Habermas traced how the ideology of fair exchange superseded traditional world-pictures as legitimation

Evidence

In traditional societies, this problem was solved through political power being accompanied by world-pictures which gave, even to those who had to suppress more of their needs than was necessary, a sense that they were participating in a form of life that aimed to provide the greatest possible measure of satisfactory, benign coexistence. Under capitalism, the economy, technology and science were to a great extent released from being tied into the framework of political power that had been supported by traditional world-pictures. The ideology of free and fair exchange, demystified but still based on ideas of benign coexistence, became the crucial legitimation for the social system. … In Habermas’s eyes, two tendencies were decisive for advanced capitalism: the growth of interventionist activity by the state in order to shore up a social system which tended to correspond less and less to the ideology of free and fair exchange, and which was plagued with crises; and the development of science and technology to become the primary productive force. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2697

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the shift in legitimation from traditional world-pictures to the bourgeois ideology of free and fair exchange, a core Habermas concept.
• XREF: connects to: The sphere of exchange generates capitalism’s spontaneous commonsense and bourgeois theory; Marx derives superstructures from the phenomenal forms of exchange relations — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 520

Broader Connections

• The sphere of exchange generates capitalism’s spontaneous commonsense and bourgeois theory #expands (0.82)
• Marx derives superstructures from the phenomenal forms of exchange relations #corroborates (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 520