Legitimation crisis / by Jürgen Habermas ; translated by Thomas McCarthy.

Translation of Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus.

A social-scientific concept of crisis -- System and life-world -- Some constituents of social systems -- Illustration of social principles of organization -- System crisis elucidated through the example of the liberal-capitalist crisis cycle -- Crisis tendencies in advanced capitalism -- A descriptive model of advanced capitalism -- Problems resulting from advanced-capitalist growth -- A classification of possible crisis tendencies -- Theorems of economic crisis -- Theorems of rationality crisis -- Theorems of legitimation crisis -- Theorems of motivation crisis -- A backward glance -- On the logic of legitimation problems -- Max Weber's concept of legitimation -- The relation of practical questions to truth -- The model of the suppression of generalizable interests -- The end of the individual? -- Complexity and democracy -- Partiality for reason.

Offers a Marxian theory of communicative competence for application to the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Bibliogs.