Efficacy, Legitimacy, and Political Contradiction: The Status of Democracy in Nancy Fraser’s Conception of Capitalism

This paper takes a closer look at Nancy Fraser’s account of the crisis of democratic capitalism, with particular attention to the place of “democracy” in her “expanded conception of capitalism.” In articles, interviews, and published dialogues, Fraser has argued that capitalism has long been plagued by a deep-seated “political contradiction,” which has taken a particular and particularly acute form over the last several decades. Her “crisis-critique” has proven both popular and controversial, but I believe the precise nature of the relation between capitalism and democracy still in crucial ways remains to be clarified, especially with regard to democracy’s status within the capitalist social order. Does capitalism require democracy? If so, what for? We can reconstruct Fraser’s crisis theory by distinguishing among several levels. The level of efficacy refers the way in which capitalism both relies on political authority and systematically undermines it, keeping democracy weak and insecure. The contradiction Fraser posits between capitalism and democracy shows up plainly at this level, but in a “functionalistic” way. Fraser insists that her overall conception of capitalist society cannot be reduced to functionalism; rather, it must be understood as an “institutional order,” whose configuration changes in response to social struggles brought on by crises. This opens up a second level, the level of legitimacy. Yet even this level leaves open questions: legitimation crises must amount to more than a “might-makes-right” confrontation of social forces, but the requisite normative criteria cannot be drawn from “outside” the crisis-complex of capitalist society. I argue we can uncover a third level, the level of rationality, which can be brought to light by reconstructing a “complementary relation” between the logic of modern crisis consciousness and democratic will-formation. The demands of processing and managing crises, from both a functionalist and a normative perspective, points in a democratic direction. Expounding this relationship affords us a more complete picture of the tension Fraser posits between capitalism and democracy; it shows us why capitalist society needs to be underwritten by specifically democratic forms of public power, which it nevertheless systematically undermines.