While the need for the renovation of critical social theory has been evident for decades, radical critique has disappeared among leading philosophical schools. Mainstream social criticism, having silently accepted the rules of the game, has turned itself to the other side of the same, to a 'critical ally' of capitalism. As one modern critic puts it, "postcolonial discourse generated in the 'First World' academies turns out to be one more product of flexible, post-Fordist capitalism, not its antithesis".1 After the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the triumphal and seemingly unconditional victory of capitalism, it has become fashionable to talk about all-human values, universalistic morality, discourse ethics, public discourse, and similar concepts, as well as of the unlimited perspectives that await us in the light of modern technological revolutions.
Indeed, there are serious confirmations for such a view. If one were to generalize its underlying assumptions they would be the following: there exists a relatively embedded democratic system; there exists a relative economic prosperity; there exists a relative social stability; the modern technological revolution promises a permanent growth. When combined, all of these promise further improvement in transcending the caution expressed in the word 'relative'. Hence, the feeling is that the details can be worked out from within the system. This is most emphatically expressed in the recent collapse of the Marxist option, the most serious challenge to the system. The old claim of the status quo about the lack of realistic alternatives now seems to be justified.
One cannot but remember Popper here. For Popper too, "the injustice and inhumanity of the unrestrained 'capitalist system' described by Marx cannot be questioned". The problem consists in 'interpreting' the situation. Freedom under capitalism is indeed what Marx and Marxists call "merely formal freedom". However, such "merely formal freedom" is a realistic foundation and the only warranty for democracy in an 'open society'. It makes it possible to "control" capitalism and exploitation, and this is better than any other alternative. On such matters, says Popper, one must think in more pragmatic terms than Marx. One must realize that control over physical power and exploitation is not only an economic but also a central political problem. So, in order to establish democratic control, one has to establish that "merely formal freedom",2 offered by capitalism. Popper's claim is not that we live in the best world in general, but - as if agreeing with Leibniz - that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The outcome of such reasoning turns out to be identical: although this world is far from perfect, one may work to improve it, but it is not worth taking the risk of radically altering it. Note that this argument was raised at the time of a serious challenge to capitalism.
Today, the legendary fierce attacks on Popper by the Left in the 1960s and early 1970s have ceded their place to a peculiar agreement about the post-communist era.3 Besides some rhetorical and linguistic differentiations, today sections of both Left and Right share Popper's assessment. Hence, modern discourse rotates around the 'revived' notion of "civil society",4 of its discontents, its nature, its perspectives, and so on. As Rorty sarcastically remarks in his recent "Achieving Our Country", the modern Left, having historically suffered from Marxist radicalism5 has been today transformed into a "Cultural Left" specializing in what they call the "politics of difference" or of "identity" or "recognition". He adds: When the Right proclaims that socialism has failed, and that capitalism is the only alternative, the cultural Left has little to say in reply. For it prefers not to talk about money. Its principal enemy is a mind-set rather than a set of economic arrangements - a way of thinking which is sometimes called "Cold War Ideology", sometimes "technocratic rationality", and sometimes "phallogocentrism" (the cultural Left comes up with fresh sobriquets every year). It is a mind-set nurtured by the patriarchal and capitalist institutions of the industrial West, and its bad effects are most clearly visible in the United States.6
I would add one significant comment to these remarks. The choice of reply is not just a matter of taste. The modern Left does not "opt" to deal with something else. To the contrary: it deals with something else because it has nothing to say in reply. Its theoretical impotence in the field of political economy and the abandonment of the latter makes inevitable the turn to other fields of criticism. In the last few decades critically oriented philosophy has changed its role; it ceases to challenge capitalism as such, and loses sight of a realistic alternative. Its social and political involvement is now grounded on liberal ideals of Kant, Locke and Rousseau. In revitalizing the "forgotten in the 20th century notion of civil society"7 critical philosophy thus appropriates what was earlier considered precisely the theoretical background of capitalism.
This reorientation is matched with a specific focus on and understanding of the "forgotten" social problems of capitalism that globalization brings to the surface. I will argue that modern critical philosophy has an explicitly "Western" vision and fails to assess the proper dimension of globalization and to evaluate capitalism at both its periphery and in its centres. As the most celebrated leader of the "second generation" of the Frankfurt School (which had once emerged as a "neo-Marxist"), Habermas represents, one might claim, the best of what recent social criticism has produced.8 He is also known for his political involvement. His work therefore offers a paradigmatic case for the critical purposes of this article.
