- It is not at all implausible to arrive at such an understanding of emancipation on the basis of the existing historical record. Emancipation does not have to stem from one's own effort at liberation. it can be granted from above. its focus often rests on attaining equality of status or equal rights. it does not have to concern humanity at large. it may concern particular groups of society that have suffered oppression. See Karl Martin Grass and Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Emanzipation' in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck (eds), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol 2 (Ernst Klett, 1975) 153, 169.
- European Commission, ‘Consumer Empowerment in the Eu', http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/consumer_empowerment/docs/swd_consumer_empowerment_eu_en.pdf, 1.
- See Renewed Social agenda, http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catid=547.
- See the study prepared by the Bureau of European Policy advisers, which is part of the Commission bureaucracy, entitled Empowering People, Driving Change: Social Innovation in the European Union, http://ec.europa.eu/bepa/pdf/publications_pdf/social_innovation.pdf, 57.
- See ibid, 31.
- See ibid, 15, 27.
- Ibid, 19.
- In a legal context, in particular, ‘emancipation’ signifies the release from servitude, tutelage or bondage. See Grass and Koselleck (n 1) 161.
- See Giandomenico Majone, Europe as the Would-Be World Power: The EU at Fifty (Cambridge university Press, 2009) 147–8.
- Only for the entrepreneurial class is liberalisation also liberation. Perhaps it would even be more accurate in their case to speak of empowerment. i shall return to this point below.
- I am obviously borrowing the terms from Benjamin Constant. See his Political Writings, Biancamaria Fontana (trans) (Cambridge university Press, 1988) 310–11.
- Of the latter threat Benjamin Constant had been acutely aware. See Jeremy Jennings, ‘Constant's idea of Modern liberty' in Helena Rosenblatt (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Constant (Cambridge university Press, 2009) 69, 73.
- See, in particular, on ostracism, Stephen Holmes, ‘The liberty to Denounce: ancient and Modern' in The Cambridge Companion (n 12) 47, 60.
- See Constant (n 11) 11–325.
- See ibid, 311.
- See the perceptive observation by Holmes (n 13) at 51 that ‘freedom’ as envisaged by Constant does not include the freedom to choose the type of freedom that one desires.
- See ibid, 317.
- The dilemma can also be described as a conflict of the ‘enabling conditions of self-assertion’. Participation in group life is both a condition and a threat to human freedom. See Roberto Mangabeira unger, False Necessity (Cambridge university Press, 1987) 104–5.
- See Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Geschichte als absoluter Begriff: Der Lauf der neueren deutschen Philosophie (Suhrkamp, 1991).
- See Grass and Koselleck (n 1) 169, 176.
- See Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Suhrkamp, 1979) 341.
- The only conceivable further form of emancipation would eliminate the status difference between citizens and non-citizens. Whether this would also be desirable is a different matter.
- See Albert Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Harvard university Press, 1991).
- Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Basic Books, 1992) 334.
- See Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, Gl ulmen (trans) (Telos, 2006) 59–60. The task of the Christian empire was to prevent the coming of the antichrist.
- For a reconstruction of the relevant eschatological consciousness, see Robert Meister, After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights (Columbia university Press, 2010).
- If these examples do not sound convincing then consider the sense of alienation that citizens feel towards the union and which has been recognised in various of its official documents. it has not disappeared in spite of all efforts at ‘selling’ the union to its citizens by making it more accessible and transparent.
- See Gordon S Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Vintage, 1991) 85.
- This form of emancipation is epitomised by Schumpeter's entrepreneur. See Joseph a Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Routledge, 1994) 132–3.
- I once could not help but overhear a conversation between a young entrepreneur in the construction business and one of his friends in which the former expressed confidence that he would stop working at the age of 30. i never found out whether he succeeded at that.
- For a valuable introduction, see Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik, ‘Karl Marx als Philosoph der menschlichen Emanzipation: Rehabilitation eines verkannten Denkers' in Gajo Petrović and Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (eds), Die gegenwärtige Bedeutung des Marxschen Denkens: Marx-Symposium 1983 in Dubrovnik (Bouvier, 1983).
- See Karl Marx, ‘Zur Judenfrage' in Iring Fetscher (ed), Marx-Engels Studienausgabe, vol 1 (Fischer, 1966) 31–60. On Marx's embarrassing anti-Semitism and his defence of the emancipation of Jews, see Shlomo avineri, ‘Marx and Jewish Emancipation' (1964) 25 Journal of the History of Ideas 445.
- See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, vol 2, institut für Marxismus-leninismus beim ZK der SED (ed) (Dietz, 1976) 117–28.
- See Marx (n 32) 51–52.
- See ibid.
- See Karl Marx, ‘Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie' in Werke (n 33) vol 42 at 127; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘Die Deutsche ideologie' in Werke (n 33) vol 3 at 34.
- See Jon Elster, An Introduction to Karl Marx (Cambridge university Press, 1986) 57.
- See Marx and Engels (n 33) 123.
- See Iring Fetscher, Karl Marx und der Marxismus: Von der Ökonomiekritik zur Weltanschauung (Piper, 4th edn 1985) 60.
- Allen W Wood, Karl Marx (Routledge, 2nd edn 2004) 49.
- See Marx and Engels (n 36) 33.
- See James a Caporaso and David P levine, Theories of Political Economy (Cambridge university Press, 1992) 70–72.
- See Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? (Harper and Row, 1976) 163–4.
- For a fine reconstruction of this point, see Wood (n 40) 49–50. as is well known, the presentation of socialism in terms of freedom enraged Friedrich august von Hayek. See his The Road to Serfdom (Routledge, 1991 [1944]) 19–20.
- On this contrast, see Constant (n 11) 11–311.
- See Georg lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein: Studien über marxistische Dialektik (luchterhand, 10th edn 1988) 436, 477–9.
- See ibid, 124, 126.
- See ibid, 157.
- See Rosa luxemburg, Schriften zur Theorie der Spontaneität, S Hillmann (ed) (Rowohlt, 1970) 158–9.
- See Lukács (n 46) 439–40, 447.
- See ibid, 128, 152–3, 434–5.
- See ibid, 128.
- On the notion of the ‘intuitive understanding’, see Eckart Förster, The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, B Bowman (trans) (Harvard university Press, 2012) 144, 148.
- Ironically, Hayek's rant against submission to the discretionary power of planners did not even confront the fact that the vanguard party had to claim to act in interests that necessarily had to be unbeknownst to the subjects of emancipation. See Hayek (n 44) 48–50, 69.
- See Lukács (n 46) 445.
- See ibid, 480–1.
- Ibid, 486.
- See ibid, 512.
- See Constant (n 11) 310, 318.
- See Lukács (n 46) 447.
- The sovereignty of this dictatorship is also manifest in the fact that the vanguard party constitutes itself on the basis of its own free choice. See ibid, 499–500.
- See Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Duncker & Humblot, 1978) 145–6. See, for example, on freedom of the press as a tool of socialist progress, Vladimir illitch lenin, ‘Die nächsten aufgaben der Sovietmacht' in Für und wider die Bürokratie: Schriften und Briefe 1917–1923 (Rowohlt, 1970) 42.
- See Lukács (n 46) 450. This did not escape Hayek's attention. See Hayek (n 44) 44–48.
- Constant (n 11) 312.
- See ibid, 316, 320.
- See eg FG Jacobs (ed), European Law and the Individual (north-Holland Publishing Co, 1976); more recently, see Dimitry Kochenov, ‘The Essence of Eu Citizenship Emerging from the last Ten years of academic Debate: Beyond the Cherry Blossoms and the Moon?' (2013) 62 International and Comparative Law Quarterly 97.
- This explains why the recent interventions by Williams and neyer do not really get off the ground. See andrew Williams, The Ethos of European Integration: Values, Law and Justice in the EU (Cambridge university Press, 2010); Jürgen neyer, ‘Justice, not Democracy: legitimacy in the European union' (2010) 48 Journal of Common Market Studies 903.
- See Friedrich Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, vol 2 (CG naumann, 1899) 59.
- See Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Harvard university Press, 1985).
- Thomas M Franck, The Empowered Self: Law and Society in the Age of Individualism (Oxford university Press, 1999) 1.
- See ibid, 255.
- See ibid, 280.
- See ibid, 255, 283.
- See ibid, 1.
- See ibid, 2.
- See Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Die fröhliche Wissenschaft' in Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (eds), Kritische Studienausgabe, vol 3 (De Gruyter, 1988) 595–7.
- Remarkably, Richard Rorty was quite aware of this. See his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge university Press, 1989) 41–43.
- See Franck (n 70) 256.
- On the constitutive role of luck, see Hayek (n 44) 77.
- According to Barbara Cruikshank, The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects (Cornell university Press, 1999) 39, Theresa Funicello describes this phenomenon as ‘the professionalisation of being human’.
- See Julian Rappaport, ‘The Power of Empowerment language' (1986) 16 Social Policy 15, 17–18; Cruikshank (n 80) 68.
- See Ulrich Bröckling, Das unternehmerische Selbst: Soziologie einer Subjektivierungsform (Suhrkamp, 2007) 185, 189.
- See Cruikshank (n 80) 80–67.
- See Stephanie Riger, ‘What's Wrong with Empowerment?' (1993) 21 American Journal of Community Psychology 279, 290; Cruikshank (n 80) 89, 99.
- See Bröckling (n 82) 192, 210.
- See Cruikshank (n 80) 39.
- See on this feature of liberal individualism John Dewey, ‘individualism: Old and new' in Ja Boydston (ed), The Later Works, 1925–1953, vol 5 (Southern illinois university Press, 1984) 78–79.
- See the telling story about the career of empowerment in the course of the Community action Program, which was part of the strategy of the war on poverty, in Cruikshank (n 80) 80–67.
- See ibid, 73.
- According to Cruikshank, ibid, 25, 72, 122, ‘the will to empower’ is recognisable in the complaint that citizens (or employees) are apathetic and disinterested.
- This appears to have been the perception of ‘the poor’ in the united States during the Johnson administration. See ibid, 75–78.
- See ibid, 97.
- See Bröckling (n 82) 188.
- See Cruikshank (n 80) 74–77. as she points out on p 75, the empowering agents often have their own views of what the interests of the subject to be empowered are. The result is a clash of ‘the subjectivity of citizens with their subjection’.
- See Bröckling (n 82) 82–182.
- See ibid, 201.
- See Cruikshank (n 80) 80–70.
- On the self-esteem movement of the 1980s, see ibid, 88–95. The idea appears to have been that lack of selfesteem is the cause of all social ills. Of course, there was no proof for this.
- See the references in Bröckling (n 82) 188.
- For a critique of this leninist conception of the party, as articulated by Lukács, see Jürgen Habermas, Theorie und Praxis: Sozialphilosophische Studien (Suhrkamp, 2nd edn 1971) 40–41.
- See Bröckling (n 82) 82–201.
- See ibid, 193.
- See ibid, 201, 203.
- This is evident in the writings of one of the first advocates of what would become ‘empowerment’, Paulo Freire, whose pedagogy of the oppressed was sharply opposed to social policy that merely wanted to assist people. See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Bloomsbury academic, 2000).
- See Cruikshank (n 80) 92.
- See ibid, 91.
- This pre-established harmony is captured in the otherwise rather fuzzy Foucauldian term of ‘bio-power’. See Cruikshank (n 80) 39–40: ‘bio-power, through the administration and regulation of life and its needs, enacts the good of all society upon the antisocial bodies of the poor, deviant and unhealthy. it seeks to unite the interests of the individual with the interest of society as a whole.
- Another connection between the interest of society and the interest of the individual is that society benefits from empowered individuals who have learned to conduct themselves and that they can join forces in order to become even more powerful. See ibid, 91, 97.
- See Bröckling (n 82) 193.
- See above, n 4.
- see Commission Communication, ‘a Strategy for a Secure information Society—“Dialogue, Partnership and Empowerment”' SEC(2006) 656.
- See Commission Communication, ‘Strategy for Equality between Women and Men 2010–2015' SEC(2010) 1079, 9.
- European Commission, ‘Eu Plan of action on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Development 2010–2015', www.dev-practitioners.eu/fleadmin/user_upload/Eu_GEaP.pdf, 7.
- See ibid, 9.
- see Commission Communication, ‘Monitoring Consumer Outcomes in the Single Market: The Consumer Markets Scoreboard', 5 (para 19), 8 (para 35).
- See ibid, 7 (para 32).
- See ibid, 3 (para 6).
- Commission Communication, ‘Renewed Social agenda: Opportunities, access and Solidarity in the 21st Century' SEC(2008) 2184, 3.
- See ibid, 9.
- Ibid.
- See above, n 49.
- See Max Weber, Economy and Society, G Roth et al (trans) (university of California Press, 1978) vol 1, 86–87.
Transnational Legal Theory
Volume 4, 2013 - Issue 2