Scheuerman Vatter

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Political Theory

DOI: 10.1177/0090591705275784

2005; 33; 917Political TheoryMiguel Vatter

Book Review: Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time

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points of commonality among diverse social movements, if not in their spe-

cific goals, then the directions and dynamic of politics undertaken within

them in response to repressive government policy and liberal ideology. Poli-

tics at theMargins thus pointspolitical theory in a refreshing direction, mak-

ing political theory work for the people doing politics.

Nadine Changfoot

Trent University

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCIAL ACCELERATION OF TIME,

by William E. Scheuerman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

2004. 286 pp. $42.00 (cloth).DOI: 10.1177/0090591705275784

William Scheuerman is the author of two previous books dedicated to the

crisis of liberal rule of law in Weimar Germany, as analyzed by the early

Frankfurt School and by Carl Schmitt. Liberal rule of law and the forces that

threaten it remains his topic in this new book, which he now approaches

through a hypothesis coming from innovative recent research in German

sociology (p. xv) according to which we are experiencing a fundamental

temporal misfit between the social acceleration of economical and social

practicesand thecorresponding liberal political institutions (p. 47).A typical

statement of the scenario conjured up in this book runs as follows: legisla-

tors are required to take their timein order to struggle with theburdensomeduty of generating norms suitable to future developments. Yet the ever more

hectic pace of change in the social and economic universe which lawmakers

are supposed to coordinate seems oblivious to the prerequisites of sensible

legislation (p. 47). The outcome, according to Scheuerman, is that parlia-

ments might delegate lawmaking duties to an executive pictured by classical

liberal theory as best equipped to tackle fast-moving social and economic

developments that call for an immediate response (p. 49). Liberal democ-

racy is then faced with theprospect of an executive prerogative . . . destined

to permeate political life (p. 51), thereby threatening the fundamental prin-

ciple of the separation between legislative power and executive rule.

Scheuerman ends his book by suggesting some technical politico-legal

reforms through whichspeedmightbe successfullytransformedintoanally

rather than an enemy of liberal democracy (p. 70).Thestrongestpart of this book is found in itscentral chapters (chaps. 3-5),

where Scheuerman analyses the stunning proliferation of exceptional and

BOOKS IN REVIEW 917

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emergency powers in contemporary liberal democracy (p. 65) Scheuerman

expresses alarm at thesteady erosion of thegraspof legislationon socialreal-

ity. Here he is on familiar, quintessentially Schmittian terrain. Schmitt

believesthat thevalidity of a legalorderdepends on itscapacityto grasp real

life itself (Schmitt, Political Theology, 15), and not on its foundation in

either transcendent moral values or factically given law.1 Additionally,

Schmitt argues that whether law applies to reality is something determined

outside of the form of the law, in a state where this form is suspended. Hence

his provocative conclusion that the rule of law advocated by liberal democ-

racy always presupposes a stateof exception to law that it cannotaccount for,

andwhose actualityit repressesat itsown cost andperil.Scheuermans book

bringsSchmitts intuitions up todate with respect to themost recentdevelop-

ments in the practices of constitutional amendment, statutory lawmaking,and globalized international law. Of particular interest is the fourth chapter,

where he discusses Schmitts claim that one of the fundamental ways in

which thestateof exception hasentered into civillife incontemporary liberal

democracies is through the management of economic crises by way of

emergency powers.

It is unfortunate that in his knowledgeable discussion of emergency pow-

ersScheuerman does notengagetheworksof theItalianphilosopher Giorgio

Agamben which today offer the most significant and influential theoretical

treatmentof thestate of exception.2 Whereas Scheuerman claims that social

acceleration lies at the root of the proliferation of states of exception,

Agamben offers a bio-political account of the reasons for which the attempt

to master life through law can only be achieved through the suspension of

law. Agamben ultimately wants to rejectthe Schmittian demandthat thelegalform ought to grasp the real. Scheuerman, on the other hand, seems to accept

the above demand. His fundamental thesis is that the real slips by the law

because it is characterized by a social acceleration that is out of synch with

the temporal fundaments of liberal rule of law.

The first two chapters attempt to defend this thesis and, in my opinion,

they are the least convincing parts of this book. By social acceleration

Scheuerman means that the time it takes to do particular activities has been

steadily decreasing (p. 9), as evidenced in technological acceleration, the

acceleration of the pace of social change, and the heightened tempo of

everydaylife (p.13). He identifies thetwo main sources of such speeding up

in the dynamics of modern capitalism (p. 16) and the competitive state

system (p.23). Unfortunately there ishardlyany discussion of theclaimthat

the successful harnessing of speed (p. 19) in both capitalism and modernwarfare is the determining factor for the obtaining of profit and victory,

respectively. What is missing here, in other words, is a discussion of the rela-

918 POLITICAL THEORY / December 2005



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tion between the speeding up of certain activities and power. For instance,

withregards to therelationbetween speedand capitalist exploitationof labor,

Scheuerman could have looked for support in the impressive attempt to ana-

lyze the new orders of capitalism in terms of a Simmelian theory of money

and its relation to speed, timeand spatial location found in the recent work of

French sociologist Luc Boltanski.3

What I alsomissed inthisbook on contemporary law isa discussion of the

relation between speed, temporality, and normativity. For instance, in order

to illustrate his thesisof a time lag between thetemporal fundament of lib-

eral legislation and social acceleration, Scheuerman cites a passage from

Lockes Second Treatise which supposedly describes the proper tasks of

prospective legislation as aspiring to foresee, and so by laws to provide for,

allaccidents andnecessities that mayconcern thepublic(p. 29,citingfromSecond Treatise, para. 160).4 He forgets to add that the citation comes from

Lockes discussion of the prerogative that the executive may have over the

legislative on the grounds that it is impossible to foresee, and so by laws to

provide for (my emphasis). Rather than planning and coordinating future

state-intervention in society and theeconomy, as Scheuerman implies, legis-

lation for Locke is bound to dispense justice, and decide the rights of the

subject by promulgated standing laws, and known authorized judges (para.

136). Thetemporalhorizon of liberal justice andrightsdoes notseem to be

the future, which would leave Locke open to Scheuermans objection that

lawmakers are inevitably forced to make predictions about the likelycourse

of a potentially significant array of succeeding social trends (p. 30), but

rather the presumptively atemporal normativity associated with natural law:

the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well asothers (para. 135). The study of the temporal fundaments of liberal

democracy advocated by Scheuerman is an important and worthwhile

endeavor, but it should be carried out with a view to examining their internal

relation to the normative foundations of liberal rule of law, as well as to the

power relations that make it possible for individuals to become subjects of

law.

To confront the situation in which popular assemblies areexpected to do

nothing less than react effectively to a multiplicity of rapid-fire changes in

social and economic life (p. 48), Scheuerman thinks we should be looking

for ways to speed up the practices that generate legitimacy for the law. Per-

haps it would be equally as important to understand why the law has been

made to take upon itself such a burden. The fate of law in the modern world

maythenseem tobe less determined bysocial acceleration than by thekindof dynamics towhichArendtand Foucault,amongothers, draw attention: the

disappearance of political space in and through the rise of the social, and the

BOOKS IN REVIEW 919



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replacement of political power (popular sovereignty) by biopower. For this

reason, I have some doubtswhether Scheuermans proposed solution, which

draws on the idea of reflexive law promoted by Teubner (another product

of recent Germansocial scientific discourse), is adequate to theproblems his

own book helps to raise. Teubners idea of law as a regulated self-regula-

tion (p. 212) of socioeconomic processes and interests still seems attached

to the belief that a self-regulative pursuit of interests is in principle possible.

Such a beliefseemsto require that law becomeinstrumental to interested pur-

suits,andin that wayno longercapable of providingforthe disinterested reg-

ulation of such pursuits. As a consequence, all interests, including ones in

regulation, get increasingly pursued in a manner that is literallyspeeding out

of control. Perhaps we should not rush to discard the seemingly old-

fashioned, liberal idea of law according to which a politicalassociation wor-thy of its name is one in which rules are followed for their own sake, and not

as a means towards some end that is not itself law. We need not give in to the

Schmittian demand that law grasp real life. For this demandmayin theend

simply be at the service of a biopolitics that wishes to dispense with law as

such.

Miguel Vatter

Northwestern University

NOTES

1. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans.George Schwab (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).

2. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-

Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man

and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004); and Giorgio

Agamben,State ofException, trans.KevinAttell (Chicago:University ofChicago Press,2005).

3. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott

(London: Verso, 2005).

4. John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis,

IN: Hackett, 1980), 84.

920 POLITICAL THEORY / December 2005


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Scheuerman Vatter