Abstract
In State of Crisis, Zygmunt Bauman and Carlo Bordoni delve into the origins, facets and repercussions of the current crisis of the state, modernity, and democracy. In a lively and free-flowing debate, two of the most prominent theorists of the European view of the world cast a critical eye on the historicity of the persistent economic, political, social, and ethical failures of our times.
The first part, ‘Crisis of the State,’ begins with a chapter on the ‘Definition of crisis,’ where Bordoni eloquently recollects the ancient Greek balanced ambiguity of ‘crisis,’ which indicates both a perilous breach and a promising turning point. After the Second World War, crisis becomes a thing of the economy, but this identification is not irrelevant to the globalization of trade and consumer trends. The increasing global economic integration, inconclusive as it is, produces failures on the international level but their repercussions are felt and need to be dealt with at the local level. In moving from the topical embeddedness of industrial economy to the liquidity of stock-market investments, money drifts from one place to another, and crisis is left behind. With crises progressing slowly and resurging, it is like ‘living in a constant state of crisis’ (p. 7).
Bauman defines ‘crisis’ with its archaic medical connotation, where uncertainty about the causes and ignorance about the remedies makes it a demanding ‘conjunction of a diagnosis and a call for action’ (p. 7). The vehicle to deal with the Great Depression was the state making use of its twin powers: ‘the ability to get things done,’ and politics, meaning ‘the ability to decide’ on the optimal direction (p. 8). States are gradually losing this combined capacity and the ‘divorce between power and politics’ leads to an ‘absence of agency’ of the state, leaving national communities to confront international problems on their own (p. 12).
The degradation of politics to routine administration leads to Chapter 2, ‘A statism without a state,’ in which Bordoni identifies the toxic effects of state retrenchment: anti-politics. The emergence of ‘governance’ is a sign of ‘false democracy,’ where democratic control over the decisions is pushed aside and people are left ‘to look after their own well-being’ against causalities out of their reach (pp. 16) – the mechanics of neoliberalism in which people are on ‘an extreme form of self-defense which conjures the image of being locked up in a well-armored bunker and equipped with every comfort, while Berlin is burning’ (p. 18).
For Bauman, mere settlements substitute for policy; indecision, as a consequence of a ‘double bind,’ where governments are caught between the electors and globalized economic forces. States – beyond their initial geographical embeddedness – are now forced to face extraterritorial challenges, and contract-out their functions to market forces: ‘our present crisis is a crisis of agency – though ultimately it is a crisis of territorial sovereignty’ (p. 22). Filling the remaining gap is a continuous issue, with the recent ‘movements of the indignant’ being only one social response, and the European Union is an almost unique laboratory in which the ways to confront those challenges are tested in practice (p. 25).
In ‘State and nation,’ Bordoni quotes Habermas and Appadurai on the division between nation and state. Absolute sovereignty of the post-Westphalian era is long gone and this also affects cultural identity. Communications and knowledge are mobilized to restore the lost cohesion, allowing for a recovery of a certain amount of control over the population, which recalls Balibar’s ‘statism without a state.’
Bauman follows the most visible varieties of state power: from its theological past to contemporary secular meanings. Recalling Schmitt, state power of sovereignty is expressed through the ability to stipulate legal exceptions – just as miracles are God’s sign of freedom of will. But retaining this option has its adverse effects when it comes to the European liquidity crisis. ‘Coercion through the threat of withdrawal’ (p. 36) is Bauman’s eloquent description of the way Angela Merkel strategically understates the threat of not assisting the heavily indebted European states.
In ‘Hobbes and the Leviathan,’ Bordoni and Bauman conclude that even if the initial impression of the Leviathan is that of a monstrosity, it points towards acquiring the critical mass of participation needed for social cohesion. Leviathan depicts a contractual bind between the masses and the sovereign, yet this is obsolete in modern democracies, because representation is split into a wide range of delegates. Bauman follows by stressing the essential message of limiting individualism in order to avoid the condition of a ‘failed state.’ If traditional states invested in mass culture in order to consolidate intellectual conformity, today these powers are ‘contracted out’ to the market forces. The old-style secret services are now assisted in enforcing order by citizens themselves and the user-contributed content they make available: individuality replaces state order (p. 51).
Part 2, ‘Modernity in Crisis,’ begins with Bordoni noting that the fundamental promises of modernity are called into question. In ‘The promises withdrawn’, he enumerates the absolute dominion of human over nature, the optimistic idea of continuous development, and the promise of the state as social guarantor, each deconstructed piece-by-piece. It seems as ‘a crisis induced, deliberately implemented to obtain the precise result that we all fear’ (p. 59).
Bauman, in a critical response, finds not the promises but the illusions of modernity being abandoned; yet with modern promises ‘still alive and well’ (p. 61). Progress involves an ever-changing equilibrium between freedom and security. Individuals, the main beneficiaries of modernity, are now turned into victims as if in a ‘landscape after an orgy’ (p. 66).
‘Leaving modernity’ is a long good-bye for Bordoni, beginning in the second half of the 20th century with a gradual collapse of our unshakable certainties. Bauman is skeptical about our ability to sense transitions, because we are confined in them: ‘we know what we are running from but have no inkling where to’ (p. 74).
Postmodernity initially emerged in the United States in architecture before spreading into various knowledge systems, but now it is identified as already over. For Bordoni, it is the spirit of individualism, subjectivity, the abandonment of civil society, and solidarity that formed the core of postmodernity. Bauman sees postmodernity as an age of maturity inside modernity itself: ‘the time for learning which of the promises of modernity were fraudulent or naïve pretentions’ (p. 85).
In ‘Deconstruction and denial’ Bordoni sees ‘deconstructionism as the real functional philosophy of postmodernism’ (p. 87). Postmodernism leaves behind a condition too limiting for individual valor. Under its debris lies a ‘hidden society’ (p. 93) made up of people coming of age, now being aware of the historical shift. Bauman points towards them – the indignant people occupying streets – as now aware of what they are running from (p. 99). In the late Vaclav Havel, Bauman recognizes some basis of the current scene: the political persona equipped with the ‘hope, courage and stubbornness’ to get things done correctly – a movement from ‘what to do’ to ‘who’ll do it’ (p. 103).
In ‘The end of history?’ Bordoni describes a situation where history is made up of individual events, and is written by those under the surface, ‘the vanquished’ (p. 106), in a universal digital Panopticon, as ‘a set of events, the sense of which, in the long run, disperses and amounts to confusion’ (p. 107). Bauman concludes with an appeal to our human duty to question the contemporary Fukuyama-like visions of the ‘new man’: ‘a warning that treating humanity as a garden crying out for more beauty and harmony inevitably divides humans into Chelsea-Show specimens and weeds’ (p. 109).
‘Democracy in Crisis’ (Part 3) begins with Bordoni discussing the ‘Ethics of progress and democracy.’ Even if economy’s domination of society has been questioned, economy has in fact gained additional control over lives, now with the proletariat becoming the precariat (p. 115). The traditional alliance between state and industry is eliminated through supranational finance. It is a condition eroding the work ethic, which followed the religious spirit and constructed individuals’ inner valorization. Bauman reiterates: ‘Staying inside the myth of progress, our ancestors looked towards the future in hope; we look in fear’ (p. 123).
‘An excess of democracy?’, Bordoni states the challenges of balancing the popular will and representation: ‘Mediation is necessary to moderate the ambitions of the captains of the people, the aggressiveness of the masses, the inevitable emotions that accompany every political action’ (p. 132). The excess of democracy describes the lost link between citizen and politics, creating expectations beyond actual possibilities.
In ‘Postdemocracy,’ Bauman identifies Generation Y as ‘the first humans who have never experienced a world without the internet and know, as well as practice, digital communication in “real time” ’ (p. 136). Bordoni pinpoints the characteristic effects of postdemocracy: deregulation, drop-in participation, neoliberalism, the retrenchment of the welfare state, the prevalence of lobbies, politics as show business, cut-downs and nominality of democratic processes. To regain control, it is necessary to revise the rules.
In the search ‘For a new global order,’ Bordoni envisages a democratic remedy to the crisis: ‘power and politics united at a local level, but aimed at a global level’ (p. 149). Bauman concludes his remarks by making an appeal to fight the ‘consumerist syndrome’: ‘While the consumerist attitude may lubricate the wheels of the economy, it sprinkles sand into the bearings of morality’ (p. 153).
In 154 pages, Zygmunt Bauman and Carlo Bordoni have managed to condense the essential parts of traditional and modern social thought and to construct a relevant path towards our contemporary sense of crisis. In an eloquent text, not too far from the anxieties of the everyday citizen, the two thinkers lay down an inclusive approach that questions our civic environment, while identifying humans and their communities as the actual constituents of the public sphere.