On the one hand, Bauman apparently seeks to defend Habermas against the charge that undistorted communication does not accord with “twentieth-century experience of public debate.” Habermas’s vision, he remarks, is “an ideal type, a baseline from which the practically attained consensus can be criticized and proved invalid” (Bauman 1987b: 96–97). On the other hand, however, Bauman rejects consensus, if thus attained, as an ideal worth pursuing. “Consensus and unanimity,” he writes, “augur the tranquility of the graveyard (Habermas’s ‘perfect communication’, which measures its own perfection by consensus and exclusion of dissent, is another dream of death which radically cures the ills of freedom’s life)” (Bauman 1997: 202). Though ambivalent in both cases, Bauman’s appraisal of Giddens and Habermas differs fundamentally in several respects.
First of all, Giddens is praised for his ability to draw a synthesis between diverse sociological perspectives; the praise concerns, in other words, his contribution to sociological theory. Habermas’s vision of undistorted communication is considered an ideal type. As such, it is useful insofar as providing a criterion to assess existing consensus on any particular issue. While praise on Giddens’s theoretical contribution is then given without reservations, Bauman’s appreciation of Habermas is qualified, depending on the empirical usefulness of this ideal type. Furthermore, Bauman’s objections to these two authors are quite distinct in their nature. To Giddens, Bauman raises an epistemological objection. It concerns the very possibility for his epistemology to provide accounts of social reality that are significantly different from public opinion and common sense. To Habermas, Bauman objects that, from an axiological viewpoint, undistorted communication is not a value worth pursuing.
These praises and criticisms may shed further light on Bauman’s vision of sociology. Sociology’s central concern is for Bauman the understanding of human experience, in all its complexity and variety, as previously stated. Sociology should not therefore avoid pursuing the empirical accuracy of such understanding; nor should it neglect the ethical consequences that occur, when this consensus constrains human experience. More in general, Bauman is wary of the perverse ethical and empirical consequences that social-science investigations may have, whether they are intended or not. Such consequences Bauman designates as “the social production of inhumanity” (Bauman 1984: 154). Their investigation is a major theme of his “Modernity and the Holocaust,” in keeping with Bauman’s central concern with human experience, and the task he assigns to sociology, to inquire into it thoroughly. Conventional research methods, which make use of random samples, are potentially useful. This is so, however, only if the characteristics of the individuals composing the collectivity, on which the investigation focuses, are irrelevant for the research purposes (Bauman 1966).
Democracy, Freedom and Globalization
Pursuing this political and ethical task has been a lifelong concern for Bauman. This concern has acquired particular urgency in his eyes because of what he considers a state of crisis connoting democracy and freedom, of which contemporary capitalism and the current globalization process bear responsibility. As for democracy, its predicament, which Bauman deplores, originates in his judgment from several interconnected causes, such as deregulation and the decline of the Welfare State. This predicament has occurred in conjunction with, and as a consequence of, the rise of neoliberalism and of the inability of parliamentary democracy to fulfill its promise. Liberalism rests on “informed opinions and political deliberation” (Bauman and Donskis 2013: 39). The absence of these conditions points to the “profound crisis,” which liberalism undergoes in our age of technocracy. This state of crisis is indicated by liberalism’s commitment to a free-market economy and by its little concern for liberty, human rights and human dignity (Bauman and Donskis 2013: 73–75). The institutions of formal democracy notwithstanding, citizens have been reduced to “the condition of a flock of sheep” (Bauman and Donskis 2013: 27).
The liberal tradition of informed citizens debating public affairs has given way to a quest for security on the part of privatized city dwellers. The promise of parliamentary democracy has been accomplished only to the extent that formal democratic procedures are concerned; but these procedures do not uphold substantive democracy, and therefore the citizens’ actual participation in the democratic process. Their participation has been constrained by the transformation of the democratic process into the current post-democracy, which is characterized by mass democracy and mass education (Bauman and Donskis 2013: 5). Post-democracy bears little resemblance to the ideal of the citizens’ active and responsible participation to political decision-making. The Agora has been since Aristotle an ideal form of life, the purpose of which has been to coordinate and mediate between private and public interests. Contemporary democracies have tried—not successfully, according to Bauman—to overcome the contradiction between “the formal universality of democratic rights and the less than universal ability of their holders to exercise such rights effectively” (Bauman 2011a: 13).
As Bauman has pithily put it, “amidst the daily effort just to stay afloat, there is neither room nor time for a vision of the ‘good society’” (Bauman 2004: 35). Democratic rights, along with their accompanying freedoms, have been “granted in theory but unattainable in practice” (Bauman 2011a: 14), as civil and political rights have not been complemented by social rights. The Welfare State, or Social State, was an attempt to make social rights effective, and therefore to turn the ideal of the agora into a social and political reality. Contemporary post-democracy, however, while guaranteeing formal political liberties, is a degeneration of this ideal. “The free public discussion of issues—and particularly of the issue of social justice and the ethical quality of public affairs” (Bauman 1997: 63) has given way to what has been called “the show business of politics” (Bauman and Bordoni 2014: 141). The currently prevailing model of “opinion poll rule” involves the politicians’ exclusive consideration of “electoral gains and losses” (Bauman 1997: 62). The free public discussion of issues is constitutive of democracy, as Bauman views it; for it is “a necessary,” though not sufficient, “condition of the freedom of expression and open controversy.” Its degeneration causes greater social inequality, which in turn prevents achieving “a good society.”
Politics, Society, the Economy and Identity in the Age of Globalization
Politics has been narrowly reinterpreted as a succession of contingent events that catch the attention of the mass media, and of an audience of passive receivers. In Bauman’s pithy words, “the many watch the few.” These few, he adds, “are the celebrities” (Bauman 1998a: 53). Celebrities, no matter where they came from, are such for no other reason that they are watched, and therefore their way of life is displayed by the media as a model. This public, accustomed to watching TV talks and other fleeting events, has a short span of attention, according to Bauman (2004: 66). The dangers and menaces, to which the media call attention, and which are allegedly and spectacularly resisted and fought back on TV screens, are not those that pose a threat to democracies. Though a major cause