CRISIS OF GLOBAL CIVILIZATION AS A DISPLAY OF ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE IMPERATIVES OF GROWTH AND SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

Th is paper analyzes the current crisis of the global industrial civilization as a coincidence of external and internal reasons, mainly as a coincidence of economic and environmental crises tendencies. Th e analysis is based on Habermas´s distinction between four types of social formation and according to their internal organizational principles and an extent of their social and system integration also differentiates the types of crises that can occur in the given type of the social formation. Th e author of the paper shows that the common reason of economic and environmental crises which are a part of system crisis of industrial civilization is an imperative of growth. Th is imperative, as Habermas points out, is the immanent principle of institutions and systems of capitalism. But all types of social formation, institutions and civilizations are also determined by the imperative of sustainability. Th e current crisis is then characterized as a display of antagonism between the imperative of growth and imperative of sustainability. Th is antagonism creates a new category of confl icts in states that reach environmental and economic limits of growth. Th ese confl icts result from food and water shortages and could bring a growing instability into the world or lead to the collapse of the industrial civilization. Refs 17.

Keywords:

the economic crisis, the ecological crisis, industrial civilization, social formations, Y. Habermas, types of crisis