modernity, utopia and rationalization

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The Utopia of the ZeroOption. Modernity and Modernization as normativepolitical Criteria

«The Utopia of the ZeroOption. Modernity and Modernization as normative politicalCriteria»

by Claus Offe

Source:PRAXIS International (PRAXIS International), issue: 1 / 1987, pages: 124, on www.ceeol.com.

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MODERNITY, UTOPIA AND RATIONALIZATION

THE UTOPIA OF THE ZERO-OPTIONMODERNITY AND MODERNIZATION AS

NORMATIVE POLITICAL CRITERIA

Claus Offe

The social sciences have been concerned with the theme of “modernity”during the past 25 years in two different contexts. These contexts are sharplyseparated from one another but, it appears in retrospect, that they are at thesame time related in an ironic way. On the one hand is the context ofhistorical-sociological modernization research. This research concerns itselfwith general, descriptive and explanatory statements about the conditions andmotive forces of modernization. It analyzes the developmental paths whichpre-modern or traditional societies historically have taken to overcome (orwith which they could today overcome) the characteristics or rigidity,stagnation, and persistence in order to approach the condition of thedemocratic-capitalist industrial societies, which modernization theory at leastimplicitly describes as normatively desirable. Despite all the empirical detailand methodological refinement of the studies carried out in the 1960’s with theclose cooperation of historians and sociologists, Americans and WestEuropeans, it would not be unfair to their authors to note a certainperspectival fixation on one question, namely, “Wherein lie the conditions ofthe possibility that ‘we’ have become what we are today, and that others mightfollow in this successfully pursued path?” On occasion, as this modernizationresearch was in full bloom during the 1960’s, the concepts of “modernization”and “westernization” were treated quite unabashedly as equivalents. “Theachievements of the western world are being urgently recommended to thedeveloping countries for imitation. Modernization is interpreted as progress.”1

In this regard, in a critical treatment of modernization research, which on thewhole evaluates the chances and perspectives of this type of work in positiveterms, Hans Ulrich Wehler warns that modernization theory is coupled tooclosely with certain goal and value-assumptions and thus, “by its attachmentto the occidental model, exposes itself to the danger of explaining away or evenabsolutizing given contemporary conditions with a proud, ‘It has been attained.’”2

The context in which the concept of modernity stands within social-scientifictheory construction since the middle of the 1970’s, on the other hand, is quitedifferent. Here, the perspective is no longer shaped by the self-confidentpreoccupation of the western social sciences with “the others,” who are gliblyreferred to as “latecomers” (or indeed by the attempt to “take them in”

Translated by John TorpeyThe author would like to thank H. Joas, H. P. Kriesi, U. K. Preuss and F. Traxler, as well asthe participants in a conference for the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Bielefeld, WestGermany in November 1985.Praxis International 7:1 April 1987 0260-8448 $2.00

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ideologically). To the contrary, these debates take place in the skepticalatmosphere of a preoccupation of “modern” societies with themselves; that is, aself-scrutiny of the structures and normative premises, of the stability andprospects for the future of already “modern” societies. This shift of perspec-tive in the social sciences is codetermined by a series of contemporary historicaland internal, disciplinary circumstances, of which I shall refer here only to afew: the political and economic crisis experiences of the 1970’s, the rapidintellectual loss of face of important tenets of classical Marxism, the renewedreception of the “Dialectic of Englightenment” as well as of the Weberiantheory of “occidental rationalism,” and the aesthetic, social-philosophical, andsociological symptoms, conjectures, and prognoses concerning the passageinto a “post-modern” stage of development of western culture and society.What seems to me ironic in this change of perspectives and contexts is not somuch that the gaze is turned away from either “the others” or from historyand toward one’s own contemporary cultural and structural conditions, butrather that the situation of “modern” societies appears just as blocked, just asburdened with myths, rigidities, and developmental constraints, as moderniz-ation theory had once diagnosed to be the case for “pre-modern” societies. Inany case, “modernity” is no longer exclusively the desirable endpoint of thedevelopment of others, but rather the precarious point of departure for thefurther development of one’s own (“western”) society. In this respect,post-modernists and neo-conservatives seem bent on outdoing each other inthe severity of their respective critiques of the principal concept of moderniz-ation, namely reason or rationality.

In what follows I should like to sketch a mediating position betweenmodernization euphoria and modernity skepticism. I would like to examinehow and why the political-moral intuitions motivated by modernizationprocesses are at variance with and remain unredeemed by the structures ofmodernity which have developed in western societies (I); why from thisexperience of disappointment, which now constitutes the background ofnearly all relevant debates, no necessary reason may be derived either for theoutright erasure of those fundamental intuitions or their termination withappeal to the higher validity of anti-modern moral principles (II); and why, tothe contrary, adequate latitude exists for a further modernization of thestructures of modernity itself – that is, for an application of the principle ofmodernization to its own structures. I hope to show in conclusion that theexploration and utilization of these possibilities actually provides thebackground theme of numerous contemporary political controversies anddevelopments (III).

I

Like many fundamental concepts in the social sciences, the concept ofmodernity has a dual, namely an analytic and a normative political status. Itdescribes characteristics and, at the same time, establishes a dimension ofevaluation in which pre- or anti-modern ideas or social relations can becriticized as deficient, retarded, regressive, etc. This simultaneously empirical

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and normative double-application of the term “modernity” is justified by thenotion that the structures that develop in modern societies can be decoded asthe realization (however limited) of the normative intentions and revolu-tionary projects nurtured by modernizing elites and ideologies in the past.These founding ideas of modern society were formulated in the western worldin the late 18th century and achieved their practical form in Britishindustrialization and classical political economy, in the French Revolutionand (one might add with Marx) the philosophy of German Idealism.

It is normally assumed that the propelling normative idea, the dominantphilosophical motif of European modernization processes (and of those whichstemmed from Europe) was the emancipation [Freisetzung] of reason andsubjectivity. Since the 18th century, this developmental process, shapedsocially and intellectually by the way-stations of the Renaissance, the Refor-mation, and the Enlightenment, has taken concrete form in political insti-tutionalizations which can be characterized somewhat schematically by thesequence: national state – constitutional state – democratic state – welfarestate. Each of these developmental steps may be unproblematically depictedas a progressive movement in the aforementioned normative dimension.Always at issue is the roll-back of boundaries constraining the freedom ofdecision and action of social actors, a gradual „transformation in the directionof the expansion of capacities and autonomy.“3 New latitude is cleared for theapplication of the actors’ subjective reason, their options are increased, andthe contingency of what can be achieved in action grows. To this correspondsin the technical and economic spheres a freeing-up and an increase ofcontingency in the spatial dimension (transportation and communications), inthe temporal dimension (banking) and in the energy sphere (physical andchemical exploitation of new energy sources and a rapid drop in theproportion of human and animal power in total energy consumption). From acomplementary perspective, this may be described as a process of cumulativede-institutionalization, as the progressive neutralization of physical givens andtraditional privileges that have become politically and philosophically unten-able, as a virtually methodical discontinuation of the past. In sociologicalterms, two processes which reinforce one another intersect in modernization.One process consists in the de-coupling of actors, organizations, and socialsub-systems in relation to other systems: a process which is unanimouslydocumented in the theorectical literature by means of such concepts asindividuation, emancipation, separation, autonomization, self-governance,“disembeddedness,” etc.4 The other process consists in the decline oftraditional commitments, routines, facticities, and expectations.Autonomized action becomes unrestrained and boundless, “insatiable” (asMarx says of capital) in the pursuit and expansion of its own particular values.Just as familiar as this dual process of the expansion of contingent andthe destruction of tradition are the fields of action gripped by thatliquefaction of the conventional. These include the four spheres of materialproduction, cultural reproduction, political participation, and bureaucraticdomination.


(a) Material Production. With the tremendous increase of options thatoccurs in this field of action, the penetration or expansion of the marketprinciple (at first to commodity markets, then to labor and capital markets), ofthe principle of rational organization and of the prinicple of rational techniqueallied with scientific research and teaching become interdependent. Theestablishment of these three principles allows all social actors involved inmaterial production the constant possibility of deciding where something willbe bought or sold and what will be produced how. For, over the long term, innone of these questions can one afford simply to adopt the premises of theconventional and customary.

(b) Cultural Reproduction. The sphere of cultural norms and values aswell as of aesthetic criteria of validity are also subject to an equally pervasiveproclivity toward transitoriness and innovation. In the modernizationprocess, traditional monopolies of interpretation, claims to absoluteness, anddoctrinal compulsions become obsolete, and accordingly the orienting normsof the sciences, of occupation, leisure, art, family, sexuality, religion,education, etc. become variable, subject to choice, and unstable over time.

(c) Politics. The totality of “that which can happen,” with which onemust reckon, and for which past experiences provide no reliable rule ofthumb, also grows in the realm of political conflicts. Whosoever takes aposition, in whatever form, or whatever issues, and with whatever interests, isin liberal-democratic political systems to a greater degree a matter of choice,and is subject to more rapid variation, than anywhere else.

(d) Public Policy. Positive law – which is formally defined and out offfrom its roots in „custom and habit“ – and bureaucratic administration createin modern societies a capability, still hardly imaginable only a century ago, forthe state executive to bring authority to bear comprehensively and reliably onhighly specific groups, matters, etc. with a multiplicity of prohibitions andcommands. The explosive growth of the possible domains of action is hereencouraged, as in the cases (a) through (c), through systematic application andselective use of formalized knowledge and information technologies whichpermit speedy cognitive access from any one point of the system to any otherpoint.

Regardless of how self-evident and commonplace they may sound, all theseclaims about growing choices over social contexts give not just a crude but adownright misleading and one-sided picture of the realities of a modern socialstructure. They serve me here merely as a foil against the backdrop of which Iwould like to consider the exactly opposite claim: namely, that it is preciselymodern societies which are characterized by a high degree of rigidity andinflexibility.

In order to bring into view this rigidity, which derives from contingencyand accumulates with it, it is necessary first to recall the facts of specializationand functional differentiation. Specialisation here refers to the development ofinstitutions and means of communication that are “responsible for” each ofthe four above-mentioned spheres and which are in each case particularlyadapted to the task of generating options and putting at the disposal of social


actors the criteria of selection among the growing options. Consider forpurposes of illustration the process of the separation of “household” and“firm” and the corresponding intellectual technique of “rational book-keeping.” Only when this technique is available is it possible for an economicconcern to grasp and actively expand the horizon of its available options, andto choose rationally among them in the language of capital accounting.Scientific research, bureaucratic domination, and political, moral, and aes-thetic discourses are other examples of specialized processes for the continu-ous exploitation of new territory. Particular media and institutions arenecessary if the focus is to be sharpened for (as yet unperceived) options and ifthe choice among them is to be steered according to defensible criteria. Onecould say more generally that the continuous expansion of options in theaforementioned spheres of action goes hand in hand with – indeed, ismediated by – a countervailing constriction of the selection filters throughwhich action proceeds. In order to be able to exploit new options, one mustnot only „make oneself familiar with the matter,“ but must also always becapable of disregarding criteria of judgment that are „irrevelant.“ The flip sideof this sharper, more precisely refined selectivity are thus those characteristicsof action which are often diagnosed as apathy, narrow-mindedness,insensitivity, unscrupulousness, etc. The individual‘s renounciation of „inter-pretation“ [„Ausdeutung“] and a narrow-minded, monomaniaca, and„convulsive self-importance“ is, according to Max Weber, the Janus-Face ofrefined selectivity, to which he retorts in desperate pathos: „Specialistswithout spirit, sensualists without heart: this nullity imagines that it hasattained a level of civilization never before achieved.“5 But reproaching socialactors for pathological one-sidedness and self-importance is only one of twopossible critiques of modernization; the other refers to the consequences ofaction and the social conditions that issue from such a one-sided type of action.The absence of concern for consequences leads to problems of order andcoordination, and generally to consequences that are “anarchic,” crisis-inducing, and which undermine the “social tolerance” for modernizationprocesses.

The other important factor is that of functional differentiation. This entails(in contrast to the case of “segmental” differentiation) that in principle allactors participate or at least can participate in all subsystems with theirspecialized means of communication (“inclusion”). There are then no spheresof socially exclusive functions (of Junkers for officers’ careers, of the poor forservices of the welfare state, of the tax-paying educated bourgeoisie forpolitical elections and attendance at opera openings), but instead a tendencyfor each individual to be connected with and to have access to all functionalspheres, assuming that s/he submits to the appropriate highly selective schemeof institutions, criteria, and special communications.

If one were now to combine the three characteristics of modernity notedabove (namely expansion of options, specialization, and functional differenti-ation), the result is a set of coordination or compatibility problems. Whentraditional constraints on the horizon of options are relaxed; when specializedinstitutions and “languages” are developed with which these horizons can be


actively expanded; and when the development and evaluation of these optionscan no longer be made the privilege or exclusive responsibility of sectoralcommunities of specialists because such sectoral increases of options tendent-ially involve “all” – then the difference grows between those demands andoptions which in a „local“ perspective are „possible“ and those which out of a„global“ perspective (of all those who do not participate, but who arenonetheless affected) are „tolerable,“ assimilable, and acceptable. Noteverything that is „possible“ is thus also „defensible“. One must, for instance,forego the short-term maximum profit or the pristine purity of a moralposition dictated by an ethics of conviction because such options becomeunassimilable [unzumutbar] for other spheres of action and unacceptable giventhe forseeable consequences for the actor her/himself. The larger the horizonof “actually” possible options becomes, the more difficult grows the problemof establishing reflexive counter-tendencies which would make reasonablysecure that one’s own action remains compatible with the “essential” premisesof other affected spheres of action.

This is in no way meant to imply that the urgency of such coordinationproblems is equally great for all strategic actors of all subsystems. On thecontrary: social power relations exist precisely in the asymmetry of the degreeto which actors in various subsystems are forced to undertake reflectionconcerning this compatibility and to take others into consideration. It wouldthus certainly be rather audacious and, given many political-economic factorsand developments, contestable to assert that in the liberal-democratic welfarestates of the western industrial societies such an asymmetry between investorsor employers on the one hand and state executives on the other did not exist;this asymmetry would indeed have to increase to the extent that the politicalsystems in question are in fact welfare states. Regardless of such asymmetries,however, all “modern” societies must be of such a kind that all subsystems areunder the same pressure of constantly entering into relation to the otherspheres of action, as well as of sacrificing the exploitation of a portion of thoseoptions in its own realm of action in order to stabilize this relation. To put itthe other way round: in “modern” societies, no subsystem can affordconsistently to behave “recklessly” and to claim in principle superiorauthoritativeness vis-a-vis all other fields of action. The problem here consistsprecisely in that solutions of such coordination problems are merely (ex post)given as systemic conditions of continued existence, not as (ex ante) motives foraction; that is to say, there is no agency that could produce such motives forcoordinative action in both legitimate and reliable fashion or otherwise assumeresponsibility for solving this task.

A distorted picture thus emerges if one naively insists upon the idea that“modernization” is equivalent solely to “an increase in options,” without atthe same time considering the contrary idea that, in order to manage thecoordination and compatibility problems and thus to secure the furtherexistence of the system, inadequate and incompatible options must becontinuously filtered out – and their number grows in step with the number ofoptions themselves. Still more: the coordination of problems grow with ourknowledge of the distant effects and interferences which particular actions can


exert upon the conditions of other, later action. And the more such knowledgeis available and the better it is demonstrated that one can acquire missingknowledge through (timely) research activities, the more difficult it becomesfor one to make use of the excuse of ignorance. The progressive liquidation oftraditional constraints on action which takes place in the modernization processpotentiates the needs for limitations (which however are not afforded byinstitutions) with the help of which the compatibility of subjectively chosenactions, otherwise increasingly precarious and toppling into “anarchy,” can beensured.

Now the grounding, construction, and observation of such “limitations,”which can be expected to perform the synthesizing achievement of making theentire array of options tolerable and mutually assimilable, are the centralthemes of political philosophy, of constitutional and policy doctrines, as wellas of empirical political science. The cross-section of relevant considerationsthat I will touch upon in what follows is thus correspondingly modest. I wantto suggest the following theses: (1) The central problems of modern societiesis not their further modernization, that is, the further increase of options,choices, and possiblities of action, but rather the invention and securing ofthose secondary rules of selection which as a synthetic principle can secure thecoexistence and enduring compatibility of variegated horizons of options. (2)Such models of a “modern” synthesis are subject to the two-fold criterion ofadequacy; on the one hand they must be “modern” in the sense that they mustrespect the emancipatory possibilities of rational subjectivity, and on the otherhand they must be synthetic in the sense that they prove themselves effectiveregulators of coordination and compatibility. The central focus here is on thecritique of those conceptions of order that commit the error of violating boththe first and the second of these criteria of adequacy.

A provisional result of these considerations is that the characteristic anddecisive criterion of modernity consists not only in the increase of optionsavailable in action but, equally and contrariwise, in the existence of regulativemechanisms that steer the actually occurring selection of options in such a waythat these options are brought into a relationship of harmony and mutualaccomodation, and at least do not wreak havoc upon one another and thusdestroy one another as options. Social systems would in this sense be“modern” to the extent that they bring the disintegrative consequences ofspecialized expansions of capacities under control in a manner that itself is notregressive and antimodern, that is, directed against the principle of theexpansion of capacities itself. It is this difficult problem which is often moreobscured than revealed by such vague formulae as that of a “liberal order” ofsociety.

There are three classical solutions to this problem of order, which areassociated with the keywords “state,” “market,” and “community” (or,alternatively, with the political philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, andRousseau). These positions are “classical” not just in the sense that theyrepresent particularly pure and consistent elaborations of their respectivefundamental ideas, but also in the sense that they can no longer play apracticable role in the present but rather are merely relevant as illuminating


examples of why this is not the case. The notion that the need for regulationand compatibility-ensuring mechanisms conjured up by modernization — thatis, for „order“ — can be dealt with by the conferral upon one social agency ofunlimited power to make binding decisions and to keep domestic peace iveson in all statist approaches, to be sure, but it proves obsolete if for no otherreason than simply because the order to be produced by the state must alreadybe presupposed in circular fashion as being at hand prior to the state[vorstaatlich] — for upon what else besides such a presupposition is thepeacekeeping potential of the state power to be grounded? It is true that thenotion that the problem can be handled by way of a strict separation of spheresbetween state and civil society, between economy and polity, continues toinspire liberal thought; but its power to persuade suffers from the blinderswith which this cast of thought shutters itself against both the constitutivefunction of political domination in economic processes and against thephenomena of social power, social classes, and political conflict which emergefrom economic processes. The idea that order can be achieved via theseparation of the spheres of economy and politics (or through the spontaneousself-coordination within and between these spheres that is expected from thisseparation) is today, in both normative and (above all) in descriptive terms, tobe banished to the realm of utopian or ideological delusions. For the recipe“simplification through separation,” insofar as the division is to be madebetween “economic” and “political” spheres of action (as economic liberalismwould have it), fails on two counts: markets are not “free of politics,” but areinstead politically guaranteed and regulated and are capable of being repro-duced only on the basis of this politically mediated order; nor is politics “freeof the market,” but is rather bound to the trajectory prescribed to the moderntax and welfare state by the economic system of the society (not to mention theprivileged influence of economic interest groups or, indeed, corruptionphenomena). As far as the idea that the unity of social life could rest upon“community” or “solidarity” is concerned, it is true that this notion is presentalike in populist and fundamentalist protest movements, but it commonlyamounts to a helpless political anti-modernism — if not a „forcible commu-nalization“ [Zwangsvergemeinschaftung] — imposed by state terror.

Such negative findings make it seem advisable to deal less with “classical”solutions than with the nature of the problems themselves which the attainedlevel of sectoral modernization raises, including the problems of thosesolutions that have introduced themselves evolutionarily in societies of ourkind. A basic experience of intellectual and political elites in modern societiescan be adequately if abstractly summarized with the following principle: onthe one hand, nearly all factors of social, economic, and political life arecontingent, elective, and gripped by change, while on the other hand theinstitutional and structural premises over which that contingency runs aresimultaneously removed from the horizon of political, indeed of intellectualchoice. The perfected capacity of the subsystems for ever-new options foraction is matched only by their inability to get under control, or responsibly tomodify, the fatal relationships which they thus constantly create at themacro-level. This conception stands in the background when Gehlen speaks


of a “post-histoire,” and makes itself felt when Horkheimer and Adorno inthe Dialectic of Enlightenment write of the “freedom [to chose] the ever-the-same.”6 Only simple, not yet modernized, internally not yet very “option-rich” societies — and so it seems from a glance at the political revolutions thathave taken place in the 20th century — still might be revolutionized fromwithin, while by contrast “complex” societies have become rigid to such anextent that the very attempt to reflect normatively upon or to renew their“order,” that is, the nature of the coordination of the processes which takeplace in them, is virtually precluded by dint of their practical futility and thustheir methodical inadequacy. The weight of established facts, according to thedoctrine of resignation, is greater than all reason: moreover, it is argued thatthe idea of an intentional and planned new construction of the social order oreven its reform is misguided, because unintended consequences stand in theway of any will to change and, since they are foreseeable as such, they denudethe will of its innocence.

There is indeed much to be said for the idea that there is such a thing as apinciple of constant sums: the more options we open up for ourselves, theless available as an option is the institutional framework itself with the help ofwhich we disclose them. This constant sum principle can be illustrated by theexample of a highway, or of a transportation system based on the automobile.Under conditions of extraordinarily high (and, in comparison to rail-boundtransport systems, with its comparatively rigid spatio-temporal schematiz-ation through train stations, schedules, etc., significantly increased) freedomof choice, in such a system every participant can at any time enter at everypoint within the street and highway system; at the same time, however, thesystem that permits this liquidity of movement is in purely physical (and ofcourse in political and economic) terms an unremovable fact, as are its familiarphysical and social effects. Simply due to the magnitude of the investmentsa ready made and now to be recouped, a tremendous resistance to revision isbuilt into socio-technical systems of this kind. They open all manner ofoptions, but preclude for any relevant period of time the option of being ableto do without them.

This would all be unproblematic to the extent that one could rely on theserigidities in their totality for having the characteristics of a “modern order,”i.e., that on the one hand they ensured freedom of choice, and on the otherthat they managed the problems of order and coordination created by theutilization of this freedom. In both respects, however, there exist thewell-known contemporary doubts. Regarding the first criterion, both thetheory of positional goods and everyday experience teach that the use-value ofoptions can rapidly sink or indeed become negative if the number of actorsthat make use of these freedoms grows. If everyone stands on their tip-toes, noone can see better, according to the well-known formulation of the problem byFred Hirsch. Once again, one can illustrate the reality-content of thisformulation with the example of automobile transport: the more peoplesimultaneously get behind the wheel, the less they can start on their way.One can also study the mechanism of the “endogenous loss of relevance,” ifnot the self-liquidation of freedom of choice, with the example of instit-


utionalized political participation, as Norberto Bobbio has recently convincin-gly shown (Bobbio, 1984). In his analysis, Bobbio confirms the tendency — earlierdiagnosed by Max Weber — of liberal-democratic systems to allow the formalrights of democratic participation of individual citizens to become materiallyempty by permitting quasi-autonomous „organs of mediation“ of the „will of thepeople“ to become dominant instead (in the form of bureaucratic parties,interest groups, political leaders, and parliaments); in addition, due to its owninterest in the maintenance of its organizational possibilities, the bureaucracyof the state executive in modern democracies not only grows in bulk, butaugments the barriers against the influence of individual citizens or ofunorganized political publics. The more democratic rights the individualcitizen enjoys, and the more citizens are drawn into the enjoyment of theserights, the more is the growth of organizations and prerogatives indirectlysimulated, in the face of which these rights (at least when they are used inconjunction with average material, informational, and temporal resources)decline in potential influence. The material meaning and political use-value ofthese rights, Bobbio makes clear, are overwhelmed and drowned by formalorganizational structures and procedures. The state power avenges thedamages which threaten it from the side of the rights of democraticparticipation not by abolishing these rights, but by developing immunizingcounter-tendencies that neutralize their actual efficacy and scope.Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s theory of the “culture industry” is a model for theanalogous dynamic in the relations between aesthetic culture and the valori-zation of capital: cultural autonomy is no longer the bulwark of individualityand freedom, but the welcome and thus less transparent pretext for theirdestruction. If one were to radicalize and generalize this idea, one confrontsthe not entirely misguided suspicion that, in a whole array of aspects of themodernization process, the gain in autonomy and subjectivity may haveremained fictive and nominal insofar as it is neutralized by counter-tendenciesof the “administered world.” It is precisely on those paths broken byenlightenment that myth maintains itself. In numerous permutations, sincethe Marxist critique of alienation and reification social theory had identifiedand elaborated those mechanisms through which modernity destroys andbetrays its own emancipatory founding principles and achievements. In thename of progress it regresses to an “iron cage” (M. Weber) and organizes the“colonization of the life-world” (J. Habermas).

Reasonable doubts also exist regarding the second criterion. The inefficacyof the order and steering mechanisms is, next to the losses of freedom, the otherfrustrating basic experience that modern societies have of themselves.Steering capacity becomes deficient when in modern societies three factorscoincide. First is the factor of growing differentiation, which increases thedependency and vulnerability of each social realm in relation to nearly everyother, and thus raises the global need for coordination. Second is theinadequacy of the available means and mechanisms of coordination. And thirdis the inflexibility, the ponderousness and the resistances to revision, whichavailable (but inadequate) coordination mechanisms put up against everyattempt to close the gap between steering needs and steering capacities,


between “design complexity” and “control complexity” through institutionalinnovations. Even political steering tasks of moderate proportions – say, a taxor pension reform that took into account all known facts, foreseeabledevelopments, and recognized claims – appear such hopelessly difficult andtime-consuming undertakings that the demand for coordination involved withany serious attempt to manage such problems narrows almost automatically toshort periods, small circles of interested parties, and obvious central prob-lems, while everything else is banished beyond the horizon of attention andconsideration – that is, put off to a „second round“ which is for that veryreason more difficult. The principle being practiced here is that of „partialcoordination through bracketing,“ which means coordination at the cost ofthird parties or the future. Coordination of extremely large steering problemswhich, corresponding to the nature of their object, cannot be managed withinthe framework of the nation-state – i.e., the military-strategic questions ofpeacekeeping, the management of problems of poverty in the third world, andthe maintenance of minimal ecological balances – thus seems completelyfutile. Such compatibility problems intensify by an order of magnitude if wemake not just the functioning of systems but also their compliance to currentnorms a criterion as well. Thus we live today in the states of the westernalliance under conditions which include the organization of a militarypreparedness — in broad daylight, by a democratically constituted govern-ment, and in all of our names — which, in certain possible cases, foresees thecommission of acts for which the characterization „nuclear holocaust“ appliesprecisely; at the same time, the preparation for such an action (especially sinceit is an empirical question whether the appropriate causal conditions will infact arise or not) is itself an act that can hardly be brought into discursiveaccord with ethical standards and demands that are current in the ChristianOccident.

Organizations and state elites everywhere thematize the approaching dangeror indeed the already achieved condition of their “ungovernability.” In theface of such striking limitations of the collective capacity for action, thequestion forces itself upon us whether talk of a “modern” society is not ratheran illegitimate euphemism, and whether we should instead speak moreprecisely of a society which, to be sure, has passed through manifold processesof sectoral increase of options and which therefore has at its disposal a trulymodern administration and art, modern industry and communications net-works, a modern military and pedagogy, but which as a society does notdispose over options as it does over this ensemble of partial modernities andtheir relation. There is rather the appearance that the “modernity-deficit”[Modernitaetsrueckstand] of the society grows larger to the extent that thesubsystems become more modern, and that at this macro-level the helplessexperience of blind fatalities becomes the rule to the extent that the rationalincrease of the subsystems advances. It appears that the modernization of theparts comes at the cost of the modernity of the whole. Precisely because of the“openness to the future” of the subsystems and of their innovation-intensifying sectoral rationalities, the society itself seems to have becomeincapable of conceiving its own future as a project or to rein it according to


elementary parameters. As flip-side of modernization processes, thereemerges a seemingly paradoxical entanglement in the status quo and aninflexibility of the overall society which no longer has anything in commonwith the fundamental motif of modernity, namely the ability to dispose overoptions and to choose.

II

The gain in freedom of expanded options is fictive, and the steeringachievement of the global social system is deficient. These two experiences ofdisappointment fuel the theoretical as well as the political-moral critique ofmodernity by the neo-conservative right and also by the intellectual camp thatI would like to refer to as the “post-industrial left.” The schemes of critique ofthe neo-conservative right are familiar. First, the emancipatory value-constella-tions of modernity are discredited as self-contradictory or scorned, and therefollows a strict renunciation of “hedonism,” the striving after progress, the“utopian expansion of horizons,” the egalitarian motifs of “the happiness ofmankind,” etc. This basic motif of a modernity that has fallen out of step withits own moral impetus already dominated the thirty-one year old Max Weber’sprogrammatic inaugural lecture of 1895: “Abandon hope all ye who enterhere: these words are inscribed above the portals of the unknown futurehistory of mankind.”7 Unlike contemporary neo-conservatives, however,Weber was in a position to give a positive point of reference from which,according to his conception, the system integration of bourgeois society wouldadmit of being achieved (at least domestically). The idea of the cultural[Kultur-] and national state, which allows him to speak of “the solemnsplendor of national sentiment,”8 figures as such a model of social synthesis inWeber; to this idea corresponds on the other hand the famous formal principleof the “ethics of responsibility,” which is supposed to enable the heroicindividuals at the pinnacle of economic and political apparatuses to construct asynthesis (which itself however is not rationally reconstructible) of thedivergent demands and value-premises of the various social spheres of action.Beyond these two principles of synthesis, there is nothing but the unregulableconflict dynamic of cultural and social, economic and military struggles. Incomparison to this conception of a “liberal in despair” (Mommsen), contem-porary neo-conservatism operates more modestly yet less consistently. On theone hand, a colorful assortment of traditional “binding values” (family,nation, achievement, private property, religion) is reactivated and pressedinto the service of disciplining demands, without, however, being able toname a common referent of values equivalent to the concept of theKulturnation. Given the failure to demonstrate the self-evidence of such aglobal reference point, the advocates of these catalogues of virtues mustconfront the difficulty of having doubt cast upon the candor and sincerity withwhich they plead for the validity of moderating and binding values: how canthey make persuasive the case that they are truly concerned with those virtuesas a matter of ethical conviction, and not just as a pretense with which theyactually strengthen privileges and intervene in distribution struggles in aregressive fashion?


On the other hand, however, the demands on such achievements of order asare at all possible are reduced so far that compatibility and securing continuedexistence are virtually interpreted as possible only as the result of forcedsectoral modernization processes – whether of the technological and economiccompetition on world markets, or of the arms race: in other words, as thebyproduct of the satisfaction of a „capacity to prevail“ that is pursued almostwith the mania of an ethics of conviction. Taken together, the two lead to thefamiliar dilemma of neo-conservativism, perceived by its critics in the fact thatneo-conservative politics wants in the same breath to be reactionary in culturaland social policy terms, and unrestrainedly modern in economic,technological, and military policy terms, whereas (it is at least suspected)modernism itself should have undermined the conditions of validity of thispropped-up traditionalism. [North] American reality in the first half of the80‘s, meanwhile, shows that the juxtaposition of traditionalism and moder-nism (the coexistence of the death penalty, obligatory school prayer, theoutlawing of abortion, „creation science,“ and other concerns of the MoralMajority with the mystification of „high tech,“ gene technology, andweapons-technological gigantism) can indeed attain a certain stability andbecome a seductive model for political forces in Western Europe. Only fiveyears age, hardly anyone would have guessed the extent to which one canapparently and at least temporarily afford both: give a free hand to the logic ofmodernization and its built-in dynamic of an increase in capacities, while atthe same time effectively putting the egalitarian and emancipatory ideas ofmodernity and their critical potential under quarantine.

In addition to the problem of the sincerity of its normative premises (that is,the question whether these rest upon moral arguments or rather uponinterests), neo-conservative thought must also deal with the problem of thetruth-content of its moral precepts, i.e., with the problem of their rationalpersuasiveness and thus with their generalizability. How can the truth of suchmoral arguments be demonstrated? The answer is likely to be either in thediscursive attitude of one who accepts no other vindication for one’s positionthan the unconstrained assent of others, or by appeal to the self-evidence ofmoral truths and substantive imperatives. If one chooses the first course andcommits oneself seriously to discourse, the jig of the neo-conservative critiqueof modernity would be up with the first move: the critic of the values ofsubjectivity and reason would have to make use of just those media andpremises the exclusive validity of which s/he wishes to cast into doubt, andthus puts her/himself in the performative self-contradiction of one who inwriting calls upon others to give up reading. But neither does the retreat to thenon-discursive alternative lead anywhere. The proclamation of explicitly“ungrounded” [grundlos] moral certainties is incapable of furnishing itselfwith the certainty of its own generalizability. In this situation, one may well besatisfied with the practice of each person’s respective moral maxims; but, fromfunctional perspectives, the limitation to this position appears inadequateprecisely when one pleads for the adherence to principles — such as in the caseof norms of moderation, renunciation, self-limitation, and constraint[Bindung] – the meaning of which can only be fulfilled if it is reasonable to


expect that, at least tendentially, all will adhere to them. One must at least beable to reckon on the “diffusion effect” of good examples and one’s owncapacity to activate latent norms of reciprocity in others; for with respect tothe socio-ethical norms in question here it is not only useless, but in the enddownright self-destructive, if one subscribes to them (in the extreme case)only oneself. This consideration, which can be illustrated quite easily withnumerous examples (such as the observance of speed limits), suggests themeta-ethical conclusion that problems of order can be “moralized” with lesssuccess the more one dogmatizes the corresponding moral principles andburdens them with “substantive imperatives,” instead of keeping themdiscursively open.

The mirror image of the precarious mixing of the motifs of modernism andreaction can be found in the political forces and motifs of the “postindustrialleft.” The neo-romantic protest of the new social movements is radically“modern” insofar as it is guided by the values of autonomy, emancipation,and identity. At the same time, this protest directs itself against thosedevelopmental results of the modernization of the technical-economic and ofthe political-military system from the unregulated proliferation of which risksare produced for autonomy and identity as well as for physical integrity andsurvival. The society is experienced and thus grasped theoretically as a“risk-society”9 in which a new politics of production and of producingbecomes the central axis of conflict.10

One can view the new social movements, which represent the protestagainst consequences of modernization that is thoroughly “modern” innormative terms, as a phenomenon that takes up at a new level and continuesthe emancipatory bourgeois movements of the 18th and early 19th century aswell as the workers’ movement of the 19th and early 20th century. The centralconcern pursued by the social and political movements of the bourgeoisiedirected itself against the decision-making privileges and the arbitrariness ofpre-bourgeois political elites. In contrast, the concern pursued by the workers’movement was directed against poverty and social inequality as the accompani-ment to bourgeois-capitalist industrialization. The democratic constitutionalstate was the evolutionary achievement which flowed from the social move-ment of the bourgeoisie, partially in conjunction with the burgeoningworkers’ movement, and the Keynesian welfare state as we know it from thepost-war epoch in West European industrial societies was the political-economic structure that was the result (if not necessarily the achievement ofthe aims) of the non-communist workers’ movement. Building on thesemovements and the structures which emerged from them, the new socialmovements concentrate on the themes of pain and anxiety that result frominfringements upon or threats to the physical (or, in the widest sense,“aesthetic”) integrity of the body, of life, or of a way of life. The protagonistsof this protest theme thus stand in continuity with motifs and achievements ofthe bourgeois-democratic and proletarian-socialist movements. Without theiraccumulated achievements, there would have been neither the occasion northe possibility of making injuries, infringements, and the experience ofsuffering, or the defense of life and way of life against such infringements into


a successful mobilizing theme. International organizations such as AmnestyInternational and Greenpeace signify today in the western countries – farahead of „green“ and „alternative“ political initiatives and experiments – theurgency of these themes and experiences.

On the other hand, this continuity of old and new socio-political move-ments is not unbroken. I find three discontinuities. First, at least so far, theecological, pacifist, feminist, regionalist, and neighborhood autonomy move-ments are far from having developed even the outlines of a program of socialtransformation with the same degree of consistency and comprehensivenessthat characterized the earlier socio-political movements. I find anotherrupture in that in their critique of modernization – with thoroughly emancipa-tory intent – these new social movements are not entirely immune from thetemptation to revert to unmistakably pre-modern ideals and to base theircritique on particularistic, communitarian, libertarian, anarchistic, ecological-biological, or similar fundamentalisms. One might, of course, suspect in thesesymptoms of a normative regression a general characteristic of socio-politicalmovements with parallels in early bourgeois romanticism and in the “guild”conceptions of the early workers’ movement, especially in the Latin countries.The third and most important discontinuity seems to me to lie in the fact thatthe new social movements have taken as the object of their critique preciselythose institutional arrangements of political rule, material production, andscientific-technical innovation with the help of which the demands of the oldermovements could be satisfied to begin with. For the critique is directedagainst the dynamics of industrial growth and scientific-technical changewhich has become autonomized and escaped all effective social ties ofresponsibility, on the one hand, and against the functioning of a “welfare-warfare state” committed to the central value of (social and military) securityon the other.11 Out of this discontinuity there arises the peculiar difficulty ofthe intellectual and political task of reconciling the partial rationalities oftechnical-economic efficiency and state-bureaucratic security measures withthe new sensitivities to suffering and the claims to inviolability, without at thesame time negating their relative importance and their practical indispen-sability. What must be made “socially acceptable” and compatible with lifeconditions, according to the demands of the new social movements, areprecisely those political-economic structures that appeared to the predecessorsof the contemporary social movements as the guarantee and securing of theirlife conditions.12

Two internally driven political-theoretical positions concerning the disap-pointing experiences and results of the modernization process thus confrontone another today, while it appears that the middle ground of those who, ingood conscience, advocate further modernization and presuppose a continuityof technical and social progress on the old socialist model is occupied by fewerand fewer all the time. On the one side stand the apologists for modernstructures, who, to be sure, hold forth with their pleas for the furtherunleashing of technical, economic, military, and bureaucratic increase incapacities by recourse to pre- and anti-modern catalogs of virtues and duties.In mirror image stand in bright-plaid intellectual formation a wide array of


contrasting positions which all rely upon the emancipatory and autonomy-enhancing initial motifs of modernity, but which for just this reason sharplycriticize the achieved condition of modernization with the familiar argumentsof the critiques of growth and technology, of bureaucracy and the professions.But the advocates of this position run the danger of committing the errorwhich the advocates of the neoconservative apology commit without a secondthought: namely, of falling back with doctrinaire absoluteness on principles oforder that are derived from an alleged “essence” of human beings (or ofwomen or men), of society, of nature, or whatever in a supposed effort tostrengthen their critique of the established structures of modernization. In thehands of such zealots of the simple life or of life true to human essence, thecritique of modernization threatens to forfeit the modernity of its impulse. Aschematic representation of this constellation of forces would yield somethinglike the following:

Positiontowards: Values of Modernity

positive negative

Means positive “social democraticmainstream”

“neoconservativeright”

ofModernization negative “post-industrial

left”“post-modern”regressiveparticularisticpotentials

III

In conclusion I would like to deal with the rather immodest and thus onlyquite incompletely treated question: how can the regressive potential – whichthe right-wing apologia of modernity brings in its train with an untroubledconscience while the left-wing critique of modernity carries along with a ratherbad conscience – how can this potential be shaken off at least in the case of thelatter. I thus return to the previously-substantiated thesis that the prevalentself-characterization of our societies as „modern“ societies is actually aneuphemism. „Society“ is not „modern“ in the sense of „open for options“;rather, this applies only to its constitutive subsystems of material production,cultural reproduction, political public sphere, and state domination. Themanner in which these subsystems are related to and affect each other mustinstead be considered extraordinarily rigid, fatal, and sealed off from anyfreedom of choice. But not only that: in addition to their rigidity and lack ofoptionality, the integrated circuits of coordination are characterized by their


inadequate efficacy, which is decried on all sides. That means that partialprocesses have effects on other partial processess in substantive, temporal, orsocial respects which are either completely unknown or unforeseen, and/orcannot be neutralized or held under control to an extent that would “really“ bedemanded by normative parameters and functional equilibrium conditions ofthe affected (or other) subsystems. In systems so constructed, it is extremelyrisky to rely on the assumption that what is complementarily required willactually have already occurred, and thus on not having to reckon with trulyunassimilable effects of the actions taking place elsewhere. The situation canbe likened to one in which airplanes are starting up everywhere before therunways of the destination airports are in operating condition – an analogywhich, given the happy-go-lucky adoption of „modern“ energy technologieslong before the resolution of the storage and disposal problems for theradioactive wastes, should not be considered overly dramatic. In all spheres oflife, one is increasingly forced into the reliance, which is by no means immuneto disappointment, that by some kind of providental arrangement or far-sighted measure (but whose?) the right actors will do the right thing at theright time.

I would describe such problems of fine-tuning coordination and steering asmodernization problems of the second order. They are not subsidiary inurgency to those modernization problems of the first order which strike anyWest European visitor to developing countries, such as the search fordrinkable water or a functioning telephone. Modernization problems of thesecond order, the core of which concerns the rationalization of the interplaybetween already rationalized subsystems, today occupies the social sciences ona broad front (for instance in the theory of collective goods, corporatismtheory, social-scientific systems theory, but also in the “theory of communica-tive action”). Max Weber was of the opinion that the problem of bringing thedivergent partial rationalities into a tenable synthesis could be dealt with inethical categories and could find its solution in the “ethics of responsibility” ofthe political leadership of organizations and states, where a “sense ofproportion” and “passion” were supposed to undergo an individually specificcombination. A solution of this “ethical” type has today become problematic,because it is difficult to uphold the Weberian premise that responsibility todaycan anywhere actually be exercised by charismatic figures, that is, by politicalleaders who have all the relevant variables “in hand” (or at least in view). Ifthat cannot be presumed, one can obviously no longer rely on an elite ethic oran elite consensus, and the problem becomes transformed into the questionhow “responsibility” can be secured through an appropriate institutionaldesign.13

For purposes of overcoming the modernity deficits [Modernitaetsrueck-staende] that stand out in (incorrectly so called) “modern” societies, threemethodical approaches come into consideration for the construction orimprovement of such a design. Their common problem is, as I mentioned, theopening up of new and, at the same time, legitimate possibilities of action inthe management of problems of order and coordination. One can in thisrespect proceed by attempting to expand the capacities of the already available


media of coordination, that is, for instance, by making administration moreeffective, the market mechanism less disturbed, or the communicativeprocesses of enlightenment and education [Bildung] of the political publicsphere more widely diffused [durchdringend].14 A second possibility is toredesign the spheres of application of these diverse steering mechanisms andthus to achieve new “mixes” between market, state and consensus. Third it isimaginable that one could approach the matter from the demand side theother way round so to speak, and so reduce the requisite degree of capabilityfor coordination and the securing of compatibility in such a way that oneactually manages with the available steering capacities. The available alterna-tives are then: the enhancement, the recombination, and the unburdening ofsocial steering mechanisms.

First, as far as concerns the strategy of enhancement, the issue can well be said toconsist in the attempt to reconstruct the functional primacy of a social subsystem,whether it be the market, the state or the community, and to raise this to the levelof a global sentry of order. Precisely in those societies the subsystems ofwhich are already highly modernized, particularly bad experiences havealready been made with such single-minded approaches to problems ofsocio-political order. This is especially true of those attempts to secure thefabric of social life by means of state administration and legal regulation; but itis also true for those attempts to entrust the self-regulatory logic of the marketwith macro-social steering tasks. The experience which one quickly makes,however, in face of the doctrinaire one-sidedness [Vereinseitigung] of suchpuristic injunctions of political order is that with the already extant regul-ations the remaining need for regulation grows rather than declines: the morebureaucratic regulations there are, the more is action other than what ismotivated by such rules discouraged, and the greater grows the gap whichmust then be closed with further specific regulations. One can theoreticallyprognosticate quite analogous phenomena of continuous self-overtaxing forthe cases of pure market steering or pure community coordination.

The second alternative to increase the capacity of global social systems for“responsible” action takes a different approach. In the case of the combinationof various steering mechanisms, the attempt is made to redesign theirrespective “jurisdictions” according to various substantive, social, and (busi-ness) cyclical parameters in such a way that their interpenetration and “mix”leads to a tolerable degree of stability and “normality.” As soon, however, asone gets serious about combination-recipes like “as much market as possible,as much state as necessary,” or, worse, if one seeks to incorporate a bit of“common sense” into the complex steering design, one confronts significantmutual intolerances and rivalries between these media, if not imperialisticclaims of exclusive authority. A cornucopia of contemporary economic, social,labor market, and pedagogical controversies provide excellent illustrations ofhow difficult it is to shift the limits of authority even slightly in one or theother direction – say, between the employment prerogatives of employers andwelfare-state authority, or between parental rights and egalitarian demands inthe area of educational policy. The sphere of market-regulated social processesin particular proves especially sensitive to such gradual impairments, and


minimal impairments of its sphere of authority can lead to far-reaching andself-intensifying collapses of equilibrium and drives toward disinvestment.One has ironically pointed to the (apparent) contradiction in the fact that themost devoted advocates of market competition reveal the strongest aversion assoon as competition no longer takes place in the market, but rather between therival steering approaches of the market, of state authority and solidaristic(e.g., cooperative) production and labor processes. In any case, it is apparentthat formulae like “as much X, Y, Z as necessary/possible” are so difficult toimplement because operative and consensual criteria are so hard to come byfor what is supposed to be “necessary” or “possible” in the given case.

In the face of these (admittedly briefly stated) negative findings, it would beuseful, I think, to consider more closely the remaining third alternative of“unburdening,” and to look at measures and strategies that can makemanageable the problem of coordination and compatibility not just throughthe enhancement of steering capacities but through the reduction of steeringneeds. As we have seen, the sectoral modernization processes and thesubstantial gain in economic, political, aesthetic, bureaucratic, and militaryoptions rest upon the social principle of differentiation and specialization. Theresult is the correspondingly increased mutual “recklessness” if the spheres ofaction towards one another; their internal rationality gain and their growingfreedom of choice give rise to the dilemma that they mutually burden eachother with externalities and all kinds of “social costs.” In addition, theirinterdependence grows; the action systems lose their autarchy because theymust rely upon preliminary and complementary achievements in relation toone another. From this context derive the familiar steering problems, thenature of which in many spheres of policy (from geo-strategic to bankingregulations) is frequently characterized by the metaphor of the “domino-chain.” The solution of such problems would appear to consist in securing asufficient degree of independence of these elements from one another and – tostick with the metaphor – to enlarge the distance between the groups ofdominos. If the solution of this (systems-theoretically reformulated) problemof responsibility fails, this damages the use- and welfare-value of the optionsopened up in the individual subsystems. To be sure, each may continuealong the path of modernization and the sectoral increase of capacities, but ifthe aforementioned steering functions do not keep pace in their capacity toperform, that suboptimal situation emerges which in another context has beencharacterized as „collective self-injury“ and which game theory models asprisoners‘ dilemma situations.

In the sense of a rational calculus, then, the issue would by no means consistin putting sectoral modernization gains under restrictions as such, but tobalance them off against the losses of well-being which strike back in the formof steering deficits, and not just at the society as a whole, but against eachindividual actor as well. We lack, however, a unit of reckoning or anaccounting framework with the help of which such a calculation could bemade, Above all, we lack the practical possibility of actually choosing those“zero-options” which would protect against a further escalation of unmasteredsteering problems especially in those cases where clear intuitions indicate that


the gain in utility from the exploitation of further options would be negative.For most citizens do not realistically dispose of the chance to opt for themselvesalone against a further increase of their options, that is, to uncouplethemselves from the virtually objective processes of the further growth ofautomobile transport, agricultural chemicalization, cable-media, the armsrace, international technological competition, etc. – not even if they werepersuaded that the pre-conditions of „responsible action“ lay in this course.The real utopia today lies in the freedom of the calculated zero-option, ofrational self-limitation in the face of the exponentially growing risks ofinterdependence.

The suspicion that in many spheres of life and of action further differenti-ation, further increase of capacities, and further modernization reallywouldn’t be “worth it” because the risky steering problems thus engenderedwould, at least in the long run, destroy the corresponding gains in welfare, istoday perceptible just beneath the surface of many socio-political discourses.What keeps this suspicion under the surface in most cases is most likely theconcern that, given existing technical, economic, and military interdepen-dencies and relations of competition, every zero-option actually embarkedupon meets with the punishment of severe losses of welfare. The fear, usuallyquite well-grounded under circumstances of high interdependence, is that therenunciation of marginal advantages could entail incalculable disadvantage. If(as in war and in Darwinism) the second-best solution is no longer distinguis-hable from the worst, zero-options become intolerable. The nature of thealready extant interdependencies would, on this model, force us to erect evergreater interdependencies beyond all responsibility; and modernization wouldthen be, to paraphrase Max Weber, no “horse-drawn carriage which one couldclimb out of at will.”

But perhaps one can change vehicles, or rebuild the vehicle in such a waythat the penalty which until now has deterred the decision for zero-options canbe reduced to a tolerable level. I think that the gradual loosening of relationsof interdependence would indeed be the way to remedy the egregiousmodernity deficit on the level of society, and to enchance our capability fordealing with the problems resulting from sectoral modernization. I know of noargument which states that the degree of interdependence which itselfbecomes the stimulus for new, risky interdependencies could not in principlebe made into an object of strategic influence by society upon itself, and thusalso into an object of gradual transformation. To name one example, onecould make a connection between the comparatively quite auspicious labormarket situation currently in evidence in the four West European industrialnations of Norway, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland and the fact that onlythese countries – unlike those of the Common Market – belong to no supra-national political-economic alliance system. The gain in options that could bereaped from opening up assimilable and tolerable zero-options (for example:from the interdependencies resulting from Common Market membership) isobvious: it consists in the enhancement of the capacity to deal responsiblywith the consequences of one’s own actions. Of course, zero-options are onlyrational when the renunciation of options brings with it at least an equally


great gain in global control, or at least in structural chances for responsibility.In order to realize this gain in control, it would be necessary to put up“dividing walls,” so to speak, between social subsystems which, on the onehand, were relatively impermeable to negative external effects, and which, onthe other hand, also diminished the dependence of these subsystems upon therequisite inputs and services of other action systems. Naturally, this cannotamount to the dividing up of functionally differentiated social complexes intoa structure of self-sufficient monads, but instead entails the cautious reductionof the substantive, social, and temporal distance between actions and theirconsequences to such a degree as would first make it possible cognitively tocomprehend and somehow politically-morally to judge the quality of thatcomplex. Social, political, and economic action systems can indeed berefashioned in such a way that reflection upon the subsequent effects of theiractions and their defensibility is made clear to actors, and so that, vice versa,they are released from direct dependence upon the limitations of other actionsystems.

Such an attenuation of externalities and dependencies is increasinglydiscussed in social-scientifically grounded steering conceptualizations withconcepts such as “self-reliance” or “auto-centered development” (in develop-ment sociology), “loose coupling” (in the sociology of organizations), anddecentralization or “devolution” (in political sociology). The common basicidea here is to refashion social systems in such a way that they burden theirenvironment less with economic and political externalities and at the sametime become more autonomous vis-à-vis their environment from which on thewhole some gradual moderation of problems of coordination and steeringneeds can be expected. This suggestion is unequivocally distinguished fromlibertarian or romanticizing conceptions: for here the issue is not to plead forthe “natural right,” or essential priority of individuals or “small” units, butrather to use the specific capacities of action systems, which have beenreleased from stifling relations of interdependence and which thus developpotentials for “responsible” action, for macro-social steering processes.

The problem of self-limitation of the radius of effects of actions anddecisions in the temporal dimension seems to me particularly pressing.Consideration of this perspective would entail that a bonus be methodicallycalculated into decisions for those alternatives the potentially problematicconsequences of which reach less far into the future. Putting such a premiumon short temporal chains of effects and on reversibility could prevent presentgains in options from returning as future steering bottlenecks; this standpointis of some relevance, for instance, in the area of renewable energies, but also inquite different areas such as urban development and social security reform. Itwould be consistent with such a criterion of rational decision, disciplined inthe temporal dimension, if decisions methodically were not taken under thetime pressure exerted by competing decision-makers, but rather were taken –for instance, through the introduction of moratoria15 or iterative decisionprocedures – with the time that is necessary to enable evaluation of possiblesubsequent effects of the decision and to avoid rashness. In the socialdimension, the same basic notion of the „rationality of shortened chains of


effects” would entail the reduction of the social ramifications of bureaucraticand managerial decisions through the strengthened protection of constit-utional rights or indeed protection against layoffs, or through the introductionof local autonomy and veto rights, thus preventing subsequent effects fromdecaying into the uncontrollable.

It is incontrovertible that, at least in many cases, the substantive, temporal,and social self-limitation of actors leads to certain losses of welfare andrenunciations on their part. Through renunciation of further modernization oftheir field of action they subsidize, so to speak, the modernity and steeringcapacity of the overarching societal whole. But it is just as little obvious whysuch a renunciation cannot be made tolerable or perhaps indeed attractivethrough countervailing “subsidies” or guarantees of continued existence andof protection. If the modernization of subsystems, in particular of theproductivity of commodity production, is so far advanced as it is today inWest European industrial societies, it is not clear why in principle thereshould be a shortage of those resources with which the society can compensateits members for renouncing a further increase of particular options and thusachieve a further modernization of its macro-social steering system as a whole.An example of this connection, which appears in the contemporary debateover social and labor market policy is the suggestion that participation in thelabor market and distribution of income should be uncoupled from oneanother in such a way that those persons who have decided upon a zero-optionwith respect to labor force participation should not be punished with severelosses of income, but rather should be able to claim a “basic income.” In thismanner, economic, technical, or demographic (consider old-age insurance)discontinuities can be prevented from being externalized in a way that isunmediated and decidedly to the disadvantage of those who lose their jobs ortheir claim to transfer payments; in other words, relief can be had fromsubstantial economic and socio-political steering problems.

If one puts the problem in this fashion, as a problem of optimization thesolution of which entails the exchange of marginal renunciation of enhance-ment of options for a gain in steering capacity (or, more precisely, for amarginal saving of steering problems caused by unforeseen later consequencesand results of action), then the occasions and temptations for an anti-modernideologization of the vote for zero-options fall away. Smallness, nearness tonature, simplicity, modesty, autarchy, leisureliness, solidaristic self-steering,etc., are by no means self-evident moral or aesthetic virtues; rather, they couldbe a worthwhile and rationally justifiable price to pay, insofar as, by paying it,one can save risky further increases in complexity and problems of steeringrelated to this complexity which are correspondingly more difficult to manage.“Small” is by no means necessarily “beautiful”: but perhaps at times it isindeed “intelligent.” If such calculations are to become relevant for action(beyond the circle of the ideological proponents of zero-options), it would benecessary to presuppose that a balancing of costs were to be politicallyorganized in such a way that the expense for the collective benefit of therenunciation at least need not be carried individually by those who create thepreconditions of this benefit through rational self-limitation. The rationality


of an “ethics of responsibility” of self-limitations will, instead, only admit ofrealization to the extent that zero-options are made assimilable and tolerable ina further, reflexive step of political modernization. This could have the resultthat societies subject the achieved condition of their modernization to athoroughly “modern” revision and put themselves institutionally in a positionto deal more selectively with further modernization processes.

These reflections on models and examples of application should have madeclear that in “modern” societies a fundamentally paradoxical relationshipexists between the sectoral enhancement of capacities and options on the onehand, and global rigidity and immovability on the other. The more responsivethe subsystems become, the more fatal grows the problem of their viablecoherence. In this sense, the pessimistic perspective is not to be dismissedthat, precisely as a result of rapid modernization and rationalization process-sess, societies can regress into a condition of mute condemnation to fate andinflexibility, the overcoming of which was the original motif of modernizationprocesses in the first place. But it should have been equally clear that betweenthe extremes of modernized yet rigidified, and “primitive” yet revolutioniz-able societies, there lies a plethora of intermediate combinations in relation towhich the limited advantages of expanded options for action and increasedsteering capacity can be “netted out” against and reconciled with one another.

NOTES

1. W. Zapf, 1975, p. 217.2. Ibid., p. 44.3. Ibid., p. 212.4. J. Berger, 1985, p. 488 ff.5. M. Weber, 1965, p. 188. English trans. The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism, trans.

Talcott Parsons with an introduction by Anthony Giddens (New York: Charles Scribners’s Sons,1976; p. 182.

6. M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno, 1947, p. 198.7. M. Weber, 1958, p. 12. English trans. „The National State and Economic Policy,“ Economy and

Society 5:4 (November 1980) p. 437.8. Ibid., p. 25. English trans. p. 448.9. a. U. Beck, 1986.

10. Cf. H. Kitschelt, 1985.11. CF. C. Offe, 1985.12. Cf. J. Habermas, 1985, p. 156 ff.13. Cf. U. K. Preuss, 1984, p. 145 ff.14. Cf. C. E. Lindblom, 1977.15. In many countries, the doors of banks are equipped with a mechanism which holds the door closed for

several seconds after the handle has been turned. Obviously it is assumed that the forfeitures offreedom imposed upon the bank customer by this moratorium stands in a completely acceptablerelation to the increased security against bank robberies.

REFERENCES

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modernity, utopia and rationalization

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