Socialism as Ethics (1986).pdf

2018

The interaction between American pragmatism and German critical theory has a long history. While Horkheimer and Adorno, the founding fathers of critical theory, were quite critical of the native American philosophy they encountered when they fled from Nazi Germany, American pragmatism has had a considerable influence on both Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth-the two most prominent thinkers within critical theory's 2nd and 3rd generations. As is well known, however, their prime inspiration has been George Herbert Mead's symbolic interactionist sociology as well as Peirce's theory of signs, while James' and Dewey's thinking has played a minor role for them. However, in Axel Honneth's most recent book, The idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal, this situation has changed: here, it is Dewey's thinking on politics, and especially his The Public and its Problems, which serves as the main inspiration. As the title indicates, the main purpose of Honneth's short (145 pages) book is to renew the socialist idea, stressing its relevance for the contemporary world. As Honneth presents it, this project is motivated by the fact that even though we have witnessed the worst financial crisis since the 1930s and many people are outraged by the rising levels of inequality, socialist ideas seem to have lost their "utopian energy" and ability to inspire people to believe in a world beyond capitalism. The main question that Honneth wants to answer in his book is why this is so. Why have socialist ideas lost their "utopian energy" or "virulence"? And how can they be reconstructed in such a way that they, once again, will be able to make people "imagine a society beyond capitalism"? In the book's first part, the short 'Introduction', Honneth lays the groundwork for his own analysis by reviewing and dismissing three 'popular' explanations of why the socialist idea has lost its power

2020

One of the principal legacies of analytical Marxism has been a moralization of Marxism, for some of the most influential analytical Marxists came to endorse the view that the Marxist condemnation of capitalism and defense of socialism ultimately derive from normative ethical considerations. If we accept this new interpretation of Marx and Marxism, with its emphasis on the moral foundations of Marxist doctrine, we are forced to reconsider the relationship between Marxism and another socialist tradition for which moral commitments are also fundamental, namely ethical socialism. If our reconsideration of this relationship avoids common misconceptions about ethical socialism (such as the idea that it implies reformism, or that it is identical to “utopian socialism”), we find that the dichotomy between ethical socialism and Marxist socialism proves untenable, at least in the terms in which it has usually been formulated.

This paper argues that the events in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union force us to conduct a deep re-examination of the fundamental categories of Marxian theory to see whether in fact they stand the test of reality. It attempts to itemize preconditions for any such socialism or communism and isolate the conditions which, in the author's opinion, cannot be fulfilled. Based on that reexamination it argues that the classical Marxian vision of socialism or communism is no longer viable. Having made that critique, it considers alternatives to capitalism and argues that for the foreseeable future there is no viable alternative to the global market economy, although there are some very important and meaningful choices to be made for any society as it integrates into the global economy.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017

Marxists have viewed the task of socialism as the elimination of exploitation, defined in the Marxian manner in terms the excess of labor expended over of labor commanded. I argue that the concept of Marxian exploitation commits both type-one (false positives) and type-two (false negatives) errors as a diagnosis of distributive injustice: it misses instances of distributive injustice because they do not involve exploitation, and it calls some economic relations characterized by exploitation unjust when they are not. The most important reformulators of Marx's concept of socialism, which implicitly or explicitly attempt to correct the Marxian errors, are Oscar Lange,

2012

In 2008 the 40th anniversary of that iconic year, 1968, was celebrated in the media in relation to student uprisings and cultural revolts, largely neglecting the very significant movements of workers and peasants who were challenging power structures around the world at that time. This omission reflects the failures of socialism in the twentieth century, which are explored in this essay. Beginning from a more complete picture of 1968, the essay examines the history of socialism, identifying the main sources of failure in its theory and practice, in particular that of the revolutionary left. If the failure lies in the elite character of socialist politics and its focus on distribution rather than production, it is to be remedied by a firm focus on the politics of the workplace and the goal of substantive equality. The concluding section reviews the prospects for such an alternative in the current circumstances of global crisis.

Monthly Review, 2020

Any serious treatment of the renewal of socialism today must begin with capitalism's creative destruction of the bases of all social existence. Since the late 1980s, the world has been engulfed in an epoch of catastrophe capitalism, manifested today in the convergence of (1) the planetary ecological crisis, (2) the global epidemiological crisis, and (3) the unending world economic crisis. Added to this are the main features of today's "empire of chaos," including the extreme system of imperialist exploitation unleashed by global commodity chains; the demise of the relatively stable liberal-democratic state with the rise of neoliberalism and neofascism; and the emergence of a new age of global hegemonic instability accompanied by increased dangers of unlimited war.

2021

Andrei Znamenski argues that socialism arose out of activities of secularized apocalyptic sects, the Enlightenment tradition, and dislocations produced by the Industrial Revolution. He examines how, by the 1850s, Marx and Engels made the socialist creed “scientific” by linking it to “history laws” and inventing the proletariat—the “chosen people” that were to redeem the world from oppression. Focusing on the fractions between social democracy and communism, Znamenski explores why, historically, socialism became associated with social engineering and centralized planning. He explains the rise of the New Left in the 1960s and its role in fostering the cultural left that came to privilege race and identity over class. Exploring the global retreat of the left in the 1980s–1990s and the “great neoliberalism scare,” Znamenski also analyzes the subsequent renaissance of socialism in wake of the 2007–2008 crisis

Axel Honneth’s (2017) The Idea of Socialism is a timely reflection on a puzzling state of affairs: Perhaps at no time in the past several decades have so many sensed that there is something terribly wrong with global capitalism—from mounting inequalities to runaway climate change—and yet rarely has the resolve to think through workable alternatives to the global capitalist order been weaker. But the “sudden decline in utopian energy” (p. 2), or withering away of the millenarian impulse, is perhaps not so difficult to explain. As Honneth recognizes, it is incredibly hard to re-engineer vastly complex, mutually interdependent systems of political governance, economic production, and sociocultural reproduction—perhaps so difficult that the very idea of fashioning ideological blueprints for the refabricating of the world has itself grown outmoded.

Logos, 2002