Habermas, J. (1986). The new obscurity: the crisis of the welfare state and the exhaustion of utopian energies. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 11(2).[we are not witnessing an overall change from modernity to postmodernity.] it is not the utopian energies in general that are retreating from historical consciousness. What had reached its end is rather a specific utopian idea, which in the past chrystallized itself around the potential of a society based on social labor. (3)[the current predicament he conceptualises as follows:] the program of the social welfare state, is losing its capacity to project future possibilities for a collectively better and less endangered way of life. (5)The lever for the pacification of class antagonism remains [] the neutralization of the conflict potential built into the status of the wage labourer. [this is achieved] by way of welfare-state legislation and collective bargaining to set wage scales. [] the welfare-state compromise and the pacification of class antagonism are to be achieved through employing democratically legitimated political power to foster and to tame the quasi-natural process of capitalistic growth. [it still relies on the remains of the utopian idea of a labouring society] The presupposition here is that state intervention can insure a peaceful co-existence between democracy and capitalism. [he wants to discuss not the changed circumstances since the 1970s, but the internal difficulties that have arisen in the social state as result of its own success] (6)[two questions: can the interventionist state keep the economic system in check; i.e, can capitalism and democracy be accommodated? And second, is the use of political power the right method for attaining the substantial goal of promoting and securing emancipation. Can new forms of life be brought about through bureaucratic means?][as to the former: there is a basic contradiction: in the crisis of the welfare state] we can see clearly the structural limitations within which the social welfare state compromise has to be worked out and maintained. Because the social welfare state must leave uncontested the economic systems mode of functioning, there is no possibility for influencing private investment activity other than through interventions that conform to the economic system. And it lacks even the power to do that, since the redistribution of income essentially is limited to a horizontal reshuffling within the group of those dependently employed and barely touches the class-specific structure of property []. (7)[] the social welfare state comes into danger of having its societal base slip away. [the consensus for social democratic parties wanes and trade unions loose power][there is a second problem:] the advocates of the welfare state project always looked only in one direction. The foreground was occupied by the task of taming the economic power of capitalists and warding off the destructive consequences of crisis-prone economic growth []. Government power attained by parliamentary means appeared as both a harmless and an indispensable resource []. The active states intervention not only into the economic cycle, but also into the life cycle of its citizens was seen by the reformers as totally unproblematic [] (8)[] inherent in the project of the social state is a contradiction between goal and method. The goal is the establishment of forms of life which are structured according to egalitarian standards and which at the same time open up arenas for individual self-fulfillment and spontaneity. But apparently this goal cannot be achieved directly through a legal and administrative transformation of political programmes. Producing new forms of life is beyond the capacities of political power. (9)The utopian content of the communication community shrinks to the formal aspect of an undamaged intersubjectivity. Even the expression ideal speech situation leads to error insofar as it suggests a concrete form of life. What can be normatively brought into relief are necessary but general conditions for a communicative praxis of everyday life and for a process of discursive will-formation which would put participants themselves in a position to actualize concrete possibilities for a better and less endangered life, in accord with their own needs and insights, and on their own initiative. (17) [good enunciation of Habermass limited utopianism]