Review: Axel Honneth’s “The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal”

“While this may be a fair criticism of socialist intellectuals, it isn’t obvious to me that all socialists were as myopically economistic as Honneth suggests.”

Introduction

Once thought to be a relic, there is no doubt that socialism has been making a comeback recently. For the first time in many decades, a self-described democratic socialist has initiated a major campaign for the American presidency, where he has been polling competitively. A growing percentage of Americans claim that some form of socialism would be desirable. And left-wing outlets such as Current Affairs and Zero Books have seen considerable success agitating for openly socialist politics. At the same time, a large number of conservative critics have emerged bemoaning that a political ideology thought to be dead and buried has risen from the grave. The National Review summarized the development nicely in its May 2019 issue “Against Socialism” featuring a wide variety of critics:

“Socialism is back. T. S. Eliot said that, ‘there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.’ We thought our Gained Cause was having vanquished domestic socialism forevermore after the collapse of Soviet Communism in 1989. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton operated within the broad economic consensus established by Ronald Reagan, and when Republicans called Barack Obama a socialist, some on the left considered it a racially charged smear. But here we are: A self-avowed socialist nearly won the Democratic nomination in 2016 and is a serious contender this time. Another socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is the hottest thing in progressive politics today. The Green New Deal and Medicare for All are proposals for sweeping aggrandizements of government power on a scale not seen in this country since the New Deal, if ever.  Meanwhile, some on the right are raising questions about free markets, or even rejecting them.”

All this commentary belies certain fundamental questions about what socialism is, what socialists want, and socialists’ real prospects at achieving power. The term’s resurgent popularity has ensured it has been associated with everything from calls for greater democracy to anxieties about socialist authoritarian states. Socialists often point to highly successful egalitarian states such as Sweden and Norway as exemplars of the doctrine, while critics prefer to focus on failing states such as Venezuela. The post-modern conservative President insists that the United States will, “never be a socialist country,” while authors writing for the Jacobin claim socialists have always played a key role in making the country a fairer and more prosperous place. Into this fray have stepped a number of commentators with books, such as the forthcoming Why You Should Be A Socialist by Nathan J. Robinson and Bhaskar Sunkara’s The Socialist Manifesto. Axel Honneth’s The Idea of Socialism is one of the best pieces in this genre: an accessible and intellectually engaging short book that offers both a stirring defense and a few pointed criticisms of socialism yesterday and today.