ABSTRACT
In this contribution, the concept of autopoiesis is interpreted as an element of a comprehensive neo-liberal deregulation movement in social sciences and criticised from a left-wing and state-interventionist point of view. The examples of the Labour Promotion Act and the Antitrust Law illustrate that the capitalist economy needs to be regulated, and can be regulated in an acceptable way, Luhmann's conceptualization of autopoiesis not only ignores important processes of societal de differentiation and stratification, but because of its restrictive communicative-theoretic view also leads to a misunderstanding of the material structural problems of the economic system and in the final analysis to system ontology, Luhmann's credo of evolution-theoretic laisser-faire is opposed by the idea of a political-economic “balance of power” with active state intervention.
