José Filipe Silva & Alejandro Lorite Escorihuela (eds) 2013 Dictatorship of Failure: The Discourse of Democratic Failure in the Current European Crisis Studies across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences 14 Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies 1–25. The Dictatorship of Failure On the Economics and Politics of Discipline José Filipe Silva Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies Alejandro Lorite Escorihuela American University of Cairo When is it polite to let go someone’s arm after you grab it? (Carson 1998, 64) The scholar and his science are incorporated into the apparatus of society; his achievements are a factor in the conservation and continuous renewal of the existing state of affairs, no matter what fne names he gives to what he does. (Horkheimer 1972, 196) I The Undiscipline of Democracy The known adage according to which a crisis is a terrible thing to waste has been suggested as a possible perspective on the current European crisis. The exact meaning of the expression need not concern us here, except as an important reminder of the political opportunity the current European sovereign debt crisis presents. If we were able to introduce into the debate about the economic remedies to the crisis the question of the kind of society in which we want to live, then the crisis and its resolution would not necessarily look in the end like a complete waste and a terrible failure. As it happens, the old political, social, and economic models of organization of European societies are increasingly being threatened by the failure of political agents to respond to the degradation of the economic environment - not to mention the failure of some economic agents to acknowledge the environment as also political. The need to contain costs continues to drain resources from traditional state supported functions, while at the same time these functions are increasingly