Democracy under pressure: the return of the Dialectic of Enlightenment in the world society

Abstract

The modern nation state has more or less successfully solved the religious, political and socio-ecomomic crises that emerged in modern Europe since the 16th Century together with the modern society. Yet, it’s greatest advance, the exclusion of inequalities presupposed the exclusion of the internal other of blacks, workers, women etc, and the other that stemmed from the non-European world that furthermore was under European colonial rule or other forms of European, Northamerican, or Japanese imperial control. Yet, the wars and revolutions of the 20th Century let to a complete reconstruction, new foundation and globalization of all national and international law. The evolutionary advance of the 20th Century was the emergence of world law, and this enabled the construction of international and national welfarism. The global exclusion of inequalities now has become something like a leading legal principle of world law. Nevertheless the dialectic of enlightenment resurged and led to new forms of postnational domination, hegemony, oppression and exclusion, and the emergence of a new formation of transnational class rule.