From privatization of public law to publicization of private law: legitimacy and intervantion of Liberal Capitalist State in the thought of Habermas

Base, scope, extent and manner of government intervention in social and economic era is one of the most fundamental issues in public law. This paper explores one aspect of the recent work of Jürgen Habermas on legitimating crisis and its relationship with intervention of state in public sphere. It focuses on Hagerman's claim that the pre-capitalist moral values on which capitalism has hitherto relied has become progressively displaced by the growth of the capitalist economy. This has caused critical problems for the state management of the economy, in the absence of an established internalized set of values which could act both as restraints upon economic demands and as reinforcements to an ethic. The conclusion of the paper is that while rational discussion of values is important, this does not entail that the possibility agreement is required to make sense of this activity. This article examines the relationship between legitimacy and scope of government intervention as a central issue in contemporary philosophy of public law.