Benjamin R. Barber

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Benjamin R. Barber 2010

Benjamin R. Barber (born August 2, 1939 in New York City , New York ; † April 24, 2017 ) was a professor of civil society at the University of Maryland and one of the most influential political scientists in the United States .

Life

Barber grew up in New York. At the age of 18 he went to study at the Albert Schweitzer College in Graubünden. In 1958 he continued his studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science . After graduating in 1963, he received his doctorate in "Government" from Harvard University in 1966 . He wrote the libretto for George Quincey's opera Home and the River . He was married to the choreographer Leah Kreutzer. In 2001 he became Professor of Civil Law at the University of Maryland.

Barber was a domestic policy advisor to the Clinton administration and advised numerous other bodies and politicians (including Howard Dean and Roman Herzog ). He was close to the social-philosophical current of communitarianism . In his major work Strong Democracy (Strong Democracy) from 1984, which also is regarded as a seminal work of communitarianism, he criticized the representative democracy (u. A. In the US) and established a radical democratic alternative in the form of participatory democracy against it. In doing so, he took up Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea that representation is poison for democracy .

Barber also wrote the influential book Jihad versus McWorld (“ Jihad against McWorld”, German publishing title Coca-Cola and Holy War ). In it he describes the threat to civil society from two opposing phenomena: radical, particularist ideologies such as religious fundamentalism on the one hand and unrestricted capitalism on the other, which transforms citizens into mere consumers and thus also infantilizes them .

Barber was also co-chair of the Democracy Collaborative initiative , which seeks to mobilize educational system resources to strengthen civil society . In addition, he supported various other initiatives.

Fonts

Strong democracy

Barber's book Starke Demokratie (1984, German 1994) is very popular in the USA. With this work he formulates a participatory theory of democracy in the form of a normative theory of democracy : It is not the objective social or political analysis that is the basis for the theory, but rather a desirable state is described after analyzing the democratic deficit. Democratic education is supposed to revive the citizenship and thus enable the direct self-government of the citizens. Barber is skeptical of an exclusively representative democracy , in which the representation of interests is perceived only by professional politicians: "Strong democracy is the politics of amateurs," said Barber. He follows the line of other republican theorists such as Thomas Jefferson , Alexis de Tocqueville , Walt Whitman , John Dewey and Hannah Arendt and wants to achieve a reconciliation of democratic republicanism with modern society. Barber describes it as the hallmark of “strong democracy”

  • a "form of community that is not collectivist " ,
  • a "form of public argument that is non- conformist " ,
  • the existence of "civic institutions compatible with modern society" (p. 146).

The book is divided into three parts:

  1. Analysis of the situation of democracy (crisis diagnosis): Liberalism leads to the right to privacy becoming egoism , tolerance turning into apathy and rights becoming indifference . This goes hand in hand with the notion that institutions degenerate citizens' motivation to participate .
  2. Development of a different point of view (alternative terminology): Barber first formulates his concept of politics: " Politics begins where there is a compulsion to make decisions, although no generally recognized truth can be recognized". Political conflicts should be carried out publicly and with the participation of the citizens in the form of an "ongoing conversation" and through mutual understanding and recognition.
  3. Proposals for change on a practical basis (democratic reform agenda): Barber's agenda aims to change political institutions in such a way that citizen participation and political decision-making are facilitated. At the same time, he wants to avoid an unrealistic overstraining of the citizens.

Specifically, Barber calls for a new “architecture of public space”. Democratic participation is to be strengthened, among other things, through nationwide “neighborhood assemblies” (each from approx. 1000 to 5000 citizens) with legislative competencies at the local level.

"Jihad versus McWorld" - Coca-Cola and Holy War

This book or its title made Barber known outside political science circles. The central thesis is that civil society is threatened from two sides, promoting exclusion instead of inclusion and anarchy instead of democratically legitimized decision-making. Jihad (by which he means radical Christian or Islamic currents or regional independence movements such as in the Basque Country or Catalonia) serve as striking labels for both phenomena ; on the other hand, an intellectually emptied and socially irresponsible capitalism , for which Barber uses the catchphrase “McWorld” - alluding to the prefix “Mc” of many McDonald’s products.

It is important that the term "jihad" in Barber does not suggest a particular threat to Western culture from the Islamic culture. Rather, the term serves as a metaphor for extreme particularist, even tribalist tendencies as countercurrents to globalization, which are also present in Western societies or are supported by them - Barber expressly speaks of a “jihad” of the American right or warns against it Western nation-led fragmentation of states, which means that "almost every district must be treated as a nation and almost every block of flats as a potential sovereign entity".

Jihad and McWorld are dialectically related to each other: although they fight each other, they produce each other and mutually determine their intensity.

“Both are waging war against the sovereign nation state and undermining its democratic institutions. Both detest civil society and despise democratic citizenship, neither is looking for alternative democratic institutions. Their common feature is indifference to civil liberty. The jihad formed communities from blood ', based on exclusion and hatred; Communities that ignore democracy in favor of tyrannical paternalism or consensual tribalism. The McWorld shaping global markets that are based on consumption and profit, leaving the issues of public interest and the common good, which were previously perhaps encouraged by democratic citizenry and their watchful governments, a non-trusted, perhaps even entirely fictitious, invisible hand. [...]
The Jihad pursues a bloody politics of identity that McWorld a bloodless profit economy. Since one belongs to McWorld 'by default', everyone is initially a consumer; if you are looking for a place for your identity, everyone belongs to some tribe. But nobody is a citizen anymore. But how can there be democracy without citizens? "

Barber expressly opposes equating democracy and market economy. The two are not categorically mutually exclusive, but they often have incompatible interests. In particular, he polemicizes the rhetoric common in American parlance, which suggests that consumers are politically “ emancipated ” (empowered) by choosing between more products .

Barber warns against the replacement of political ideologies by a consumer-oriented world of images (videology) and especially the influence of television - “McWorld's noisy soul” is MTV . In this television review, Barber ties in with Neil Postman's theses ; the disintegration of political consciousness through brand fetishism that he observed has Naomi Klein's “Manifesto” No Logo! influenced.

Barber's counter-strategy is to strengthen civil society, which he proposed in Strong Democracy .

“Civil society, the bourgeois area, occupies the middle between politics and the private sector. We do not cast our votes there, nor do we buy or sell; there we talk to our neighbors about hiring a student guide, plan a charity campaign for the local school, discuss how our church or synagogue can provide shelter for the homeless, or we organize a softball summer tournament for our children. In this area we are 'public' beings, like a government we have a sense of public duties and respect for the common good; but unlike a government, we do not lay claim to the exercise of a monopoly of force. […] Like the private sector, this neighborly, cooperative area of ​​civil society also participates in the 'gift of freedom', […] but unlike the private sector, it strives for common ground and consensual […] modes of action. Civil society is thus public and political without being of a coercive nature; it is voluntary and voluntaristic without being privatized. "

With this, Barber argues analogously to Jürgen Habermas , who calls for the "lifeworld" to be strengthened as a potential retreat for the "ideal speech situation" against "colonization" through the systems of political bureaucracy and economy; Zygmunt Bauman advocates similar theses in The Crisis of Politics . However, Habermas' language is much more abstract. With Bauman there is a stronger culturally pessimistic tone, while Barber's style is “closer to life” and despite the sometimes poisonous criticism of US society, it is characterized by the optimism typical of American authors.

Publications (selection)

Books

  • 1969 (with Carl J. Friedrich and Michael Curtis): Totalitarianism in Perspective. New York: Praeger Publishers.
  • 1971: Superman and Common Men: Freedom, Anarchy and The Revolution. New York: Praeger Publishers.
  • 1974: The Death of Communal Liberty: A History of Freedom in a Swiss Mountain Canton . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • 1975: Liberating Feminism . New York: Continuum Books / Seabury Press.
  • 1981: Marriage Voices: A Novel. New York: Summit Books.
  • 1984: Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for A New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press (German 1994 als Starke Demokratie - About participation in the political - Berlin: Rotbuch).
  • 1988: The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • 1988 (with Patrick Watson): The Struggle for Democracy. Book of the CBC / PBS television series "The Struggle For Democracy." Toronto: Lester Orpen & Dennys.
  • 1992: An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics and Education and The Future of America . New York: Ballantine Books.
  • 1996: Jihad vs. McWorld. How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping The World . New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-38304-4 . (German 1996 as Coca Cola and Holy War. How capitalism and fundamentalism abolish democracy and freedom, Munich: Joke, and 2000 as democracy in a stranglehold. Capitalism and fundamentalism - an unholy alliance, Frankfurt / Main: Fischer).
  • 1998: A Passion for Democracy: American Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • 1998: A Place For Us: How To Make Society Civil and Democracy Strong. New York: Hill and Wang / Farrar & Strauss.
  • 2001: The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in The Clinton White House . New York: WW Norton.
  • 2003: Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism and Democracy in an Age of Intedependence . New York: WW Norton (German 2003 als Imperium der Angst. The USA and the new order of the world. Munich: Beck. ISBN 3-406-50954-1 ).
  • 2004: Social Justice, New Answers in the Globalized Economy? Klartext-Verlagges., ISBN 3-89861-320-8 .
  • 2007: Consumed! ( Consumed! How the market seduces children, infantilizes adults and devours the citizens. 395 p., CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-57159-6 )

items

interview

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dr Benjamin Barber - August 2 1939 - April 24 2017 In: globalparliamentofmayors.org. (English).
  2. ↑ To the whole paragraph: Katrin Schmidt: Benjamin R. Barber: In which world do we want to live? For the exhibition of the same name by Dilemma Verlag, January 29, 2004 (pdf, 131 kB).
  3. ↑ After Peter Massing, Gotthard Breit: Democracy Theories: Chapter "Benjamin Barber". Series of publications, vol. 424. Federal Agency for Civic Education , September 15, 2003, archived from the original on December 12, 2007 ; accessed on April 30, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Quoted from the German edition, page 15.
  5. ↑ Quoted from the English edition, pp. 6/8, underlines added.
  6. ↑ Strong Democracy , p. 281.
  7. ↑ Jörg Plath: Book review: Das Ende der Tugend- Deutschlandradio Kultur , March 18, 2008, accessed on April 30, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Barber, Benjamin R.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American political scientist and professor of civil society at the University of Maryland
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , New York
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 2017
Place of death New York City , New York