Jurgen Habermas Sees the Task

Jurgen Habermas sees the task of socio-political criticism resting in the hands of the early literate bourgeois public sphere as he defines this sphere as the "sphere of private people [who] come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor" (Habermas, p.27). But the sharp delineation of the 'public' from the 'private' as explicit in the text was not a possibility during the earlier times.

Taking on a socio-historical stance, Habermas traces back the uncoupled public and private sphere to "publicness of representation" (p.7). In this set-up, the monarchy represents the people which clearly cannot pave way for the existence of the public sphere where civil society can engage in debates and critiques on the powers-that-be. But because of changes in the socio-economic conditions of the society, particularly at the onset, finance and trade capitalism, the demands of this kind of economic structure gave birth to "the elements of new and commercial relationships: the traffic and commodities in news." Basically, the demand of the market for an accurate, frequent information on distant events led to a system of correspondence that serves this particular need. The differentiation of the market institution from the political sphere paved way for the latter's independence as the then private "household" turned into "commercial economics." The "press" became stronger as the need for information on taxes, harvests, foreign trade to name a few intensified. Even the state authorities, used this medium to inform the "public" of ordinances and other administrative happenings (pp.15-20).

Moving along 17th century, journals started to release criticisms and reviews (p. 25). This marked the evolution towards a sphere where the exchange of ideas and criticisms was made possible. By the turn of 19th century, amidst the tension-filled state and society spheres, interventionism came into existence. To manage the tension brought about by the criticisms on the state and its power, the state adopted the interests of the people via interventionism which led to the "transfer of state functions to private corporate bodies" (p.142). Another particular structural transformation (i.e. industrialization) led to the objectification of labor where a separate existence of the 'world of work' from the private and public sphere lead to the deviation from the then-autonomous sphere of the owner and the means of production. Even the family has now turned into consumers of income and leisure time (pp.152-156). These events led to the drifting away of public sphere's critical stance and movement towards the direction of the passive, cultural consumers. This passivity of the public in turn leads to what Habermas calls "legitimation crisis" where the "crisis tendencies generated in the economic sphere, would be displaced into the cultural sphere. This in turn creates problems of social integration... In particular it creates the possibility of a large-scale loss of legitimacy for government institutions" (Heath, p.1).