[D66] Axel Honneth at Humboldt University

[J.N.]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/07/11/honn-j11.html

Axel Honneth at Humboldt University: A socialism that is nothing of the sort
By Peter Schwarz
11 July 2016

A meeting on “The relevance of socialism today” took place at Berlin’s
Humboldt University on July 5. On the podium were two philosophy
professors, Axel Honneth and Christoph Menke, and two politicians,
Gesine Schwan (Social Democratic Party) and Sahra Wagenknecht (Left Party).

The event centred on the presentation of The Idea of Socialism, a book
by Axel Honneth, published in 2015. Honneth (66) is the director of the
Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt. He is, in other words, the
official head of the “Frankfurt School.”

The University’s auditorium was packed, with around 800 people in
attendance. But all those who had come to hear a contribution on the
evening’s official subject, “the relevance of socialism today,” were to
be bitterly disappointed.

The contributions were so far removed from social reality that at times
they assumed comical dimensions. A playwright seeking to convey the
aloofness, class prejudice and arrogance of a German professor could not
have come up with a more accurate depiction.

Honneth began by insisting that his book was “a metapolitical essay.” He
was trying neither to place himself or socialism in the context of
today’s conflicts, nor to review the history of the socialist movement
up to its present stage, thereby gaining insights into its possible future.

Instead, what followed was a discussion about “normative ideas,” which
carefully avoided drawing any connection to actually existing events or
developments. The current historic levels of social inequality were not
mentioned. Nor were the global financial crisis, the break-up of the
European Union or the growing danger of war. An uninformed observer
would have concluded that socialism arises not from the class struggle
within society, but from disputes over “normative ideas” in the heads of
German professors.

The discussion offered Schwan and Wagenknecht the opportunity to paint
their own parties’ reactionary politics in the rosiest of colors. After
all, when the SPD implemented its Agenda 2010 social welfare cuts and
the Left Party decimated public services in the state of Berlin, they
were both putting into practice the normative idea of “democratic
socialism.” Schwan, herself a philosophy professor and a member of the
SPD’s basic values commission, is well acquainted with this form of
doubletalk.

The metaphysical and abstract character of the discussion was not,
however, simply the result of academic estrangement from the world.
Whenever he attacked Marxism, Honneth became concrete. He regards
anything related to the class struggle, the working class or the
abolition of capitalism as a horrifying prospect.

In his contribution, as in his book, Honneth referred to three
conceptions from which socialism had to be liberated: the idea of the
proletariat as the revolutionary subject; the idea that progress
develops out of a law-governed process; and the idea that economy, i.e.
property relations, must be changed.

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, the founders of the Frankfurt School,
had earlier rejected the class struggle and the working class. In the
aftermath of the Second World War, they introduced into the Frankfurt
School the ideology of corporatism, that is, institutionalised class
collaboration, directed against communism and revolution. Social
improvements and wage increases during that period gave to this type of
politics a certain degree of plausibility.

By the time Jürgen Habermas became the Frankfurt School’s leading
representative, the period of social reforms had already ended. He
became a propagandist for “constitutional patriotism” and the regulation
of social conflicts through “communicative action.”

But today, the democratic mechanisms that Habermas idealized are
breaking down under the pressure of social contradictions. Class
tensions are once again erupting to the surface. That is why the
speakers were unable to base themselves on the realities of social life
in the course of their pseudo-intellectual discussion. On the contrary,
they were compelled to avoid any reference to the real world as they
advanced their reactionary theories.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality, which has four
representatives in the student parliament at Humboldt University,
explained its attitude to Honneth’s book in a leaflet (see below) that
was distributed to the audience and which met with great interest. One
student told the IYSSE after the meeting that the leaflet was “the only
interesting thing about the evening.”

Four Theses on Axel Honneth’s The Idea of Socialism

1. The IYSSE student club at Humboldt University welcomes a discussion
on the relevance of socialism today. The urgency of this question arises
from the deep crisis of capitalism. Twenty-five years after the collapse
of the Soviet Union, all of the unresolved questions of the twentieth
century are re-emerging. Social inequality has swelled to an
unprecedented extent since the financial crisis of 2008, the European
Union is disintegrating, militarism and nationalism are on the rise
everywhere, and the danger of a third world war grows as the major
powers rearm. Social opposition is on the rise all over the world. Under
these conditions, the perspective of socialism as founded by Marx and
Engels—an international movement of workers for an equal society and a
democratically planned economy—takes on decisive significance.

Honneth’s book is explicitly directed against such a perspective and
provides a defence of capitalism. He mentions neither the social attacks
of the last 25 years, nor the danger of war, nor the growth of
nationalism. He gives no serious consideration to the idea of socialism
as it historically developed, but juggles entirely abstract ideas and
concepts. His book claims to be an academic study and avoids all
concrete political questions. But in the final analysis it is a targeted
attack on Marxism and an ideological justification for the right-wing
policies of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Left Party and Syriza
in Greece.

2. Although Honneth entitled his book “The Idea of Socialism,” he
ignores the history of this idea spanning over more than 200 years. He
does not deal with the intense debates that pre-occupied generations of
socialists and that fill entire libraries. This is not just an issue of
abstract, theoretical differences; rather the different conceptions were
tested out in practice with consequences for the fate of millions.

Socialism was never simply a theory, but a living movement. Generations
of workers fought for their social and democratic rights under the
banner of socialism. When the idea of socialism gripped the masses, it
led to the greatest triumphs of human history. In 19th century Germany,
the SPD developed into the first mass socialist party. In Russia, the
workers gained power in the 1917 October Revolution. Conversely, attacks
on the materialist foundations of socialism were bound up with
catastrophic defeats of the working class.

Honneth praises Eduard Bernstein in a footnote. However, he does not
even mention in passing that Bernstein’s “revisionism,” as it was
universally called at the time, made a substantial contribution to the
historic betrayal by social democracy of its own program in 1914, when
it supported the First World War and sent millions of its supporters to
certain death in the trenches of Verdun. If this historic betrayal is
omitted, the catastrophes of German history become completely
incomprehensible. The SPD betrayal paved the way for the split in the
workers movement, the growth of National Socialism, the Second World War
and the Holocaust.

Honneth is also silent on the epic dispute between the Stalinist
bureaucracy and the Trotskyist Left Opposition in the Soviet Union,
which dealt with every aspect of the “idea of socialism,” culminated in
the physical liquidation of tens of thousands revolutionary socialists
in the Great Terror of 1937, and ultimately sealed the fate of the
Soviet Union.

3. Honneth’s historical blindness is no accident. These historical
questions are irrelevant to the Frankfurt professor because his purpose
is not to provide an appraisal of the contemporary significance of
socialism, but to attack it. At the very moment when social struggles
are breaking out all over the world and workers are defending themselves
against war and attacks on their rights, Honneth explicitly rejects a
socialism based on a movement of the working class, of the oppressed
masses. He wants to separate socialism—or what he calls socialism—from
any “social actor.” Rather, he claims, “institutional achievements”
represent the material foundation of socialism.

Honneth even denies that socialism presupposes overturning capitalist
property relations. He explicitly attacks the Marxist conception that
“the lever for producing solidarity in social relations is the reform or
revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist market economy.” In place of
the abolition of capitalism he proposes “experimental reformism” aimed
at increasing “social freedom.”

That is, Honneth wants a “socialism” without a social movement and
without revolution, preserving capitalist property and competition. He
drags up the shallow and hackneyed conceptions of social reformism,
which have proven their bankruptcy and hostility to the working class
time and time again. He advocates a “socialism” of the kind represented
by the SPD in Germany, the Socialist Party in France and Syriza in
Greece, which—in the name of “social freedom and justice”—enforces the
reactionary Hartz laws, the El Khomri law and the dictates of the troika.

In his rejection—or rather his fear—of a socialist movement of the
masses, Honneth proves himself the true intellectual heir of the
Frankfurt School. Its founders, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno,
claimed in their book Dialectic of the Enlightenment that the supposed
“authoritarian character” of workers—rather than the failure of Social
Democracy and the Stalinist leaders of the workers parties—were
responsible for the rise of Hitler. Honneth articulates the interests of
the upper middle class, which fears a mass movement against capitalism
far more than it fears capitalist reaction.

4. Honneth not only rejects an independent movement of the workers, but
also opposes every form of critical analysis of society. He accuses
Marxism of “determinism,” which leads to “attentism”—i.e. a passive
“wait-and-see attitude.” This is an intentional misrepresentation. The
real object of Honneth’s criticism is the Marxist analysis of the
law-governed character of social being.

Marxists do not hold that socialism automatically arises out of
capitalism, but that the intrinsic contradictions of capitalism place
before humanity the alternatives of “socialism or barbarism.” This
historical question of the 20th century is once again on the agenda. To
pose this question is the exact opposite of passivity. The recognition
that the class struggle is the result of the contradictions of
capitalism once again poses the central task of fighting for socialist
consciousness in the working class and building a revolutionary party,
which the Frankfurt School has opposed since its outset.