Prohibition and Restriction

A reflex is paralysing the political debates on climate change. As soon as it deals with measures that demand restraint, the outrage is great: Speed limit? Eco-dictatorship! Veggie Day? There goes that T-bone steak! Yet prohibition and restraint are tried and tested instruments for conserving resources and overcoming ecological crises.

Philipp Lepenies examines the origins of this habitual fundamental opposition. He traces it back to the neoliberal persuasion that sees the state as an adversary and places individual consumer choices above moral and ecological concerns. This spirit of misunderstood freedom, however, has produced a politics of restraint that shies away from stating the obvious: that a socioecological transformation will not succeed without prohibition and restriction.

»One of Lepenies’s strengths lies in the manner in which he exposes the strategies and cliché phrases of liberal-conservative or even social-democratic politicians, academics and editorial writers. He shows how the large-scale advertising campaign of the sellers and profiteers of neoliberalism has contributed to the weakening of politics and the community.« Peter Unfried, taz. die tageszeitung

»Not even the financial crisis of 2008 or the current pandemic have succeeded in banishing the idea of an illegitimately intervening state from our realm for good ... It is precisely this highly ideological basic structure that needs to be cracked open in order to implement upcoming changes ... [Philipp Lepenies] has created an important foundation for this with his thoroughly researched yet easily readable book ...« Beate Willms, taz FUTURZWEI