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Abstract
In advanced modern societies ecological integrity, democratic renewal, social inclusion and global justice are non-controversial collective concerns. The ecological, economic, social and political unsustainability of the present arrangements is largely uncontested. Demands for radical societal change as they have once been articulated by the counter-cultural new social movements seem to have been fully mainstreamed. At the same time, however, there is an unprecedented consensus of defence reinforcing the established system of liberal consumer capitalism. What is required in order to make sense of these evident contradictions is a theory of late-modern society's discourses of radical change. New social movement theory (NSMT) can neither explain the mainstreaming of the supposedly subversive discourses of radical change nor their relationship towards the firmly established consensus of defence. A critical review of Niklas Luhmann's systems theoretical analysis of protest communication paves the way towards an interpretation of contemporary discourses of radical change as a particular form of societal self-description that functions as a means of societal self-deception: late-modern society uses the form of simulation in order to stabilize and reproduce at the same time the unsustainable status quo and the belief in the radical alternative.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their very perceptive and helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.
Notes
1. Baudrillard's thesis of ‘deep-seated complicity’ may actually be extended from the terror of Islamists to the terror of nature: one might speculate that ‘without this deep-seated complicity’ not only the events of 9/11 but also hurricanes Katrina and Rita that devastated New Orleans in September 2005 ‘would not have had the resonance’ in Europe that they actually had (2003, p. 6).
2. The term future-fitness (Zukunftsfähigkeit) figures prominently in Germany's debate on the modernization of its welfare system and economic structures. It amalgamates ecological notions of sustainability with neo-liberal notions of international economic competitiveness (Blühdorn, Citation2004a, 2006b). In Britain, Tony Blair's speech at the 2005 Labour Party Conference in Brighton centred on the key question: ‘How do we secure the future: For our party and for our country?’
3. Note that Baudrillard conceptualizes the ‘global perfusion of terrorism, which accompanies any system of domination as though it were its shadow’ in terms of ‘triumphant globalization battling against itself’ (2003, p. 10f.).
4. Note Baudrillard's suggestion that neither for the terror of Islamic fundamentalists, nor for the equally fundamentalist ‘terror based on law-and-order measures’ (2003, p. 32), ‘the aim is’ any longer ‘to transform the world’ (2003, p. 10).
5. McAdam et al. (Citation1996), Hellmann & Koopmans (Citation1998), Klandermans & Staggenborg (Citation2002) and Crossley (Citation2002) provide useful overviews.
6. For a very compact review of Luhmann's social theory see Blühdorn (Citation2000b); for a more detailed discussion see Blühdorn (Citation2000a).
7. For this reason Luhmann repeatedly points to the special alliance between protest movements and the mass media (e.g. Luhmann, Citation1989, Citation1998, p. 862f.).
8. Nevertheless, Luhmann does not suggest that protest movements have no impact and cannot effect any change. According to his model, protest communication can disrupt (irritate) the smooth functioning of other communication systems which then have to adapt to the changing conditions in their environment. However, this impact or resonance of protest communication will always be shaped by the logic or code of the respective function systems and never implement the values and demands formulated by the protest movements.
9. Note that in Luhmann's model, any such suggestion about the function of late-modern society's discourses of radical change has no more than the status of an ‘offer of plausibility’ that has to compete with an unlimited number of other such offers (Blühdorn, Citation2000b).
10. Indeed, Luhmann at times seems undecided whether or not the communication of protest really qualifies as an autonomous function system at all. On the whole, however, he adopts the view that ‘protest movements can be described as autopoietic systems’ (Luhmann, Citation1993, p. 126), albeit as ‘autopoietic systems of a peculiar kind’ (1996, p. 210, my emphasis).
11. In the following paragraphs I am drawing on (and sharpening) passages of my article ‘Social Movements and Political Performance’ (Blühdorn, Citation2005).
12. This does not automatically imply any dedifferentiation of late-modern society or a reduction in its complexity. On the contrary, the ‘global order to which there is no alternative’ implies ‘a fragmentation to infinity’ ‘with singularities drifting off on their own or rising up against the system’ (Baudrillard, Citation2003, pp. 91, 90, 91).
13. Note that Luhmann has no use for concepts such as advanced or late-modern society or even denucleated modernity.
14. Correctly, Baudrillard notes that ‘discrimination and exclusion are not accidental consequences; they are part of the very logic of globalization’ (2003, p. 90).
15. In the late-modern condition, this concept should probably be dropped. After the neo-liberal ‘fundamental re-casting of progressive politics’, the concept no longer denotes a modernist emancipatory agenda but is defined as forceful leadership in the implementation of ever accelerated societal change in response to non-negotiable imperatives which ‘a changing world is setting for us’ (Tony Blair, Labour Party Conference speech, Brighton 2005).