Socialism as an Organic Democratic Form of Life: On Axel Honneth’s Project of a Renewal of Socialism Based on Social Freedom

ABSTRACT

The article addresses Axel Honneth’s project of renewing the idea of ⁣⁣socialism based on the concept of social freedom. At first, it emphasises the historical and philosophical singularity of this project within the tradition of critical theory, and then the political potentials represented by the concept of social freedom, especially concerning the openness to several forms of social conflict and the possibility of democratising intimacy. The article argues, however, that Honneth’s proposal to conceive a socialist society as an organic whole undermines rather than enhances the attempt to revitalise socialism as democracy. Aimed at the functions of social integration, the organistic conception of society seeks harmony between the different social spheres (personal relations, economic structures, and political public sphere), which entails the risk of neglecting the intrinsic link between politics and conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Axel Honneth
• critical theory
• social freedom
• socialism
• form of life

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Simone Fernandes for all suggestions and comments on the first version of this article and all members of the Philosophy and Critical Theory Studies Group at the University of São Paulo for the discussions on Honneth’s conception of socialism.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Already in “Traditional and Critical Theory,” Horkheimer claims the independence of the critical theorist in regard to worker’s associations (Horkheimer [1937] 2002, 240–243). Thereby the unity of theory and praxis proposed from Marx to Lukács became lastingly problematic in critical theory (see Nobre 2015, 160).

2 The most influent figure in the postwar time, Theodor W. Adorno, rarely addressed socialist ideals and workers’ movements. Accordingly, his works seek to explore some potentials of individual resistance and immanent critique against the tendencies of total integration in late-capitalist society, which for him were similar to those of “real” socialism. In this context, I leave aside the problematic issue on the political pressures concerning the divided Germany as well as the McCarthyism in the USA.

3 A hasty representation of the differences between Habermas’s and Marcuse’s proposals would consist in appealing to the opposition “Reform vs. Revolution” produced during the Second International. Although both authors make use of these terms, it is clear that their historical meaning has been vastly modified. In a certain way, this traditional scheme is not accurate enough for grasping the meaning of new socialist ideas by Habermas and Marcuse. Something similar applies to Honneth’s case, as it must be clear when he speaks of the “socialist experimentalism.”

4 This alternative is not so much a different road to socialism as an emergence of different goals and values, different aspirations in the men and women who resist and deny the massive exploitative power of corporate capitalism even in its most comfortable and liberal realisations. The “Great Refusal” takes a variety of forms (Marcuse 1969, vii).

5 On the other hand, Habermas contradicts his own radical-democratic standpoint when assuming that the relatively self-regulated economic system like the market is more appropriate to the modern complexes societies (Habermas 1990, 16–17).

6 In the following, I cannot discuss Eleonora Piromalli’s interpretation that there would be a considerable difference in the meaning of social freedom between Freedom’s Right and The Idea of Socialism, since the latter would have tied too close freedom and fraternity, while the former involves a more institutional and pluralistic account and thus would be more opened for the social conflicts (see Piromalli 2017). It is very difficult to establish the extent to which Honneth synthesises solidarity and fraternity when he is reconstructing the early socialism (see Honneth’s answer to Pirolalli [2019, 701]). In my view, as I will address in the last section, the organistic version for the democratic form of life is the most problematic point regarding the potential for conflicts.

7 It is not possible to discuss here the difficult issue about the aetiology of all these pathological phenomena. If it is true that Honneth seems to stress the effects of freedom’s conceptions on intersubjective relations, like in Suffering of Indeterminacy, proposing a type of therapy based on the effectiveness of mutal recognition, other works, as “Recognition as Ideology,” “Paradoxes of Capitalism” (Honneth and Hartmann 2006) and Freedom’s Right, came to insist in the social interconnection of these conceptions with the modern, capitalist conditions, like the form of law and the neoliberal movements. Under the structural point of view, Honneth adopts Zurn’s interpretation, according to which pathologies are second-order disorders that stop individuals from grasping the intersubjective fundaments of their first-order practices and beliefs (Zurn 2015, 95–111; Honneth 2014, 86).

8 About the loss of the significance of social conflict throughout Honneth’s work, see Melo (2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luiz Repa

Luiz Repa is Associate Professor of political philosophy and theory of human sciences at the University of São Paulo, and a researcher at the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development. He recently coordinated the joint Humboldt-USP project “Critical Theory Goes Global.” He has written about the connections between method and politics in critical theory, especially concerning the method of reconstruction and immanent critique. He has published books and articles on Habermas, Honneth, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Hegel.