Abstract
In the first part of my essay I argue that the real issue behind Axel Honneth’s interpretation of socialism is the relationship between Marx and Hegel with the fundamental claim that Marx misunderstood Hegel and as a consequence took socialism down a path that led to a dead end. In the second section, as the title of my essay suggests, I argue that socialism, contrary to Honneth, cannot move beyond political liberalism without accommodating pluralism.
Axel Honneth’s book, The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal, represents one more attempt in the history of Critical Theory to rethink the origins of that movement in the writings of Karl Marx and the thoughts of his socialist critics and collaborators. 1 The book does two things worth noting: first, it tries to solve the riddle of what went wrong with socialism, and second, it attempts to provide through reconstructing its origins an appropriate correction to the original model. In the analysis that follows I want to think about the original argument of the book and then cast some reflections on Professor Honneth’s prospect for a solution or at least a redirection of socialism. What I find interesting about the book is the subtext that is only incidentally about socialism and really about Hegel and Marx, or to put it more precisely, about whether Marx misunderstood Hegel and consequently led socialism, which could have had a vigorous life, to a disenchanted and inglorious dead end. By so characterizing the argument of the book I am taking it with utmost seriousness because the underlying question that it raises is still of paramount importance not simply for socialism but for the future of democracy.
I
The first task of the Idea of Socialism is to explain why socialism failed. Honneth gives us three reasons: first, all socialists believed in one way or another that socialism required the overcoming of the capitalist market economy; second, all socialists believed that the possibilities for overcoming capitalism were implicit in the current structure or conditions of capitalism; third, all socialists believed that those changes were a matter of historical necessity which is to say that they were inevitable from an evolutionary perspective.
2
Of course, from our current position in the course of historical development, that is, from the perspective of the 21st century, none of these things happened. So, the question is what went wrong? For an answer to that question, it is necessary to go back to the young Marx. Professor Honneth gives an elaborate analysis of the entire group of socialists who were present when the young Karl Marx began to put pen to paper.
3
Unfortunately, we don’t have time to go through that elaborate and nuanced analysis. Instead, I want to cut to the chase and go to the portion of the text that gives us the clue to what this book on socialism is about. ‘Already in the work of Saint-Simon and his followers, socialist theory seems to shift the focus entirely from the political sphere to that of industrial production’.
4
The hint here is the term ‘political sphere’, which means that the socialists were not really interested in things like civil rights, the achievements of law and so on. As Honneth suggests a few paragraphs later, they had a ‘certain disdain for the newly gained political liberties’.
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However, it was Marx who elevates the problem of the disdain for the political to ‘an entirely new level of discussion’.
6
The text in question is Die Judenfrage, Marx’s in some ways most brilliant and in some ways most tragic early text, where he with a certain systematic delight dismisses the achievements of both the French and the American revolutions. As Honneth points out as a student of Hegel, Marx picks up the distinctions between civil society and the state which he sees as ‘subject to a separate set of principles’ that remain unreconciled.
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This, of course, is the task which Marx takes from Rosseau quoting him at length: The abstract notion of political man is well formulated by Rousseau: ‘Whoever dares undertake to establish a people’s institutions must feel himself capable of changing, as it were, human nature itself, of transforming each individual who, in isolation, is a complete but solitary whole, into a part of something greater than himself, from which in a sense, he derives his life and his being; [of changing man’s nature in order to strengthen it;] of substituting a limited and moral existence for the physical and independent life [with which all of us are endowed by nature]. His task, in short, is to take from a man his own powers, and to give him in exchange alien powers which he can only employ with the help of other men’.
8
liberal rights to freedom…lose all normative value in socialist society, because there would no longer be a separate sphere of common will-formation apart from the economy, which would in turn mean that individuals would no longer require a right to self-determination.
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It should come as no surprise that the author of Struggle for Recognition and Freedom’s Right would find an explanation for the sins of the son (Marx) in a certain misunderstanding of the legacy of the father (Hegel). Rather than taking the road laid down by Karl Marx, socialism should have abandoned the views of the ‘founding fathers’ and developed further ‘the idea of socialism by drawing on Hegel’s theory of freedom’. 13 Why? Because if socialism had tried to interpret Hegel’s theory of freedom, they would have found that liberal rights are not a constraint on economic freedom but a ‘necessary condition’ for economic freedom.
This is where the book gets interesting, because what Hegel did in this view and what Marx did not do but what Honneth has to do is to incorporate the history of liberalism in his analysis, and once having done that, he has to somehow explain how his view of socialism goes beyond liberalism. 14 Whatever Honneth does with liberalism he does it very carefully as is clear from the number of somewhat ambiguous but very interesting footnotes on John Rawls. But before turning to that issue, it is helpful just to sum up the Hegel/Marx/Critical Theory issue. The generalization that we can make is that if Marx had taken seriously Hegel’s notion of social freedom, he could have accounted for the various spheres of society rather than lumping them all together in a kind of totality. This seems to be the point of Honneth’s endorsement of functional differentiation (Luhmann) which he claims would be an attractive methodological choice for future socialist analysis. This is a huge claim that I cannot resolve in this short piece. Let it suffice that Honneth’s attempt from the point of view of the history of Critical Theory appears to be valid and worth studying further.
II
The second issue, socialism’s reconstruction, is of interest to me to the extent that the book tries to both incorporate liberalism and go beyond it. As I indicated a moment ago, I find this interesting because the book seems to make this attempt with a good deal of unease, discomfort and hesitation, because it is not clear to me quite how this is possible. Let it be clear, when I refer to liberalism I do not mean neo-liberalism or even comprehensive liberalism but political liberalism as John Rawls defined it in his book, Political Liberalism. I agree with Axel Honneth that Marx made a huge mistake when he so recklessly demolished the achievements of modern political theory – basic rights as they existed in French Rights of Man, and the constitutions of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire – even though it was a distinct pleasure for me to visit that territory again through Axel’s book. However, it is not clear to me how socialism even as it is presented in its reformed version is not a comprehensive doctrine. In other words, it is not clear to me how this reconstruction accommodates pluralism. I am not suggesting that we should avoid socializing democracy – democracy should provide a framework for freedom and equality for all. However, I am not convinced that this argument can go beyond liberalism without making it clear how it is possible to accommodate pluralism. If it does not accommodate pluralism, how does it go beyond liberalism? About Rawls, Honneth says the following: Rawls believes that the task of a political conception of justice is to draw the attention of the members of democratic societies to the principles of fairness to which they must consent given the ideals they already accept, thus reconciling these ides with already existing institutions.
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