Abstract
Along with the partial rehabilitation of Karl Marx in global academia, we have witnessed in recent years a renewed interest in socialism as a political idea and aspiration. Yet these two trends have not always been in complete harmony. Indeed, there have been attempts to take socialism back from Marxists who, in the words of Peter Beilharz, narrowed its meaning and thus ‘in a sense abducted socialism’. Before Marxism and European communism, socialism was popular even among the middle classes and widely understood as a localized practice centred on fresh ideas of ‘cooperation’ and ‘self-management’ (Beilharz, 2009: 2).
Similarly, Axel Honneth does his best to cleanse the language of socialism of its connotations of authoritarianism and ‘industrialism’. In his small new book The Idea of Socialism, hastily translated by Joseph Ganahl, the German philosopher who now teaches at Columbia University, he does three things. First, he projects his own concept of ‘social freedom’, which he introduced in his previous book, Freedom’s Right, back into the history of socialist political thought, claiming that this concept has always been at the heart of socialism. Second, he rejects much of socialist thought and practice for not having lived up to the idea of social freedom. And third, he tries to retrieve the idea of socialism for our present times. This triple movement of retrojection, rejection and retrieval makes for an interesting read, although in my mind only the first two steps are (more or less) convincing. In what follows, I will look at each of these steps in turn, before I will question some of the claims that are implicit in Honneth’s neo-socialism.
Let’s start with the attempt to project the concept of social freedom back into the history of socialist political thought. ‘Social freedom’, Honneth wrote in Freedom’s Right, is the kind of freedom which, unlike ‘negative’ and ‘reflexive’ freedom, is grounded in mutual recognition. Social freedom can only be made real by an agent’s relationship to others. Honneth claims that such a conception of freedom can already be found in the writings of early socialists. According to him, these writers and activists were normative thinkers who made two moral demands: first, for fully realizing the already widely accepted principles of the French Revolution – liberty, equality and fraternity – and, second, for bringing these principles into greater harmony with each other by resolving the ‘contradiction’ (p. 12) between the ways in which ‘liberty’ and ‘fraternity’, or solidarity, have been institutionalized in capitalist democracies. French libertarian socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his compatriot Louis Blanc are presented by Honneth as forerunners of his own social philosophy of freedom through mutual recognition. Both have attempted to re-interpret the concept of freedom in such a way as to make it compatible with an ethic of solidarity. Freedom, writes Proudhon in his Confessions of a Revolutionary, is not a ‘limitation’, but an ‘aid’ to the freedom of others (p. 14).
Honneth also discovers numerous, often surprisingly contemporary-sounding calls for social experiments that would allow people to experience freedom not simply as the absence of obstacles to the satisfaction of their own, purely egocentric needs, but as personal fulfilment through reciprocal social relations. Robert Owen, for example, one of the founders of the cooperative movement and an early advocate of garden cities, believed that only through the ‘experience of working for one another’ in cooperative projects would people be educated to feel and to practice ‘mutual benevolence’ (p. 10) regardless of their race, sex or religion. Honneth could also have referred to Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, first published in 1902, which has influenced modern socialists, but even more so representatives of European Christian Democracy such as Ludwig Erhart in post-war West Germany.
In sum, Chapter 1 gives readers a glimpse of the ideas developed by half-forgotten socialist writers such as Owen or Proudhon. This is interesting, but it’s interesting in the way life-sized reconstructions of woolly mammoths in a natural history museum are interesting. At the end of Chapter 1 it is not yet clear how Honneth wishes to breathe new life into those old socialist ideas about the value of cooperation, reciprocity and fraternity.
The retrojection of the idea of social freedom into the history of socialist thought is followed by a rejection of socialism as a political ideology. In Chapter 2 Honneth notes that socialism has lost its appeal as a source of universal hope, and he asks why this is the case. Given that this is a book in defence of the idea of socialism, it is amazing how effectively its author pulls to pieces most of what has been written by socialist thinkers. One important critique is that modern socialists, following Saint-Simon, were oblivious of the political consequences of civil rights, confined the project of a new society to the reorganization of the economic sphere, and often dismissed individual rights altogether (pp. 34, 48). What is worse is that socialists either believed in the myth of a revolutionary subject (p. 42) or in law-like progress towards social freedom (pp. 43–4). Both beliefs suggest that civil liberties are of little use. If progress happens as a result of automatic societal evolution or if a revolutionary subject is taken for granted, there is no need for open communication and consensus-building among a heterogeneous public. A final dead-end was reached with the ‘self-referential closure’ (p. 39; translation corrected) of socialist thought in the course of the 20th century, for which Honneth blames not only Marxism in general but Marx himself.
When he denounces socialism as a product of the ‘spirit and culture of industrialism’, Honneth is at his most convincing. Not only Marxism but also social democracy was, until recently, completely under the spell of this particular spirit and culture. There are many iconic instances of this spirit from Honneth’s native Germany. In the 1960s, the Social Democrat Georg Leber, a prominent former minister for transportation, claimed, for example, that in order to realize freedom for everyone, ‘no citizen should live more than 20 kilometres away from the next highway connection’. Little wonder that a socialism inspired by such kinds of ideals fell into disrepute.
However, Honneth is not content with keeping the ashes but insists on poking the fire. This is his third step, presented in Chapters 3 and 4. The rejection of 20th-century socialist thought is followed by the retrieval of its presumed central ‘idea’, which happens to coincide with Honneth’s own idea of social freedom. However, to make this operation successful, he has to replace key assumptions of historical socialism with new ones. In launching his unlikely defence of socialism, he often speaks of the need for a replacement or ‘substitute [Ersatz]’ for the older policies and ideas of socialists (pp. 52, 62, 105). Chapter 3 states that substitutes have to found in particular for the defunct labour movement, for the belief in law-like progress, and for the trust in the economy as the main driver of social progress. But if there is indeed a need for all these substitutions, we may wonder why Honneth doesn’t search for a substitute for socialism itself. The answer is, as I have pointed out, that he believes that the ideational core of socialism is social freedom which is equivalent to mutual recognition. Honneth’s defence of socialism rests on the claim that social freedom is both possible and desirable. This is difficult to dispute. What can be disputed, however, are three implicit claims made by Honneth.
First, the equivalence of socialism and social freedom is far from self-evident. If social freedom means that subjects in pursuing their goals often have to rely on ‘being supplemented by other subjects’ (Honneth, 2014: 50), many institutions – from open markets to the welfare state and voluntary associations – can be described as expressions of social freedom. This is, in fact, what Honneth argues in Freedom’s Right. What is not completely clear is why he feels the need to revive the withered spectre of socialism in order to emphasize the idea of the interdependence of subjects. Perhaps for the same reason Oscar Wilde used ‘socialism’ as a symbolic term to argue both against ‘false’ individualism and in favour of a kind of individualism that is compatible with the aim of ‘substituting cooperation for competition’ (Wilde, 1970: 257).
Second, I find Honneth’s very preference for social freedom over other, presumably lesser kinds of freedom puzzling. Honneth is surprisingly explicit in characterizing social freedom as somewhat more desirable or valuable than its allegedly less worthy precursors, negative freedom and reflexive freedom. The way he phrases his preference is sometimes dangerously close to the ‘ideologies of solidarity’ criticized by Judith Shklar (1998: 18). He writes, for example, that the focus of our political efforts should be ‘on expanding social rather than individual freedoms’ (p. 53; emphasis added), as if these two freedoms were in a relationship of hierarchy and mutual exclusion. He also mentions people who pursue their private interests ‘under the guise of individual freedom’ and in violation of the ‘promise of solidarity’ (p. 66), but not the many instances where falsely general interests are pursued under the guise of solidarity.
Third, the feasibility of social freedom as an organizing principle of modern society is questionable. Social freedom in smaller communities, cooperatives and intimate relationships is definitely real and desirable, but I doubt whether this principle can be applied to modern society as a whole, in particular given Honneth’s emphasis – against G.A. Cohen – on the ‘different spheres’ (p. 132, note 20) into which modern societies are divided. It is worth noting that Honneth has developed his concept of social freedom, following Hegel, on the model of romantic love (Honneth, 2014: 45–6). By unrealistically calling for modern society to be re-organized in light of the principle of a love-like social freedom he returns to a utopian brand of socialism. Contemporary society is far too heterogeneous and fractured to allow for a complete transformation into a harmonious society in which all tensions between freedom, equality and solidarity have been resolved for good. Honneth ends his book with the following sentence: ‘Only if all members of society can satisfy the needs they share with others – physical and emotional intimacy, economic independence and political self-determination – by relying on the sympathy [Anteilnahme] and support [Mithilfe] of their partners in interaction will our society become social in the full sense of the term’ (pp. 107–8). However, it is doubtful whether this is a realistic political project. In contemporary society, we certainly need to make more room for people who live and work for each other, but there is also a growing need to accept the empirical reality of many diverse people simply living alongside each other, in a spirit of mutual respect but without much interest in, or sympathy for one another.