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Focus: Progress and Regression
2025 (47) Issue 2
The concept of progress may seem outdated. After all, critics of ‘progress’ have been showing how this concept not only facilitated colonial domination but also allowed placing ‘non-Western’ regions in the waiting room of history. Understandably, thus, many scholars wish to leave ‘progress’ behind. What is curious, however, is that many of these scholars would also accept the claim that liberal democratic societies are presently subject to regression. Yet what is regression if not the loss of progress? Hence, analyzing regression must draw on an understanding of what is lost, and thus, of progress. Accordingly, as long as regression remains an interpretative frame for diagnosing society, there is a need for theorizing progress.
Rahel Jaeggi has taken up this task in her latest book Progress and Regression (Harvard 2025). Based on materialist and pragmatist perspectives, she rejects the idea that progress consists in the gradual realization of an ideal and articulates progress as a second-order problem-solving capacity. This capacity, Jaeggi argues, involves an experiential accumulation process that enables societies to effectively address problems. By contrast, societies suffer from regression when, due to an experiential blockage, they pursue inadequate solutions. Morally progressive social change, on Jaeggi’s view, is therefore not simply the result of approriately structured reasoning, but depends on material conditions that lead to learning experiences.
Analyse & Kritik welcomes submissions to Jaeggi’s book as well as to the wider field of research on progress and regression. The deadline for submitting papers of 8000 words is September 1, 2025. To submit your paper, please email it as word document to one of the editors via jculp@aup.edu, leist@philos.uzh.ch, or tranow@uni-duesseldorf.de. The issue will be published by December 2025.
Focus: Democracy and work in conflict
2025 (47) Issue 1
The stability of democracies depends on the organization of work. Despite all the predictions of the \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'end of work\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\' that have repeatedly emerged in both public and academic debates since the 1960s, gainful employment remains the central point of reference for economic security, social status and personal identity for a large proportion of democratic societies. However, there are several sources of tension between democracy and the capitalist organization of work:
- While democracy is legitimized by equal citizenship rights, the capitalist sphere of work is based on unequal property titles and opportunities for prosperity;
- while the democratic ideal is based on an autonomous citizen as political sovereign, wage labor is determined by the experience of dependency and subordination;
- while in democratic discourses political interests have to be justified by referring to the common good , the capitalist world of work prizes motives of individual profit maximation.
In addition, the financialization of capitalism has led to increasing inequalities and a decoupling of wage labor and individual wealth accumulation. Precarious working conditions, which threaten economic security and social status, as well as the gradual devaluation of ‘hard work’ for economic and social participation have increased popularity of populist parties and distrust in existing democratic institutions.
The focus \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"Democracy and work in conflict\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" collects articles that address the relationship between political democracy and the capitalist world of work from normative and empirical perspectives. In doing so, it seems sensible to look at external and internal contexts:
externally, to the ways in which democratic attitudes and social participation are connected to wage labor, especially in the form of wages that guarantee economic and social security;
and internally, to ways in which the normative role of the democratic citizen as political sovereign is connected to the experience of dependency and subordination in the role of an employee. Specific questions are, for example:
- To what extent do satisfaction with democracy and commitment to democratic values depend on socio-economic conditions (level of prosperity, social security, mobility opportunities, etc.)?
- What significance does the experience of the role of an employee have on the development of a “democratic habitus,” i.e., on democratic motives and skills?
- To what extent is a democratization of the work sphere normatively desirable and practically feasible? What are models of the democratization of the sphere of work? What are the normative and practical limits of workplace democracy?