Kriza države blagostanja i iscrpljenost utopijskih energija
Crisis of the Affluent State and the Exhaustion of Utopian Energies

Summary/Abstract: The Utopia of the work society has lost its point of reference in contemporary reality: the power of labour in the abstract which creates structures and forms the society. The crisis of the Utopia of the work society affects also the project of the social state, even though it has been incorporated in it, in a particular form. The substantive aspect of the project of the social state feeds on the remnants of the Utopia of the work society; the status of the employed is normalized by means of civil participation and shareholding rights, thus granting the majority of the population the chance to live in freedom, social justice and prosperity. Two crucial questions, arising from the postulates of the project of the social state will decide its fate: the first is the question of the limits of reconciliation of capitalism and democracy, and the second is the question of the possibility to create new forms of life by legal and administrative means. Habermas accepts Offe’s typology of response to the exhaustion of the politically motivational potential of the Utopia of the work society in the West: the legitimism of the social stale In industrial society, neo-conservatism, and the dissidence of the critics of growth.

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