Hegel, Weimar and Financial Crisis - Poul Fritz Kjær

Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

Germany in Danish Business Research4th November 2014

Poul F. KjaerDepartment of Business and Politics

Copenhagen Business School

The question:

Why do we have a deep crisis in some parts of the Euro-zone but not in others?

A possible answer:

The Euro-crisis is just as much a state-crisis as it is an economic crisis.

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Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831)

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Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

Hegel and the Emergence of the Modern State

Hegel: “Die Verfassung Deutschlands” (1800): Why is Germany not a modern state? - The dominance of localistic private power.

Hegel: "Rechtsphilosophie” (1820): “Staat und Gesellschaft” - Public and private - Traces of modern public power and statehood.

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Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

What Makes a Modern State Different From a Not So Modern State?

1. A modern state is not a patrimonium (Kant) – distinction between office and person (Amt und Person).

2. The existence of a generalised form of public political power – binding decisions for everyone - superiors and subordinates – no privileges.

3. The separation of “State and (the rest) of Society” (Staat und Gesellschaft) through law – public and private.

4. A capability to establish “singular contexts” – or “societies”.

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Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

Franz Leopold Neumann (1900 – 1954)

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Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

But modern statehood newer arrived for real…

“Germany was never a united nation – and never a democracy. She was always divided… Besides the Germany of Potsdam and the Germany of Weimar there exists an industrial Germany and an agrarian Germany, a proletarian Germany and a Germany of the propertied classes, a Catholic and Lutheran Germany, a Germany of the federal states and a Germany of the Reich, a Germany of youth and one of old age. There is above all a democratic and an anti-democratic Germany.”

Franz Neumann 1933.

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Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

The downfall Weimar according to Neumann (and others):

- A strongly cartelised economy – continuation of feudal patterns

- The suspension of law – “Kriegsökonomie”

- Networks of collusion and localistic power

- breakdown of the public/private distinction

- the state apparatus as a vehicle of private interests

- selective application of the law

The result: A mutual disintegration of politics and the economy.

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Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

And now to the Financial Crisis…

Contemporary Greece, Spain or ItalyLack of territorial control – strong regional autonomy and tendencies of “balkanization”.A politicised judiciarySelective application of the law – the building boomDeregulation from the 1990s onwards - the (re-)emergence of localistic networks: e.g. the ‘saving banks’

The result: De-differentiaiton (Luhmann) Re-feudalisation (Habermas)

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Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

Conclusions

Modern Statehood is more fragile and materialised far later and in a smaller part of the world than typically assumed.

The problems faced in the south used to the problem of the north no so long ago…

“Merkel’s project” needs to be about far more than economic imbalances – a profound restructuring and reform of the state – Stein and Hardenberg in Greece.

Not just economists but also lawyers, political scientists and sociologists are in demand.

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Read More about the ITEPE Project:

Institutional Transformations in European Political Economy –

A Socio-Legal Approach

www.itepe.eu

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Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

Hegel, Weimar and the Financial Crisis

Thank You!

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