Abstract

Over the last decade there has been a veritable explosion of Anglo-American interest in the works of Weimar constitutional and political theorist, Carl Schmitt. There has been concurrently a revival in the treatment of technology as a subject worthy of social-philosophical inquiry. Yet the two scholarly movements have surprisingly passed each other by. Surprisingly because as I demonstrate the German critique of technology is crucial for understanding the works of Schmitt, especially his criticisms of liberalism, and vice versa, theoretical confrontations with technology, often dismissed as excessively abstract, could benefit greatly by observing the way in which Schmitt incorporated theoretical engagements with technology into practical-political treatises. The conjuncture of the critiques of liberalism and technology in Schmitt's writings may shed fresh light on the perennial problem of "technocracy" in liberal democracies and the potential for authoritarianism latent within it. The context in which fascism first emerged in Europe was characterized by a structural transformation--a fusion--of the economy, society and politics as welfare state conditions eclipsed the nineteenth century's--supposedly separate--state/society configuration. As the perceived agent of this transformation technology consequently aroused exhilaration, awe and fear irrespective of whether it was perceived as beneficial or detrimental. The analyses on the part of the intellectuals who engaged technology in this context were sometimes hysterical but also sometimes quite perspicacious. Soviet Communism, fascism and liberal technocracy were all posed as solutions to this situation. Since the 1970s industrial societies have undergone another structural transformation as a Fordist welfare state configuration gives way to a globalized one. This process has brought down Soviet Communism, but fascism has reemerged and liberal technocracy transmutes itself in not necessarily progressive ways. The considerations on these political alternatives in the wake of this century's first technological transformation by fascism's most brilliant promoter and liberalism's most relentless critic may not provide facile answers in the midst of this century's second transformation. But we must properly understand the past to accurately assess the present and insure that the disastrous outcome that befell a fragile liberal democracy such as Weimar's does not occur again