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2 Critical Hist. Stud. 157 (2015)
Legitimation Crisis? On the Political Contradictions of Financialized Capitalism

handle is hein.journals/chstd2 and id is 157 raw text is: Legitimation Crisis? On the Political Contradictions of Financialized Capitalism Nancy Fraser, New School for Social Research ABSTRACT Facade democracy. Post-democracy. Zombie democracy. De-democratization. In proliferating such terms, many observers posit that we are living through a crisis of democracy. But what exactly is in crisis here? I argue that democracy's present travails are best understood as expressions, under historically specific contempo- rary conditions, of a general tendency to political crisis that is intrinsic to capitalist societies. I elaborate this thesis in three steps. First, I propose a general account of the political contradiction of capitalism as such, without reference to any particu- lar historical form. Then, I reconstruct Jurgen Habermas's 1973 book, Legitimation Crisis, as an account of the form this political contradiction assumed in one specific phase of capitalist society, namely, the state-managed capitalism of the post-World War II era. Finally, I sketch an account of democracy's current ills as expressions of capitalism's political contradiction in its present, financialized phase. a ade democracy. Post-democracy. Zombie democracy. De-democratization. Such expressions are currently proliferating, claiming the space once oc- cupied by earlier talk of deliberative democracy. The clear suggestion is that democracy's long-standing ills have passed beyond the point of amelioration to the stage of crisis. And who could disagree? The evidence includes declines in electoral turnout, the proliferation of corruption and big money in politics, in- creased concentration of media ownership, a rise in right-wing extremism, the virtual collapse of traditional left-wing parties in the Global North, the sharp narrowing of the spectrum of policy differences as nearly all parties rush to placate For helpful comments, I am grateful to Robin Blackburn, Hauke Brunkhorst, Claudio Corradetti, Robert Gooding-Williams, Bernard Harcourt, Jennifer Nedelsky, Max Pensky, William E. Scheuerman, Melissa Williams, Eli Zaretsky, Linda Zerilli, and an anonymous reviewer for Critical Historical Studies. Critical Historical Studies (Fall 2015). 0 2015 by Nancy Fraser. All rights reserved. 2326-4462/2015/0202-0001$10.00 157

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