|
June 10, 2008
Paul Gottfield describes the managerial liberal state of today thus:
What seems most significant about the alliance of mass democracy and the managerial state is that it leads to a radical and irreversible break from bourgeois society and its conservative liberal ideas. The new order’s appeal to democracy is an attempt to justify a managerial revolution in which popular rule is reduced to plebiscitary procedures and “democratic” socialization by the state. The older constitutional liberalism is kept as window-dressing, but is progressively hollowed out, supposedly to remove its “elitist,” “racist,” and “sexist” character. At the end of this process, only judges, administrators, and the media exercise effective power, though politicians and parties play a functional role by organizing elections and funneling patronage. The last, like welfare and entitlements, assure supporters for the system.
Managerial liberalism is part of the liberal modernizing programs that proposes different ways to rationalize the existing liberal order by depoliticizing social relations and reducing politics to economics. This program creates a strong “neutral” state administered by the burgeoning New Class to contain and regulate the otherwise all-powerful capital interests.The de facto depoliticization of the political process is now reduced to a contest between different sectors of the power elite.
|
