Legitimation Crisis
Rationality Breeds Legitimacy
In Jurgen Habermas’, Legitimation Crisis, Western society is examined through a sociological lens to determine whether society is just. In his work, Habermas argues that advanced capitalism in Western societies leads to a legitimation crisis. Advanced capitalism displaces crisis tendencies, by means of state action, from the economic sphere into the socio-cultural sphere. Therefore, the legitimacy provided by the cultural sphere is threatened, resulting in a loss of legitimacy in society. Habermas addresses the legitimation crisis rationally, by calling for a free society that creates the conditions for real human form. Rationality, according to Habermas, is human emancipation. Through the creation of open, substantive speech the legitimation crisis can be overcome. Endemic to our age, human emancipation may be precipitated through a legitimation crisis. Only through a legitimation crisis can a rational society, which fulfills human needs be erected.
Jurgen Habermas examines the legitimation crisis through a systems theory, which argues that society is a system composed of different elements that function separately to maintain the overall operation. Habermas applies the systems theory to advanced capitalism by breaking down advanced capitalist society into three entities: the political system, which lies in the center of the advanced capitalist structure and consists of the state and government, legally having a monopoly on the use of state power; the economic system, which appropriates the products of nature through labor and work for the purposes of survival and the socio-cultural sphere, which is civil society. The economic system provides a fiscal skim off through taxes, the money resources that pay for its services. This creates a transfer between the political and economic systems: the economic system transfers its resources to the political system, in the form of monetary support or tax revenue and in turn the political...
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