“Refeudalization” – the foundations and topicality of
a concept from Habermas’s social analysis
This article reconstructs the term
“refeudalization” as developed by Jurgen Habermas in his inquiry on the
“Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere” and compares Habermas’
analysis with the topical diagnosis of “postdemocracy” as described by Colin Crouch.
The outcome of this reconstruction is an analytical concept of the
“refeudalization” of modern society that describes a social dynamic of the
present in which modernization takes place as a break in the continuity
of the modern social order. “Refeudalization” as a paradoxical mode of social
change that leads to pre-modern societal patterns as a result of modernization
is described in respect to four social developments: the organization of
economic power in financial market capitalism, the emergence of an estate-based
cementation of social inequality, the erosion of the performance principle and
the reprivatization of public social policy in the form of donations and
charitable foundations.