THE WORKING SOVEREIGN

German ethicist and humanist philosopher Honneth turns his attention to the world of work—and all its indignities.

Most people in a given society are workers, observes Honneth in this accessible work of political philosophy, and it is “one of the major deficiencies of almost all theories of democracy” that this fact is not of central importance. Workers can be made the backbone of civil society by creating dignified conditions that promote cooperative, social behavior; if poorly run, a society will instead produce egocentric, us-against-them citizens. That’s precisely what we have, Honneth argues, because workers lack the freedom, the opportunity, and the incentive to contribute to “societal prosperity.” Whereas the Hegelian ideal of work produces independence and honor, the reality in capitalist societies is very different: workers are oppressed not just by the usual machinations of the bosses but also by such things as the fragile gig economy of the present, the suzerainty of finance and speculative capital, and the outsourcing of labor “to hugely underpaid remote workers all over the globe.” Add to that companies that break unions, that time workers’ bathroom breaks, and that view employees as fungible, and you have no chance of creating a society in which, as Adam Smith wished, “workers can fully understand the laws, accept them on rational grounds and embrace their meaning.” In short, workers are present, but they are not actors in a precarious society that does not value them. There are remedies, Honneth notes: one can reform capitalism, or one can fetter capitalism with laws and labor market reforms. He holds that a middle way between the two is “the moral order of the day,” one that contributes to human dignity and that allows workers a voice in the conditions of their labor.

A thoughtfully constructed argument in favor of work worth doing, and of workers treated as human beings.