Social and political dimension of the state crisis in 1920
This is a four -handed written essay by Zygmunt Bauman and Carlo Bordoni, who reflect on the social and political dimensions of the current state of current crisis. The work is structured in three main sections in which the difficult situation in which society is found: crisis of modernity, crisis of sovereign action and crisis of representative democracy are exposed. They establish a debate regarding the meaning of crisis, since it has been one of the most serious problems. They defend that a series of transformations of great importance have been forming that Western societies must face.
They advocate that we are in a rather complex social situation, which unlike previous crisis, cannot be considered temporary, but a permanent situation. The current crisis constitutes a key characteristic, in which we find an absence of economic and existential stability;In addition to finding us in a society where uncertainty and insecurity prevail, that is, in perpetual crisis. On the other hand it is seen that today we no longer trust the state to make us get ahead, we barely have confidence in their promises, we are paralyzed in a separation between power and politics that leads to an insecure society.
This work can be structured in three main sections in which the crisis of the sovereign action of the State, the crisis of modernity and the crisis of representative democracy are addressed.
In the first section called "State Crisis", it refers to the fact that the crisis in which we are currently is very different from what resulted in the late 1920s, in which the State could improve the situation and thesociety trusted and did not doubt it;This state confidence was consecrated according to two social realities: power and politics. By "power" the authors understand the ability to get things to be done, while, by "politics", the ability to decide what things the State should do and which would have to be resolved outside it, and that, therefore, therefore, would be those that should avoid or whose exercise should refrain. In the 70s, there was a growing unemployment and inflation that could not be controlled, and the states were increasingly difficult to protect society and fulfill their promises, thusNo problem became too serious actions and could not cope.
Bauman warns that there is a power deficit, and therefore also coercive capacity, which affects finance, investment capitals, labor markets and merchandise circulation.
In the second section of the work, the dialogue between the two authors focuses on "Modernity in crisis". According to Bordoni, we were in the end of modernity, the great certainties of a technology capable of preventing and avoiding natural catastrophes, to all this, also joined the so -called moral catastrophes that are caused by man, thus the promise ofModernity was condemned to failure. Later the so -called supreme promise appeared, which cost a lot to reach it and that was only obtained by union disputes and political battles, here are the measures provided by the State as agreement with the citizen to protect health, labor law, retirement, etc.
Bauman believes that today we are waiting to collect fruits from their promises and proposes that failures must be understood as mere setbacks for science, regarding the task they must perform. According to this author, there have been two changes in the type of strategies, in the first place they are no longer understanding, and secondly the modern spirit is currently following the recommendation of Karl Popper who defended that the process should be "chopped".
And finally, in the third part, "democracy in crisis," says Bauman that among crises, which affects democratic institutions is possibly the most serious of all, since it attacks the instruments of collective action that are thewhich we currently have. For Bordoni the crisis is rather a normal condition of democracy and warns that we talk about that concept as if it had traveled a long career. The democratic concept since its inception was the cause of inevitable conflicts, and in the work it is distinguished between the original meaning of democracy, as the government of the people and that we attribute today to that same term: freedom, equality and respect for the same.
The current democratic faint situation, estimates Bauman, is mainly due to the state crisis, to its inability to act, so much so that private insurance companies have replaced governments and politics today as providers of Social Security.
As for the relationship of the work with the subject, there are several issues that we should analyze, in the first place we understand by politics that activity through which individuals and human groups make decisions and act from state institutions in order to organize orReorganize coexistence and/or obtain interest satisfaction, the central place of political activity is the State, since it has the capacity to make a decision that makes it affect the whole society, and entering the work we observe that we have a distrust ofThe chosen leaders and inability to govern, and who precisely do not use the power they have, becoming aware that they are the central place and that the ability to make the decisions that are going to be carried out.
Hobbes together with Machiavelli founders of political science said that the State is a means to achieve an end, but in the work it can be seen that the State has become the executor of a superior power that leads us to meet the "State without a state ”and this results in the lack of trust, citizens no longer believe in the future to improve their way of life and much less believe that the State will be responsible for achieving the proposed purposes.
The authors give as an example that during World War II there was a clash of ideologies, but here all war participants had in common that the State had to be assaulted and controlled because it was the one who exercised the power to reorganize society. But now, the situation is different, the State is no longer Leviatan de Hobbes, a sum of men who imposed order in chaos but the government is very weakened by losing powers and powers, citizens already participate less in public life andThey expect less help from the State, which makes democracy weaken, looking for other alternatives to obtain their objectives.
It is argued that postmodernity is that transition period and not a new era as Habermas said in relation to the end of modernity and post -industrial society. They give as an example that the great promises of modernity have been breached. The idea of progress was also assimilated by Marxists with the idea of creating a redistributive socialist state but failed.
As they say in the work when talking about the crisis we are going through, frequent comparisons are made with the great depression of the 1930s, which gave rise to a burst of the financial bubble, sinking of the stock market, bankruptcy of companies, massive unemployment, loss of savings, among other things, and this results in despair that leads to radical sanctions with state intervention, but at this time citizens did not doubt who to go in search of help, there was no discrepancyin which the State could on track the situation, that is, there was confidence in the state apparatus and gathered the conditions of power and politics.
However, we no longer trust the state’s ability to make us move forward. In that decade it should be noted that measures were also created and a new system in which the State called "New Deal" is involved, in which freedom was established against fear, religious freedom and freedom to protect themselves from needs, butIn the current crisis the State is unable to act as an interlocutor, as a regulator of the economy and as a security guarantor.
It should also be noted that the crisis of 1929 was skillfully resolved by application of some of Keynes’ theories: the State invested in public works and used labor when the work was scarce, the orders of goods and services were stimulated and so they were putEconomy gears again.
We have seen that the best model that best responds to democracy is the pluralistic, the representation, the political representatives must be made with the popular echo, the representative is to the extent that he assumes responsibilities when he must do it;In the contemporary era, democracy has opted for a representative form: parliamentary democracy, in the work it is reflected that regardless of how bad or good this formula is clear that the crisis of modernity has brought with it a crisis of representative democracy, that is, there is a disconnection between the citizen and politics, which is the opposite of a true democratic representation.
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