“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.