Social stability rests on consciousness fragmentation, not belief in legitimacy

Evidence

Secondly, Habermas’s account of the ‘legitimation crisis’ which he claims has supplanted the classical form of capitalist crisis focuses on the destabilizing effects of changes which have, he believes, undermined the masses’ normative integration into the existing order. But it is at least arguable that social stability depends not on the subordinate classes’ belief in the legitimacy of the status quo but on a fragmentation of social consciousness which prevents them from developing a comprehensive perspective on society as a whole. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 447

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This is a genuinely paradigm-shifting claim: the functional precondition for capitalist stability is not legitimation but the very fragmentation that Marxists typically diagnose as a symptom. It reworks the base for post-Marxist cultural analysis and reframes domination as a cognitive limit rather than a value commitment.
• XREF: This undermines the core of Habermas’s legitimacy thesis and resonates against Jameson’s claim that postmodernism is the ‘cultural logic’ of late capitalism — here fragmentation is not culture but the political infrastructure of stability. — connects to: Social being determines consciousness, not the reverse — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2495; Some theorists argue consensus reality has dissolved entirely — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 1117
• SEED: Article angle: ‘Domination by Fragmentation’ — arguing that the political function of postmodern cognitive fracturing is to prevent the emergence of class-conscious totality, not simply to reflect it.

Broader Connections

• Social being determines consciousness, not the reverse #complicates (0.78) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2495