September 11, Social Theory and Democratic Politics

MOMENTOUS HISTORICAL events, like the September 11 terror-ist attacks and the subsequent Terror War, test social theories andprovide a challenge to give a convincing account of the event and its consequences. In the following analyses, I want first to suggest how certain dominant social theories were put in question during the momen-tous and world-shaking events of September 11. I take up the claim that ‘everything has changed ’ in the wake of September 11 and attempt to indicate both changes and continuities to avoid one-sided exaggerations and ideological simplicities. I conclude with a few reflections on the impli-cations of September 11 and the subsequent Afghanistan Terror War for critical social theory and democratic politics, envisaging a new global movement against terrorism and militarism, and for democracy, peace, environmentalism and social justice. Social Theory, Falsification and the Events of History Social theories generalize from past experience and provide accounts of historical events or periods that attempt to map, illuminate and perhaps criticize dominant social relations, institutions, forms, trends and events of a given epoch. In turn, they can be judged by the extent to which they account for, interpret and critically assess contemporary conditions, or predict future events and developments. One dominant social theory of the past two decades, Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992), was strongly put into question by the events of September 11 and their after-math.1 For Fukuyama, the collapse of Soviet communism and triumph of Western capitalism and democracy in the early 1990s constituted ‘the end of history’. This signified for him ‘the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the fina