Upitna moderna
Questionable Modernity

Summary/Abstract: Jacques Bidet’s theory of modernity is a fascinating research project which confronts us in a challenging way with a series of key theoretical and practical problems. The text focuses on the concepts of metastructure, domination, class and democracy. The most important concept is “metastructure”, which is to be perceived as all coordination and legitimation resources (on the economic, legal-political and cultural levels – the overcoming of any transcendental order) at the disposal of the citizens of modernity. These resources can be combined in several different ways, in varied structures of modernity. How are we to understand the ontological status of this metastructure? A full answer confronts us with another question: is it possible to offer a scientific explanation of the genesis of this modern (meta)structure? Thus, if metastructure is some sort of general grammar of modernity, the social structures are an actualisation of the possibilities of metastructure according to the spectrum ranging from the extreme of planned collectivism to the extreme of liberistic capitalism. Consequently, the duality of modernity is manifest in the fact that it is characterised, on the one hand, by universalistic legitimacy and, on the other, by the persistence of forms of (class) domination. According to Bidet, in capitalism a dominant class will be established with two poles – property and competence – which correspond to the interlinkage of market and organisation in such a form of society. For this reason, an attempt to achieve emancipation from the domination of the proprietor, in the case of planned collectivism, developing to the full the organisational dimension in order to satisfy the social needs in a more egalitarian way, necessarily results in the organiser’s domination. But the thesis that the dominant class in capitalism has two poles (property and competence) is met with the objection that simultaneously too much and not enough is said about the second pole of this class (of managers). Namely, it remains unclear how we must think the unity of capitalist domination in the plurality of spheres of social power; and if, on the contrary, we must abandon this unity, why should we limit ourselves to only two poles? The author concludes with a discussion of two questions which he deems to be decisive: to what extent can the inequalities related to property or competence be designated as class relations or forms of domination? And what is the relation between various modalities of class relations or relations of domination, and the institutions of modern poliarchic democracy which is centred on the multi-party system?

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