Another idea of socialism, through Axel Honneth's conception of democracy

Abstract

This work dialogues with Axel Honneth’s problematization around social freedom, a notion on which he bases his conception of democratic ethics. At the same time, in this one, he inscribes his proposal to renew the idea of ​​socialism. Accounting for the contributions but, also, the deficiencies of the Honnethian approach will allow this paper to outline another idea of ​​socialism and, with it, the path towards the democratization of social relations. This is the main objective pursued here. To reach it, we will review, on the one hand, the normative claim of the Honnethian theory, pointing out how it collides with constitutive elements of democratic sociability. On the other hand, we study the characterization of the economic and opinion-forming spheres, which will imply discussing the relationship between the logic of the market and that of the public. Finally, an idea of ​​socialism is proposed, conceived as the democratic alternative to a context marked by the appearance that “there is no alternative” (TINA).