Sixty years ago, Habermas's Encyclopedia article on 'the Public Sphere' came out. It was ignorant shit. The word public refers to the population as a whole. Public officials exercise authority over that population. The word private refers to withdrawal from public life and came to mean those without public office or function or, as in the army, those of lowest rank. It was in China, not Europe, that this distinction was most marked. Incidentally, the Chinese Emperors monitored 'public opinion' from a very early period by ordering that the songs on the lips of the common people even in distant provinces be reported back to the Imperial Capital
In law and custom had always been a distinction between public, that is social, and private, that is domestic, life and as to what could be safely expressed or enjoined in the former, without violating the sanctity of the latter. Equally, those discharging public duties were expected to ignore private considerations or urgings.
Nevertheless, within the Public sphere, certain personages or collectives had a privilege with respect to the private realm. This fundamental fact did not change with the growth of mass politics or mass media. Rather both adapted themselves to previously obtaining norms and to the evolving tastes or interests of various stakeholders.
The Concept. By "the public sphere" we mean first of all a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed.
There is no such realm. Even when taking a shit in the public toilet, we are exposed to graffiti which may shape our opinion on political or other public matters.
Access is guaranteed to all citizens.
There is no 'realm of our social life' where any and every citizen is welcome. It is a different matter that some public goods- e.g. TV or Radio broadcasts- are 'non-rival' and 'non-excludable' save by some more or less costly enforcement mechanism. Yet such mechanisms do exist. Also, Habermas may have noticed we have prisons in which some of our citizens are incarcerated.
A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body.
Only if that is the intention of those individuals and what they are doing is worthy of wider public interest. But neither condition may be met. In Britain, the Railway company had set up a 'trainspotters' club but it was laughed out of existence after a novel, and then a film, of that name came out.
They then behave neither like business or professional people transacting private affairs, nor like members of a constitutional order subject to the legal constraints of a state bureaucracy.
There speaks the true Teuton! Habermas had been in the Hitler Youth.
Citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion-
about what? Muslim immigrants? I suppose a lynch mob was a 'public body' in some parts of the world. Certainly, a posse comitatus might function like such a mob.
that is, with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions-about matters of general interest.
Habermas was fortunate that Allied Armies were based on German soil to prevent too free an assembly of this sort.
In a large public body this kind of communication requires specific means for transmitting information and influencing those who receive it.
Talking rather than farting? Why? Farting can be more effective.
Today newspapers and magazines, radio and television are the media of the public sphere.
Some magazines served a very private sphere. Sadly, back then, you had to be over 18 to buy them.
We speak of the political public sphere in contrast, for instance, to the literary one, when public discussion deals with objects connected to the activity of the state.
Literature may do so to better effect. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' may have done more for the Abolitionist cause then lengthy speeches delivered by learned lawyers to other learned lawyers.
Although state authority is so to speak the executor of the political public sphere, it is not a part of it.
The Executive branch of a State may or may not say it is executing the will of the public. It is not itself a part of the public and enjoys qualified immunity or executive privilege.
To be sure, state authority is usually considered "public" authority,
it is authority over the public
but it derives its task of caring for the well-being of all citizens
it has no such task. When the State conscripts you and send you to die in the trenches, or arrests you and sends you to rot in jail, it is not in fact showing a tender care for your well-being as a citizen.
primarily from this aspect of the public sphere.
Nonsense! The State is like a Nanny who must sternly oppose the public opinion of the nursery that only cake should be served for supper and nobody should be made to go to bed without any of that commodity. ---
Only when the exercise of political control is effectively subordinated to the democratic demand that information be accessible to the public, does the political public sphere win an institutionalized influence over the government through the instrument of law-making bodies.
Rubbish! Legislatures developed so as to raise taxes with minimal coercion so that collective action problems could be solved. 'Democratic demands', like 'oligarchic' or 'monarchic' demands have to moderate themselves on the basis of how much money is flowing into the exchequer. Only if more is paid in, can bigger demands be met in a sustainable manner.
The expression "public opinion" refers to the tasks of criticism and control which a public body of citizens informally-and, in periodic elections, formally as wellpractices vis-a-vis the ruling structure organized in the form of a state.
Fuck off! British visitors to despotic countries took note of 'public opinion'. If it grew too intense, there might be riots which the Cossacks or Janissaries or other such savage militias might put down in a brutal fashion. But this would affect tax revenue. The Brits understood that it was a virtue of their own system that as a class rose in opulence, it could pay to get a seat at the table and then keep that seat by yielding more and more in tax revenue if the more sensible of its demands were met and thus its own productivity rose more than proportionately.
Regulations demanding that certain proceedings be public (Publizitatsvorschriften), for example those providing for open court hearings, are also related to this function of public opinion.
Not if there are reporting restrictions. The plain fact is both Judges and officials are empowered to put 'the Public interest' ahead of 'Public opinion' or even the interests of the public. Habermas didn't understand Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. He was ignorantly trying to prove himself a good little schoolboy of the occupying powers. But, like Hannah's Aunt, he got carried away and over-egged the cake in a typically Teutonic, i.e. stupid, manner.
The public sphere as a sphere which mediates between society and state,
It doesn't. It is like the public toilet which interposes itself between the public restaurant and your own toilet at home. If public toilets are clean, you may use them instead of hurrying home to drop your load.
in which the public organizes itself
under the direction of the Fuhrer!
as the bearer or public opinion,
because the Fuhrer has commanded the public to have an opinion!
accords with the principle of the public sphere
thanks to the Fuhrer who can be very cordial though, to be on the safe side, let us just accord with his Will lest we find out otherwise.
- that principle of public information which once had to be fought for against the arcane policies of monarchies
Britain was and is a monarchy as are Holland and Belgium and Sweden and Denmark and Norway. Sadly, 'arcane policies' prevented those Nordic countries gaining a Fuhrer.
and which since that time has made possible the democratic control of state activities.
The Weimar Republic was democratic. It didn't control the activities of the General Staff. Ultimately it couldn't control even its own bowels and shat itself very publicly.
It is no coincidence that these concepts of the public sphere and public opinion arose for the first time only in the eighteenth century.
Not in Germany. Otherwise there would have been no fucking Reformation. But, even prior to that, there was 'public opinion'- which is why you had crazy shit like Crusades and Pogroms.
They acquire their specific meaning from a concrete historical situation.
German pedants attributed specific meanings to their own loose motions.
It was at that time that the distinction of "opinion" from "opinion publique" and "public opinion" came about.
Fuck off! The phrase 'opinion publique' was first used in 1588 by Michel de Montaigne. True, he was speaking of the dead weight of custom but, the truth is, he lived in an age, a milieu, of extravagant fads and fancies which crossed seas and rivers as quickly as rumor. It was the Seventeenth Century which saw 'public opinion'- more particularly on religious matters- fucking up most disastrously. The Eighteenth Century, on the other hand, was more devoted to Reason- or, at least, money.
Though mere opinions (cultural assumptions, normative attitudes, collective prejudices and values) seem to persist unchanged in their natural form as a kind of sediment of history, public opinion can by definition only come into existence when a reasoning public is presupposed.
Says a guy who had been in the Hitler Youth! The plain fact is, from the time of Plato, reason is what is opposed to opinion- more particularly that of the great unwashed. Still, I suppose Habermas needed to show the occupying powers that he was a diligent, but reassuringly stupid, pupil of theirs.
Public discussions about the exercise of political power which are both critical in intent and institutionally guaranteed have not always existed-
They existed, Herodotus tells us, even in Persia when, after the slaughter of the Magi, the virtuous people of that nation deliberated on what form of Government would best serve the commonweal. Habermas must have known this. German paideia was thorough enough. I suppose he was pretending to be stupid so as not to make a target of himself. After all, back in 1964, none could be certain a Fourth Reich might not rise.
they grew out of a specific phase of bourgeois society
Habermas's supervisor was a Leftist who, however, had the sense to run the fuck away from East Germany. Still, it must be said, however stupid Habermas may have been, he must have realized that bourgeois society in different European cities was pretty much at the same phase. Yet only Germany had fucked up so monumentally- not once, but twice. Their bildungsburgertum and beamtenliberalismus were totally and utterly shite- the more so because they had so many ghastly pedants banging on in the most illiterate manner possible about Politics and Economics and Jurisprudence and other stuff the Teutons were rubbish at.
and could enter into the order of the bourgeois constitutional state only as a result of a particular constellation of interests.
Fuck off! It is obvious that public opinion had shifted against absolute monarchs and towards the burgher who paid taxes and wanted a portion of those taxes to be spent on providing 'club goods' which would raise productivity and thus create a virtuous circle of rising incomes leading to rising tax revenues leading to 'positive externality' type public spending. I may mention, the creation of Consols- i.e. riskless assets- was a great boon for 'chrematistics' or the 'financialization' of industrial capitalism. Interestingly, the reparations which France had to pay twice in the nineteenth century helped their thrifty middle class. Germany's refusal to pay reparations (or rather their 'extend and pretend') was very damaging for their mittelstand.
History. There is no indication European society of the high middle ages possessed a public sphere
the Church, though strongly linked with the Court, was public enough and, springing from its Universities, the 'goliard' or, in Holland and Germany, the poets of romantic chivalry writing in the vernacular, catered to a widening audience. The stage was thus set for the Humanism of Ulrich von Hutten and the type of public opinion which supported the Reformation. In Germany, this had to do with the downgrading of the poorer members of the knightly caste.
as a unique realm distinct from the private sphere.
Fuck off! If there was no public sphere, how could there have been Crusades or a Reformation? I suppose, what Habermas is getting at is that there was no independent, purse-proud, bourgeoisie. Consider the great merchant Jacques de Coeur. His father-in-law had been the valet of the Duke before rising up in commerce. His daughter married into the aristocracy while his son became an arch-bishop. Yet, he fell. A Lombard family with greater luck was that of the Princes of Thurn und Taxis. It took them three centuries to be ennobled but a mere century and half to rise Princely rank. But they have remained very rich for at least eight centuries. As couriers and postmasters, they served a widening public and, I suppose, since their trade was not considered vulgar, public opinion supported their rise into first the aristocratic, and then the Princely, caste.
Nevertheless, it was not coincidental that during that period symbols of sovereignty, for instance the princely seal, were deemed "public."
Because princes ruled over the public. A knight may have a coat of arms but, in some countries, that was a private matter. Thurn und Taxis is an example of a knightly family which had to forge a genealogy to make the leap into the upper ranks of European Society. As I have said, the fact that they served the public for centuries, meant public opinion changed in their favor.
At that time there existed a public representation of power. The status of the feudal lord,
I think Thurn und Taxis only gained actual feudal powers quite late in the eighteenth century only to be 'mediatized' by Napoleon shortly thereafter. But their postal business continued to thrive.
at whatever level of the feudal pyramid, was oblivious to the categories "public" and "private," but the holder of the position represented it publicly: he showed himself, presented himself as the embodiment of an ever present "higher" power.
Not in France where noble status was stripped from those without the economic means to keep up an appropriate style of life. The situation in Germany was more complex.
The concept of this representation has been maintained up to the most recent constitutional history.
Habermas was mistaken. The Weimar Constitution abolished Princely titles along with their political role. Previously, the Kaiser was styled German Emperor not Emperor of Germany and, in constitutional law, other German Kings had a representative function.
Regardless of the degree to which it has loosed itself from the old base, the authority of political power today still demands a representation at the highest level by a head of state.
No. A particular State may, for diplomatic purposes, have a Head of State but this has nothing to do with political authority. The nominal head of government may serve, in fact, not legal fiction, at the pleasure of a Gaddaffi- who was a mere 'Brotherly leader and Guide' till he was killed and his corpse was sodomized.
Such elements, however, derive from a pre-bourgeois social structure.
No. There were cities and there were merchants (burghers) in cities before there were Kings. Representation was required for the signing of contracts. This could be delegated. Thus, the owner of a property may appoint a representative to make a particular contract. But a King, too, might send a representative to take and hold the crown on his behalf.
Representation in the sense of a bourgeois public sphere, for instance the representation of the nation or of particular mandates, has nothing to do with the medieval representative public sphere--a public sphere directly linked to the concrete existence of a ruler.
No. Both spring from the same notion of power to contract or power to discharge the terms of a contract. Incidentally, in the private sphere, though there could be 'marriage by proxy', still, sooner or later a dick and a vagina had to actually physically represent the two contracting parties failing which the marriage might be dissolved.
As long as the prince and the estates of the realm still "are" the land, instead of merely functioning as deputies for it, they are able to "re-present"; they represent their power "before" the people, instead of for the people.
Rubbish! The American or Swiss President isn't 'the land'. He or she is a Head of State with the power to sign treaties on behalf of his or her country. Habermas may have thought, in 1964, there was some big big difference between Ceylon, which retained the Queen as head of state till 1972, and India, which had become a Republic. But this wasn't the case.
The feudal authorities (church, princes and nobility), to which the representative public sphere was first linked, disintegrated during a long process of polarization.
Nonsense! Britain retains a monarch and an established Church to this day. The House of Lords still consisted of mainly hereditary peers in 1964. Some of the Channel isles still had feudal lords. But this made no fucking difference to anything.
By the end of the eighteenth century they had broken apart into private elements on the one hand, and into public on the other.
No. Had Queen Victoria had a dick, Hanover would have remained in personal union with the UK. Because it was 'Salic' this ceased to be the case on her accession. It was the Great War which, in Europe, caused great magnates to lose multiple nationality and allegiance. A Prince had to choose one nationality and stick to it.
The position of the church changed with the reformation: the link to divine authority which the church represented, that is, religion, became a private matter.
It still isn't in Germany. Unless you declare yourself an atheist, a portion of your tax payment is handed over to the Religion of your birth. Habermas was as ignorant of his own country as he was of every other. No wonder, the Germans considered him a leading savant. Even Max Weber was less stupid.
So-called religious freedom came to insure what was historically the first area of private autonomy.
Fuck off! Europe killed 'pagans' or Muslims or Jews (unless they were too useful). There was no such autonomy. The good thing about Western and most of Central Europe was that 'exit' was permitted. Thus, you could change your religion though you might have to run the fuck away to save your skin once you had done so. True, the need for this declined in the eighteenth century.
The church itself continued its existence as one public and legal body among others.
Unless it was the Established Church. On the other hand, in 1905, France turned on the Catholic Church and imposed various restrictions upon it. Ireland, after 1922, went in the opposite direction.
The corresponding polarization within princely authority was visibly manifested in the separation of the public budget from the private household expenses of a ruler.
This still hasn't happened in England though we may say that the ball was set rolling by Henry I.
The institutions of public authority, along with the bureaucracy and the military, and in part also with the legal institutions, asserted their independence from the privatized sphere of the princely court.
It wasn't 'privatized' initially, though it became so save where particular feudal revenues- e.g. the Duchy of Lancaster which, since 1461, has been separated from the Crown Estate, so as to provide an independent income to the Monarch or his eldest son.
Finally, the feudal estates were transformed as well: the nobility became the organs of public authority,
In some places, not others. Wealthy feudal magnates might engage in a ruinous 'game of Thrones'. One way or another, they were brought to heel- else chaos prevailed.
parliament and the legal institutions;
which, at the end of the day, were about raising money. For them to flourish, the money they raised had to raise productivity. Otherwise, they were disintermediated.
while those occupied in trades and professions, insofar as they had already established urban corporations and territorial organizations, developed into a sphere of bourgeois society which would stand apart from the state as a genuine area of private autonomy.
This cretin was of a middle class background. What fucking private autonomy did his family enjoy during either of the two world wars?
The middle order can, it is true, sell up and fuck off to a safer country. But, if it fails to do so, it is as much a hostage to fortune as the proles or the aristos.
The representative public sphere yielded to that new sphere of "public authority" which came into being with national and territorial states.
This cretin did not understand that people exercising 'public authority' do so as representatives of the sovereign. In England, after the Norman invasion, the Sheriff or 'vicomes' represented the King and undercut the traditional power of the Earls. If the King was weak, then the Earl or Marcher land really did represent particular territories. But, in that case, the King might represent nothing at all and anarchy might prevail.
Continuous state activity (permanent administration, standing army)
e.g. in China
now corresponded to the permanence of the relationships which with the stock exchange
which dates from 1666 for Frankfurt- a sovereign City State. But there was no unified German State- the Holy Roman Empire being neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an actual Empire. Still, at least the 30 year war was over.
and the press had developed within the exchange of commodities and information.
The first German newspaper predated the chaos of the 30 year war. The exchange of commodities and information during that period led some parts of Germany to lose half their population.
Public authority consolidated into a concrete opposition for those who were merely subject to it and who at first found only a negative definition of themselves within it. These were the "private individuals" who were excluded from public authority because they held no office.
Actually there had always been 'novo homini', raised up by the King- though it may have been the Church which gave them their start- whom he used to bring the Barons to heel. In some Empires- e.g. Tzarist Russia, Manchu China, Noble rank was linked to public service. Failure or inability to serve meant degradation by one rank per generation. But, 'new men' were able to rise into the nobility though Government service. Lenin, it will be remembered was a 'titular nobleman' because his Dad had been Director of Schools in some province.
Public no longer referred to the "representative" court of a prince endowed with authority, but rather to an institution regulated according to competence, to an apparatus endowed with a monopoly on the legal exertion of authority.
Whether it did or did not, didn't matter in the slightest.
Private individuals subsumed in the state at whom public authority was directed now made up the public body.
Fuck off! Nobody is 'subsumed in the State'. The public is just whoever bothers to show up. Generally, these are crazy people- unless economic interests are involved.
Society, now a private realm occupying a position in opposition to the state,
Very true. High Society is actually an anarchist collective scheming to topple the King and sodomize the Cabinet. When the Duchess of Westminster meets Victoria Beckham, they exchange tips on how to blow up Parliament.
stood on the one hand as if in clear contrast to the state. On the other hand, that society had become a concern of public interest to the degree that the reproduction of life in the wake of the developing market economy had grown beyond the bounds of private domestic authority.
In Germany, der Fuhrer orders you to go cuddle your wife and make babies. But Habermas forgot that the fucking Fuhrer poisoned his dog and ate a bullet.
The bourgeois public sphere could be understood as the sphere of private individuals assembled into a public body, which almost immediately laid claim to the officially regulated "intellectual newspapers" for use against the public authority itself.
Nope. Publishing was a business. People wrote pamphlets or set up newspapers so as to make a bit of money. Sometimes this was subsidized by various vested interest groups. Some influential writers gained power and influence.
In those newspapers, and in moralistic and critical journals, they debated that public authority on the general rules of social intercourse in their fundamentally privatized yet publically relevant sphere of labor and commodity exchange.
No. They debated how fucking horrible or nice the administration was. They didn't question the rule that you have to pay money in order to buy stuff.
The Liberal Model of the Public Sphere. The medium of this debate/public discussion-was unique and without historical precedent
Not to people who actually knew some history. St. Paul's Epistles changed 'public opinion' and continue to change opinion. But Emperor Ashoka had already done so. When new Religions spread, it is because public opinion has changed.
Hitherto the estates had negotiated agreements with their princes,
or killed and replaced them
settling their claims to power from case to case.
Bitter wars were waged from time to time. Habermas was entirely ignorant of History. He didn't understand that the Reformation was about a change in public opinion. Some people didn't believe that giving money to the Pope would cut down their time in Purgatory.
This development took a different course in England, where the parliament limited royal power, than it did on the continent, where the monarchies mediatized the estates.
No. In Germany some Princes and Archbishops were mediatized- i.e. down graded in rank. Estates were not 'mediatized'. The Church was brought under the control of the Monarch (unless the Monarch changed religion and, like James II was thrown out) or lost influence as people stopped believing that excommunication was a big deal. In some countries, Parliament gained the upper hand but, in others, it was downgraded or rendered subservient. Poland is an interesting case where the Crown was elective and held little power. The problem was nobody did and thus the country became vulnerable.
The third estate then broke with this form of power arrangement since it could no longer establish itself as a ruling group.
'No longer'? I suppose one could say the English 'Long Parliament' was a 'ruling group' which ceased to be so. In America, after the Revolution, there was only one Estate. In Russia, there was autocracy. The nobility and the Church were firmly subordinated to the Tzar. In other words, different countries went in different directions.
A division of power by means of the delineation of the rights of the nobility was no longer possible within an exchange economy-private authority over capitalist property is, after all, unpolitical.
Nonsense! The Electors of Brandenburg were sovereign in all but name. They were accorded the title 'King in Prussia' on the basis that a portion of their territory was outside the Holy Roman Empire and they no longer held it as vassals of the Polish King. It was only under Fredrick the Great that the title 'King of Prussia' was accorded to the Hohenzollerns. Bavaria only became a Kingdom in 1805 and remained so till 1919. Hanover only became a Kingdom in 1814 but was annexed by Prussia in 1866.
Bourgeois individuals are private individuals.
They may hold public office but everybody has a private life.
As such, they do not "rule."
Louis Phillipe was, famously, a bourgeois King. By that stage the Queen of England reigned but did not rule. After the death of her husband, there was a long period when she her life was largely private.
Their claims to power vis-d-vis public authority were thus directed not against the concentration of power, which was to be "shared."
The common people, too, had claims against 'authority'. Sometimes, these had to be conceded or there was a bloody insurrection. Don't forget, a goodly portion of the bourgeoisie sprang from the working or peasant class. Speaking generally, Parliament demanded power over the raising of taxes and some aspects of government spending. It did not necessarily demand power over diplomacy, the Church or the conduct of military operations. The doctrine of Parliamentary supremacy was slow to evolve and developed differently in different countries.
Instead, their ideas infiltrated the very principle on which the existing power is based. To the principle of the existing power, the bourgeois public opposed the principle of supervision-that very principle which demands that proceedings be made public (Publizitat).
Yet, there were still plenty of secret treaties in the Twenties and Thirties even though President Wilson had claimed that there would be no such things after the Allies won.
The principle of supervision is thus a means of transforming the nature of power, not merely one basis of legitimation exchanged for another.
No. The sovereign appointed supervisors to ensure he wasn't being cheated. So did Parliament once it became supreme. Dictators and autocrats have plenty of auditors and inspectors and also secret policemen keeping tabs on their subordinates.
In the first modern constitutions
the Swedish constitution of 1634 is generally considered the first modern constitution though it was not considered as such at that time. However from 1809 onward one could say that Parliament had the upper hand.
the catalogues of fundamental rights were a perfect image of the liberal model of the public sphere:
America gained independence by waging war. It expelled loyalists. There were no fucking 'fundamental rights' for the indigenous people or African Americans.
they guaranteed the society as a sphere of private autonomy and the restriction of public authority to a few functions.
No. Presidents and Senators were part of Society. The government had unlimited powers when it came- including the right to conscript soldiers- which it used from time to time. It could also restrict commerce and property ownership in any manner it pleased. When Habermas was writing this, Americans were not allowed to own gold. Also homosexuals could be arrested and sent to jail even if they were having consensual sex behind locked doors and closed curtains. Now, of course, American men copulate with each other in the streets while indulging in golden showers. My own sister told me this when I threatened to visit her in New York. True, this also happens in Hendon, where my cousin lives, but I did hope that Obama could persuade his people to adopt more hygienic practices.
Between these two spheres, the constitutions further insured the existence of a realm of private individuals assembled into a public body who as citizens transmit the needs of bourgeois society to the state, in order, ideally, to transform political into "rational" authority within the medium of this public sphere.
In Tzarist Russia and Ottoman Turkey and Ming Dynasty China, there existed 'a realm of private individuals etc.' This was also true of the Cannibals of Cheltenham- where another cousin of mine used to live. I wonder why all my relatives chose to live in places where an elderly Tambram myself would be at risk of being sodomized or eaten if I showed my face.
The general interest, which was the measure of such a rationality,
Monarchs and Dictators are perfectly capable of pursuing 'the general interest'.
was then guaranteed, according to the presuppositions of a society of free commodity exchange,
free commodity exchange existed even in the Stone Age. But, Capitalist countries, under exigent circumstances, may establish total state control over all of the country's resources.
when the activities of private individuals in the marketplace were freed from social compulsion
they never have been. This is why I am obliged to wear clothes when I appear in the streets.
and from political pressure in the public sphere.
Political pressure does mean I no can't buy certain things which, to be frank, would be very bad for me.
At the same time, daily political newspapers assumed an important role.
But a largely illiterate population- e.g. the India of Mahatma Gandhi- could develop a powerful enough 'public opinion' to compel constitutional change- not always for the better.
In the second half of the eighteenth century literary journalism created serious competition for the earlier news sheets which were mere compilations of notices.
Peter the Great established Russia's first newspaper. It was later taken over by the Academy of Sciences. But the country moved in an autocratic direction. Indeed, after the Bolsheviks came to power, autocracy intensified. No Tzar possessed the power of Stalin.
Karl Biicher characterized this great development as follows: "Newspapers changed from mere institutions for the publication of news into bearers and leaders of public opinion-weapons of party politics.
In some countries, not others.
This transformed the newspaper business. A new element emerged between the gathering and the publication of news: the editorial staff.
All newspapers were edited. As circulation and advertising revenue grew, more staff could be employed.
But for the newspaper publisher it meant that he changed from a vendor of recent news to a dealer in public opinion."
Peter the Great wrote most of his newspaper himself. He changed 'public opinion' and killed those who resisted such changes. The first German newspaper publisher explained in 1605, that previously news circulated to subscribers through hand copied letters, henceforth they would be printed. A woman established the first daily newspaper in the English language around 1702.
The publishers insured the newspapers a commercial basis, yet without commercializing them as such.
In Western Europe, most newspapers and magazines were always commercial ventures.
The press remained an institution of the public itself, effective in the manner of a mediator and intensifier of public discussion, no longer a mere organ for the spreading of news but not yet the medium of a consumer culture.
Nonsense! Advertisements appeared in the Daily Courant from the start.
This type of journalism can be observed above all during periods of revolution when newspapers of the smallest political groups and organizations spring up, for instance in Paris in 1789. Even in the Paris of 1848 every half-way eminent politician organized his club, every other his journal: 450 clubs and over 200 journals were established there between February and May alone.
So what? In countries where printing hadn't taken off, letters circulated and were read aloud to the common people.
Until the permanent legalization of a politically functional public sphere, the appearance of a political newspaper meant joining the struggle for freedom and public opinion, and thus for the public sphere as a principle.
Banned newspapers circulated just as banned pamphlets or epistles had circulated.
Only with the establishment of the bourgeois constitutional state was the intellectual press relieved of the pressure of its convictions.
Nonsense! Newspapers and magazines became more 'intellectual' as education and opulence increased. But this was also true in some autocratic countries.
Since then it has been able to abandon its polemical position and take advantage of the earning possibilities of a commercial undertaking.
If there is a demand for polemics, newspapers will be happy to supply it.
In England, France, and the United States the transformation from a journalism of conviction to one of commerce began in the 1830s at approximately the same time.
Nonsense! The American press was highly partisan in the eighteenth century. It was only after 1830 that they sought to increase their circulation by carrying more 'news' than 'views'. In England, people like Daniel Defore, Addison and Steele, were highly political.
In the transition from the literary journalism of private individuals to the public services of the mass media
Daniel Defoe and Benjamin Franklin had bridged that gap in the eighteenth century.
the public sphere was transformed by the influx of private interests, which received special prominence in the mass media.
Habermas says that the mass media gave special prominence to the mass media. By the standards of German pedagogues, the guy was a freakin' genius.
The Public Sphere in the Social Welfare State Mass Democracy. Although the liberal model of the public sphere is still instructive today with respect to the normative claim that information be accessible to the public,
In the Middle Ages the public was not allowed to know who was King. Also, nobody told them whether it was raining which is why they often got very wet.
it cannot be applied to the actual conditions of an industrially advanced mass democracy organized in the form of the social welfare state.
Sure it can. Nothing has changed. Some newspapers were partisan others less so.
In part the liberal model had always included ideological components, but it is also in part true that the social pre-conditions, to which the ideological elements could at one time at least be linked, had been fundamentally transformed.
Social pre-conditions don't matter. That's why India could be a democracy in 1964 whereas East Germany couldn't. Ideology is independent of the economic 'sub-structure'. Albania was Communist though much more agrarian than Italy.
The very forms in which the public sphere manifested itself, to which supporters of the liberal model could appeal for evidence, began to change with the Chartist movement in England
which had zero effect. As Gen. Napier explained to the 'physical force' Chartists, it was the guys with canons who had the physical force.
and the February revolution in France.
Which changed little. An Emperor replaced a King. History, as Marx remarked, repeated itself as farce.
Because of the diffusion of press and propaganda, the public body expanded beyond the bounds of the bourgeoisie.
It was always much larger. As Victor Hugo put it, 'fex urbis lex orbis'- i.e. the scum of the City- or poor Christians lurking in the catacombs- ended up giving laws to the world. But that happened long before there were printing presses or radios or televisions.
The public body lost not only its social exclusivity;
This nutter didn't know that guys like Martin Luther weren't born into the aristocracy. Yet they changed history.
it lost in addition the coherence created by bourgeois social institutions and a relatively high standard of education. Conflicts hitherto restricted to the private sphere now intrude into the public sphere.
Intense enough private conflicts become either through violence or law suits or the attempt to change laws and regulations. This is true in any type of society at any age in human history.
Group needs which can expect no satisfaction from a selfregulating market now tend towards a regulation by the state.
This was always the case. Even where there was a 'self-organizing' Law Merchant, merchants themselves wanted it codified and amended by the State. Furthermore, the demand for protection from foreign competition existed even in ancient times. This was sometimes linked to sumptuary laws. The paradox was that the very merchants who clamored for mercantilist policies, might also turn a profit by dealing in contraband.
The public sphere, which must now mediate these demands,
e.g. the demand of a guy whose neighbor stole his cow. But that had been happening since the time of the cavemen.
becomes a field for the competition of interests, competitions which assume the form of violent conflict.
There were conflicts between pastoralists and farmers etc. before there was
Laws which obviously have come about under the "pressure of the' street" can scarcely still be understood as arising from the consensus of private individuals engaged in public discussion.
Sure they can. Private individuals have conversations and then take to the streets. The King then orders a pogrom. Hitler, of course, was something of a 'self-starter' in that respect.
They correspond in a more or less unconcealed manner to the compromise of conflicting private interests.
As private individuals we still have public concerns or want the State, or the local community, to do certain things or not do them. But this has been true throughout human history
Social organizations which deal with the state act in the political public sphere,
They may bring pressure to bear behind the scenes. A lot of lobbying is far from transparent.
whether through the agency of political parties or directly in connection with the public administration. With the interweaving of the public and private realm, not only do the political authorities assume certain functions in the sphere of commodity exchange and social labor, but conversely social powers now assume political functions.
When was this not the case? The tribe had its own hierarchy and internal politics. It promoted some times of trade and taxed or forbade other sorts.
This leads to a kind of "refeudalization" of the public sphere.
NO! It led to the Spanish Inquisition taking those parts of the public sphere which had not been over-run by Atilla the Hun.
Large organizations strive for political compromises with the state and with each other, excluding the public sphere whenever possible.
Also, when you apply for a driving license, you exclude the public sphere because nobody wants to be harangued by nutters from Extinction Rebellion who think cars are very evil.
But at the same time the large organizations must assure themselves of at least plebiscitary support from the mass of the population through an apparent display of openness (demonstrative Publizitat).
Fuck off! Big Trade Union leaders enjoy holding the country to ransom.
The political public sphere of the social welfare state is characterized by a peculiar weakening of its critical functions.
No. Advances in economic theory and statistics tended to create better 'Cost Benefit analysis'. Over the course of the Sixties and Seventies, politicians, administrators and media commentators began using an increasingly technocratic language. The style of debate changed. In England 'Butskillism' prevailed as all major parties sought to occupy the middle ground. They competed with each other by portraying themselves as better managers of the business of the nation.
At one time the process of making proceedings public (Publizitat) was intended to subject persons or affairs to public reason, and to make political decisions subject to appeal before the court of public opinion.
It was argued that 'delegated legislation'- a big feature of the post-war industrial State- meant less transparency and oversight. This was one reason Ombudsmen, independent of the Executive, were increasingly appointed.
But often enough today the process of making public simply serves the arcane policies of special interests;
e.g. where a Regulatory Agency is 'captured' by those it is meant to police.
in the form of "publicity" it wins public prestige for people or affairs, thus making them worthy of acclamation in a climate of non-public opinion. The very words "public relations work" (Oeffentlichkeitsarbeit) betray the fact that a public sphere must first be arduously constructed case by case,
No. It suggests that public opinion already existed and that it mattered a great deal. But monarchs and dictators, as well as elected politicians, had always known that popularity matters a great deal. That is why they took a lot of time and trouble to cultivate a particular image. So did commercial enterprises as they grew in scale and scope.
a public sphere which earlier grew out of the social structure.
Everything grows out of 'the social structure'. Mummy and Daddy were able to get married and have babies and bring up those babies because they were part of a society which had a lot of structure.
Even the central relationship of the public, the parties and the parliament is affected by this change in function.
There was no change in function. States have been providing pretty much the same types of services from their first inception.
Yet this trend towards the weakening of the public sphere as a principle
Habermas's conception of a 'public sphere' was weak as shit. This is because he had shit for brains. I suppose one might say 'over the course of the Sixties and Seventies, the private sphere became more autonomous with regard to sexual and some financial matters. Thus, when I was born, it was illegal in England for one man to have sex with another. There were also restrictions on your ability to buy and to hold foreign exchange.
is opposed by the extension of fundamental rights in the social welfare state.
But those 'fundamental rights' were often provided for by the public sector- e.g. Council houses and the NHS in England.
The demand that information be accessible to the public is extended from organs of the state to all organizations dealing with the state.
No. Nobody expects the Mafia to provide information even if it deals a lot with the Police and the Judiciary. It is a separate matter that if an organization- e.g. a Housing Trust- is mainly discharging a public (i.e. Government) function, then it may have to abide by rules concerning government activity.
To the degree that this is realized, a public body of organized private individuals would take the place of the now-defunct public body of private individuals
there was no such 'public body'. The moment a guy becomes a public official, he ceases to be a private citizen at least in connection with anything to do with the workings of that body.
who relate individually to each other.
Individuals relate to each other directly- more particularly when they are having sex. Frau Habermas may have told her hubby differently but she was lying. It isn't the case that the postman- as a representative of the Public- must be present at the conception of a baby.
Only these organized individuals could participate effectively in the process of public communication; only they could use the channels of the public sphere which exist within parties and associations and the process of making proceedings public (Publizitat) which was established to facilitate the dealings of organizations with the state.
This cretin probably thought that the German Secret Service published all its files.
Political compromises would have to be legitimized through this process of public communication.
No. There was never any such rule. If one guy says to the other- 'I'll support your bid to become Chancellor in return for your supporting my bid to become Mayor'- he is not obliged to report this to anybody.
The idea of the public sphere, preserved in the social welfare state mass democracy, an idea which calls for a rationalization of power through the medium of public discussion among private individuals, threatens to disintegrate with the structural transformation of the public sphere itself.
The public sector expanded because of two world-wars and then an expensive Cold War. One may say the private sphere expanded as affluent Societies became more permissive.
It could only be realized today, on an altered basis, as a rational
this stupid cunt wouldn't have recognized rationality if it bit him in the bum.
reorganization of social and political power under the mutual control of rival organizations
rivals don't mutually control shit.
committed to the public sphere
There are plenty of rival Churches. They are committed to God, not the public sphere.
in their internal structure
some organizations have little internal structure. By Contrast the Institute of Socioproctology has a very intricate system of hierarchy. I am currently the Chief Acting Deputy Assistant Director of Enrollment. I used to be the President but had to resign because of allegations of sexual abuse. The same thing happened when I was made Director of Enrollment. I need hardly say that the allegations of self-abuse I made against me were wholly false. Shit. Just been fired again. I am not Acting Deputy Chief Assistant Director.
as well as in their relations with the state and each other.
or themselves. Sexual self-abuse is a widespread problem in modern society due to public opinion is causing me to watch Mia Khalifa on Pornhub. I think I now understand why Mahatma Gandhi backed the Khilafat movement.
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