Moral Socialism and Liberal Citizenship

The current crisis of liberal democracy has led to a reconsideration of the idea of socialism. This article seeks to critically compare three different approaches to socialism, all of which draw on specifically moral criteria. The first is a form of liberal socialism that has a long history in critical theory and has most recently been re-imagined by Axel Honneth through a theory of recognition. The second is a conservative version of socialism, which encourages citizens to return to native traditions that can restrain the destructive individualism of liberalism. Finally, I look at a more materialist version of socialism that can be associated with the writing of Marx. In the concluding section, I argue that the return to a materialist vision of moral socialism is long overdue; this is especially the case in the context of the impoverished cultural life of neoliberal capitalism, and the ongoing ecological crisis.