressing danger of a loss of freedom in the golden cage of consumerism and in
the air-conditioned boutique framework of narcissistic "sensualists without
heart," who sociologists describe as "enclaves of a lifestyle." 12
The reason for Weber's gloomy diagnosis is not so much a German
romantic aversion to technology, an emotional rejection of machines and
mechanisms, cogwheels and gears rooted in a philosophy of life, although it
does always contain an element of that too. Yet the real reason for his
pessimism lies in his view that in the course of its triumphal worldwide
advance, capitalism had lost its spirit. Its path leads it from spirit to victory,
and at the end of modernity "victorious capitalism" as Weber called it
destroys its own spirit, that once so proud protestant ethic. For Weber,
however, the spirit of capitalism is nothing other than the climax of
occidental rationalism, the core of which had from the outset consisted of the
ideas of freedom and equality: every individual should be able to react
negatively to eve!ything which presents itself as mere pre-given fact. 13 This
kind of rationalism regards every innerworldly limitation as something which
256 Praxis International
can be overcome and changed. accidental rationalism is the invention,
development and adoption of alternatives, even those alternatives the
possibility of which might today still appear utopian. The kernel of Weber's
prophetic diagnosis is: "The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are
forced to do SO.,,14
This, however, would indeed be the end of history: a social situation
completely lacking alternatives (or, and this would amount to the same thing,
a situation characterized by complete arbitrariness). The positivistic
identification of idea with reality would have destroyed the idea by realizing
it. Unlike the false prophet from the American State Department, however,
Weber the sociologist was able to distinguish his own prophecy from his
science. The prophecy is a meant as a practical warning, not a forecast as to
what the future course of the world would be. As long as we remain capable
of countenancing the possibility of an end to history, we shall also remain
capable of averting it.
But what of today's situation? Are there alternatives to what is, once
again, a "victorious capitalism"?
At first sight there seems to be much to be said for Fukujama's diagnosis
once we separate it from the purely historico-philosophical construct of a
fictitious end of history. There are at present no alternatives to the American
or North Atlantic course (with or without NATO), at best mere variations:
Swedish, Spanish etc. No alternatives from Manhattan to Berlin and possibly
in the near future Moscow: back in the USSR. It is after all completely clear
with regard to the East - despite late Habsburgian dreams of the centrality
and ancient traditions of Europe - that this Western alternative, the
discovery of America which has yet to be historically attained in the East, is
the only desirable alternative among those currently imaginable. For this
reason, the historical struggles in the militarily organized societies of
bureaucratic socialism are still best explained in terms of the theory of "civil
society. " This theory currently holds such a fascination for many intellectuals
in both East and West and is, infact, merely the rehabilitation ofthe "citoyen"
whom Marxism cultivated in a rather stepmotherly way. This rehabilitation is
shot through with nostalgia in that it no longer reckons with the other face of
the citoyen, namely the bourgeois. Nonetheless, the theoretical model of
democracy does fit the East given that, to put it in oversimplified terms, it is a
case of civil opposition to a military society. However, it must be
remembered that the civil forms of communication in autonomous public
domains, and the life-blood of any democracy consists of allowing these free
rein, always contain what Marx termed the "civilizing tendency" of an in
itself not at all friendly and civil bourgeois society based on self-interest, the
market and capital. If one thing is certain, it is that the communicative
powers of autonomous public domains and social movements (or even the
good will of corporate managements) are not in turn in themselves sufficient
to civilize the uncivilized might of capital and its mobilization of human
resources. In order to achieve this within the bounds of mortal life it is also
necessary to mobilize the utterly uncommunicative organizational power of a
welfare state and strong trade unions whose power is based on a mixture of
Praxis International 257
free association and bureaucratic organization. 15 In fact, one look at Eastern
Europe is all that is necessary to recognize this, for here not even the first
condition for a functioning modern constitutional state and a rational
bureaucracy fundamentally free of nepotism has been fulfilled: namely the
abolition of private ownership of the state.
16
If, then, there are no alternatives beyond victorious capitalism, then we
must look for them, as did Hegel and Marx, where they are: within victorious
capitalism. For the claim that capitalism, in the course of its triumphal march,
has long since lost its self-willed driving force, the spirit of occidental
rationalism, is completely without foundation, a purely historical-
philosophical protecting wall, a castle in the air, not science but science
fiction. And if there are alternatives, then they can only be expected to
originate in the next wave of mobilization of the "capitalist" spirit against a
merely victorious capitalism - for the spirit of capitalism is by no means
identical with capitalism itself. Francis Fukuyama was right to follow Hegel
and Kojeve in championing the role of ideas in history against the naIve and
vulgar forms of utilitarianism and materialism. However, he unjustifiably
identifies such ideas with the status quo and is therefore incapable of doing
more than hold up an idealistic, rose-tinted mirror to crude material-
ism.
Yet, it is the gradually foreseeable victory of capitalism which is opening
up completely new opportunities for an alternative to the final victory of
capital. And I am thinking of opportunities for an increasingly radical but
never complete realization of equal freedom for all, opportunities which until
now were systematically obstructed.
Let us bear in mind the initially surprising affinity between Fukuyama's
diagnosis of the age and Marcuse's much older and meanwhile utterly
forgotten diagnosis of Western civilization as expressed in One-Dimensional
Man, which appeared in the early sixties. In this light, the factor separating
mere victory from the necessary final victory in the Cold War immediately
becomes apparent. At the core of Marcuse's diagnosis is the one-
dimensionality of industrial society. This is the same as saying that this
society can no longer avail itself of any alternatives. In other words, another
case of post-histoire. However, unlike Fukuyama, Marcuse takes a dialectic
premise as the point of departure for his forecast. It states that the
opportunities for a radical democratic and a cultural revolutionary
transformation of the Western welfaring and warfaring state are primarily
fettered by the fact that the entire potential of Western wealth is bound up
with combating the external enemy and the Russian anti-utopia. This fetter
will be removed, however, if capitalism triumphs. If the peoples are relieved
of the enormous pathology of a Cold War then there will be a growing
probability of alternatives - as hazardous as they are utopian - within that
which in Frankfurt was once called "the extant." It is the possibility, vaguely
anticipated in the theories of civil society, of a discursive civilization of late
capitalism. What will, at any rate, become apparent, if a long transformed
capitalism triumphs, is whether what Hegel called the "vast power of the
negative" has indeed already been exhausted or - to use one of the young
258 Praxis International
Lukacs' metaphors - the mighty river beds of western rationalism have dried
up for ever. In any case, history is open.
Which brings me finally back to the first theory, the obsolescence of both
real and ideal socialism.
3. Socialism is dead
Now I too have to advocate unification. This is made all the easier for the
fact that what is now to be unified was never really divided - if I may be
forgiven for expressing myself in such a Platonic manner.
If we watch old Social Democrats beings asked on television about the
future of socialism they make an embarrassed impression, like people having
to strain to remind themselves of something they have forgotten, but which
they still know they once held very dear. They remember their youth. And
for some of them this brings life back into their stiffened old faces. Of course,
in the struggles for power over the decades it was not solely a question of
power, nor was it, as in previous years, solely a struggle against the Nazis, but
rather it was a struggle for something. And this is followed by the re-
emergence of vocabulary centering around words like "community" and
"solidarity. " What bobs up to the surface, however, is often the last reserves
of authenticity left over from a left-wing version of the Youth Movement, a
socialist scout camp. And once the television viewer realizes this he or she
understands why the old Social Democrats still today want to avoid
appearing as unpatriotic figures with a clear conscience, why many of them
resurrect their socialism out of the ashes of nationalist kitsch. Behind this
sentimental socialism, however, lies an error of reasoning. The idea of
socialism has since become almost as hollow and empty as its dismal
bureaucratic reality - and not only among older Social Democrats.
The simple reason for this is that there is no idea as such, but merely a
concretistic vision of an ideal socialism. This, in turn, depending on the
location, functions as a distorting or rose-tinted mirror of Eastern bloc
socialism. As with everything else in life, here too it is a distinction which is
crucial, namely that between idea and idealism. The former is indispensable,
whereas we have no use for the latter. It is easy using the simple means of a
Marxist critique to demonstrate that ideal socialism is nothing other than the
affirmative superstructure of the Eastern bloc socialist bureaucracy. Right
down to Honecker's last political utterance, which he read from a prepared
speech: "Socialism is the more human society." Right down to Ceaucescu's
falsified weather reports which, faithful to the words of the old song, made
sure that "the skies were not cloudy all day."
Yet, in so far as an idea of socialism actually exists - and of this there can be
no doubt - the idea cannot itself be any more socialist than the spirit of
capitalism is itself capitalist. Both the spirit and the idea in question are in fact
one and the same: the modern understanding of freedom we have inherited
from occidental rationalism. And that is all I can think of to say on the subject
of unification and the heritage, to paraphrase Ernst Bloch, of this particular
age.
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259
This, the only unity at stake, is the unity of the idea and the spirit of
freedom, which permits me to conclude with a remark on the theory of "civil
society" and its "citoyen" who have disappeared in German sociologese
under the notion of an "Aktivbiirger", an citizen". 17 The basic notion
underlying this theory is the assumption that the legitimatory foundations of
modern democracies have undergone a radical secularization, making them a
hazardous and (ostensibly) undirected project.
IR
I believe that it is correct to draw this conclusion for a theory of democracy
from the secularization theory. Plural minorities are the most productive
motor behind democratic modernity. Their fundamental location in
democracy is the principle (made possible by secularization) that all opinions
and decisions can potentially be revised. However, the secularization theory
itself is at best imprecise. Which ultimately leads, as exemplified in the book
by Dubiel, Frankenberg and Rodel, back to the premature identification of
the negation potential of the modern idea of freedom with concrete
movements and public domains that merely exist de facto.
If we are to talk of secularization" - and I believe it is correct to do
so - then there must also be something which is secularized and sublated (auf-
gehoben) rather than being totally destroyed in the course of the seculariza-
tion process. And that which should be salvaged is the continuity of occidental
rationalism, something which must be preserved even given the most radical
break with tradition. And this continuity stands or falls with the claim
modern freedom makes to having an absolute and unconditional element.
Now, it is possible to discern at the very heart of the completely secularized
dispositive nature of democracy itself one such point of continuity of modern
freedom, and one that abolishes the normative monotheism of Western
religions. ll) It is rooted in the radical revisability of all decisions, opinions,
constitutional principles and laws, but in particular of all majority decisions.
Whenever the right to contradict the decisions of the majority is exercised by
a minority or an individual., whenever they demand revision or re-
examination over and over again, they refer to an absolute, non-relativizable
component of such democracies: namely the contrafactual idea of freedom
and that which goes hand in hand with it, namely the truth of the opinions and
the correctness of the decisions. Under finite conditions, this principle of
unconditionality, indispensable as it is to the cause of freedom, always takes
effect exclusively as the sanction-free power of arguments to compel us to
change our opinions or the world. I regard this and this alone as the real
contribution of minority opposition.
Rousseau's mistake was to project the universal will onto that of the
majority of a concrete community modelled in the fashion of the Greek
polis. This portentous projection - which Hegel was later to attack severely-
leaves no breathing space for pluralism or for an open conflict of opinions and
interests. Rather, these become stifled by chance majorities being declared
artfully to be the will of all. The transition from this self-misconception of
majority will to the rule of a party leadership is then not a qualitative leap.
Society under a reign of terror is a closed society: that was the tragic logic first
of lacobinism and later of Bolshevism. The only true location of the universal
260 Praxis International
will is therefore to be found where minorities or individuals contradict the
factual will of the majority. In such a contradiction, the universal will is a true
force and yet something over which one can not dispose, i.e. it is not private
property. For anyone can contradict every contradiction at any time, if he or
she has the argumentative means to do so. The never-ending nature of this
process is the political location of a universal will. It is not this that forms the
basis of the catastrophe of terror, but rather the recantation - be it militant or
subdued- of the distinction between the truly universal and the contingent will
of the majority.
NOTES
1. K. H. Bohrer, "'Warum wir keine Nation sind," in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
13.1.1990.
2. Cf. F. Oieckmann, "'Friedensfeier," in Merkur 491, p. 10.
3. For a different interpretation, cf. Oubiel/Frankenberg/R6del, "'Wir sind das Yolk,"
Frankfurter Rundschau, 2.1.1990.
4. J. Habermas, "1st der Herzschlag der Revolution zum Stillstand gekommen?" in Forum
fur Philosophic eds, Die Ideen von 1789 (Frankfurt, 1989).
5. Bohrer, Ope cit.
6. T. Parsons, ""Ocr Stellenwert des Identitatsbegriffs in der allgemeinen f-Iandlungs-
theorie," in Entwicklung des Ichs (Konigstein, 1980) p. 84.
7. Bohrer, Ope cit.
8. Cf. J. Rawls A Theory of Justice, (Oxford, 1973).
9. Bohrer, Ope cit. Cf. Bohrer, "'Editorial," in Merkur 490, p. 1038.
10. F. Fukuyama, ""The End of History," in The National Interest.
11. M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsiitze zur Religionssoziologie (Tubingen, 1978) pp. 202 ff;
cf also pp. 560 ff and Schriften zur theoretischen Soziologie und zur Soziologie der Politik und
Verfassung (Frankfurt, 1947) pp. 204, 222.
12. Cf. Robert Bellabua Beitrage zur Judischen Gegenwart Gewohnheiten des Herzens,
Cologne 1987.
13. Cf. H. Brunkhorst, "'Exodus - Ocr Ursprung der modernen Freiheitsidee und
die normative Kraft der Erinnerung", in Babylon, 6, 1989, pp. 22 ff.
14. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. Talcott Parsons (London,
1930) p. 181.
15. Cf. C. Offe, "Bindung, Fessel, Bremse," in Zwischenbetrachtungen, (Frankfurt, 1989)
esp. pp. 760 ff, and on the Swedish model, pp. 766 ff.
16. Cf. H. Brunkhorst, ""Hegel und die Franzosische Revolution" in Die Ideen von 1789,
op. cit., pp. 166 ff.
17. Frankenberg et al., Die demokratische Frage, (Frankfurt, 1989).
18. Ibid.