Neoliberalism and the death of the social state: remembering Walter Benjamin's Angel of History

Abstract

This article argues that for the past 30 years, the values and practices of disposability and social death promoted by casino capitalism have replaced important elements of a democratic polity with a culture of greed and cruel spectacles of violence. In its current form neoliberal politics, economics, and public pedagogy have become a register of how difficult it is for American society to make any claims on the promise of a democracy to come. As the realm of democratic politics shrinks and is turned over to market forces, social bonds crumble and any representation of communal cohesion is treated with disdain. As the realm of the social disappears, public values and any consideration of the common good are erased from politics, while the social state and responsible modes of governing are replaced by a punishing state and a Darwinian notion of social relations. This paper argues that if we are to imagine another type of society than the one which we currently inhabit, it is imperative for intellectuals, educators, artists, and other cultural workers to once again put the social question on the political agenda. In part, this means not only making evident how neoliberalism intensifies the pathologies of racism, war, inequality, and violence but also how we might take up the challenge of developing a politics and pedagogy that can serve and actualize a democratic notion of the social.

Keywords:

• Angel of History
• Walter Benjamin
• neoliberalism
• social state
• economic Darwinism
• second Gilded Age
• survival-of-the fittest
• public pedagogy

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Zygmunt Bauman for his thoughtful comments on this article. Of course, I am ultimately responsible for the narrative that unfolds.

Notes

1. For a series of extended commentaries on the social state, see the works of Zygmunt Bauman in the reference list.