{"title":"Introduction: Axel Honneth’s “The Working Sovereign”","authors":"C. Schmidt, Rahel Jaeggi, R. Celikates","doi":"10.1177/1468795x231180424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795x231180424","url":null,"abstract":"In his 2021 Walter Benjamin Lectures, Axel Honneth questioned the displacement of work from the center of contemporary political theories. This special issue collects an interview with Axel Honneth on central theses of his lectures and a number of commentaries that discuss issues like Honneth’s extended definition of work, his inclusion of long neglected care activities in the definition of work, the requirements for non-detrimental, meaningful work, Honneth’s criticism of contemporary trends in the division of labor, as well as his rejection of traditional critiques of working relations and conditions such as above all the critique of alienation. The special issue closes with a rejoinder by Axel Honneth.","PeriodicalId":44864,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Classical Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48934298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Working Sovereign: A conversation with Axel Honneth","authors":"R. Celikates, A. Honneth, Rahel Jaeggi","doi":"10.1177/1468795X231170980","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X231170980","url":null,"abstract":"In the summer of 2021, Axel Honneth was invited by the Centre for Social Critique Berlin to give the Walter Benjamin Lectures. The lectures have now been published in German under the title Der arbeitende Souverän (The Working Sovereign). In a conversation with the directors of the Centre for Social Critique, Rahel Jaeggi and Robin Celikates, Axel Honneth explains why he believes a political theory of labor is necessary, how the world of work has changed, and what opportunities and risks this entails for democratization processes.","PeriodicalId":44864,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Classical Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41892847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Abolishing division of labour or making it better?","authors":"E. Renault","doi":"10.1177/1468795X231170365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X231170365","url":null,"abstract":"In some of his latest publications, Honneth claims that what is problematic with the contemporary forms of division of labour is that they are not in tune with what the division of labour should be. He endorse a Hegelian-Durkheimian conception of a division of labour as a source of social recognition and solidarity and therefore rejects Marx’s assumption that the division of labour is problematic as such, and therefore should be abolished. In a first step, this article reconstructs Honneth’s central argument. In a second step, it distinguishes different meanings of the very notion of the division of labour. In a third step, it raises two sets of questions: Would it be possible, and legitimate, to try to improve all dimensions of the division of labour, or would a normative conception of the division of labour imply that some of them should be abolished? Should we not use two distinct concepts of division of labour rather that only one?","PeriodicalId":44864,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Classical Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45354755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Taking Care Seriously: Gendering Honneth’s The Working Sovereign – A Normative Theory of work","authors":"Christine Wimbauer","doi":"10.1177/1468795X231170827","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X231170827","url":null,"abstract":"Axel Honneth’s latest work The Working Sovereign. A Normative Theory of Work states that the democratization of work and employees’ experience of democracy at work are important prerequisites for creating and promoting democracy as well as social and political participation. According to Honneth, various aspects of ‘good work’ are essential for such a democratization of work. Undoubtedly working conditions must be improved and it is an inestimable merit of Axel Honneth’s book to demand this so clearly. Beyond this fundamental agreement, I would, however, take a broader view of some details and draw some conclusions differently. First, it is difficult to derive the improvements needed in the world of work from a theory of democracy alone as its limited scope hides other urgent problems. Second, any approach might prove short-sighted if the democratization of work thesis only refers to wage labour or, at best, to paid care work. Rather, a comprehensive concept of care/work must be the starting point. On a surface level, Honneth’s conception of work is broad and gender-sensitive. However, Honneth does not follow this to its logical conclusion and fails to provide a systematic role to his conception of work when deriving his claims in the final chapters of his book. Rather, this broad conception of work is lost more or less inconspicuously behind a latent androcentrism. This has far-reaching consequences: from a comprehensive, gender-theoretical perspective, it would have been necessary to demand the ‘democratization of care/work’ such that gender and specifically women, who are the main care providers and perform this work largely unpaid and invisibly, finally are also included. What is more, in Honneth’s analysis the same elision applies to other intersectional categories, as race, migration, citizenship and ability are all lost from view in Honneth’s nation-state-based, homogeneous and harmonious concept of democratization. In sum, in my critical engagement with Honneth’s new text I will show that while he very clearly points out the indispensable need for better working conditions, he is blind to gender and care work.","PeriodicalId":44864,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Classical Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47368000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What we may expect from work","authors":"Christian Schmidt","doi":"10.1177/1468795X231170762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X231170762","url":null,"abstract":"In his critique of contemporary working conditions, Axel Honneth rejects Marx’s concept of alienation for three main reasons: (1) The concept is allegedly tied to industrial labor as the standard model of work. (2) The ideal of unalienated labor seems to be too demanding in its aspiration to the full development of all human potential. (3) The level of analysis is so fundamental that the critique loses the “ends in view,” that is, the feasible almerioation of actual working conditions. I argue that these three challenges can be met by a more charitable reading of Marx. Moreover, alienation helps us to identify structural reasons for the failure of approaches to improve working conditions in recent decades and provides analytical tools for the current crises of democracy.","PeriodicalId":44864,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Classical Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43685698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The contribution of meaningfulness to the work of democratic will formation","authors":"Dr Ruth Yeoman","doi":"10.1177/1468795X231170712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X231170712","url":null,"abstract":"A response to Axel Honneth’s 2021 Walter-Benjamin Lectures on ‘The Working Sovereign’","PeriodicalId":44864,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Classical Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48655585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Edward Granter, Graeme Gilloch, Jeremy Aroles, Ross Abbinnett
{"title":"Introduction: Celebrating the life and work of André Gorz","authors":"Edward Granter, Graeme Gilloch, Jeremy Aroles, Ross Abbinnett","doi":"10.1177/1468795X231170763","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X231170763","url":null,"abstract":"In this introduction, we thank those who supported and contributed to our special issue of Classical Sociology, on the work and life of André Gorz. We then provide a sketch of Gorz’s place in intellectual history. Along the way, we explain some of our motivations for editing the special issue, then move on to a discussion of our contributors’ papers. We end with a reiteration of our goals for the issue, and with thanks once more to those who helped make it happen.","PeriodicalId":44864,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Classical Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44530155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Crisis and Utopia: André Gorz and the end of work","authors":"Edward Granter, Jeremy Aroles","doi":"10.1177/1468795X231170368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X231170368","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we are concerned with the role of André Gorz in the development of the concept of the end of work. We draw from Gorz’s stance on automation, utopia, capitalism and labour to reflect on the directions of the end of work debate, leaning towards Gorz’s invitation to repoliticize the end of work. While Gorz’s writings predate the rise of the gig economy, he presaged many of the developments we are currently witnessing. Even if the end of work is not in sight, we argue that it remains nonetheless a useful concept to help us cultivate possibilities and a sense of difference. Finally, it is our intention to highlight that while Gorz’s work received less attention than other scholars broadly associated with critical examinations of capitalism, his scholarship holds the potential to reinvigorate, or rejuvenate, debates pertaining to the end of work as well as the future of work.","PeriodicalId":44864,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Classical Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42333650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The contributions of the analysis of alienation to the social critique of labour in neoliberal capitalism","authors":"Nial Tekin","doi":"10.1177/1468795X231170398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X231170398","url":null,"abstract":"From a sociological perspective, this paper attempts to contribute to the discussion on work and democracy led by Axel Honneth. Through Honneth’s analyses, this text focuses particularly on the concept of alienation. The central argument is that the analysis of alienation can provide critical insights into the limitations of democratic practices within contemporary organizations of work. The paper draws on empirical and theoretical debates in sociology to demonstrate the concept of alienation as a lens for analysing the complex relationships between labour and democracy.","PeriodicalId":44864,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Classical Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43297820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}