Taking Care Seriously: Gendering Honneth’s The Working Sovereign – A Normative Theory of work

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.

starting point. On a surface level, Honneth's conception of work is broad and gendersensitive. 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, 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.
I elaborate on this below, examining further the link between democracy and work as well as critically engaging with Honneth's definition of work. In the following section, I critically examine the book's little-explained democratic-theoretical foundation and the relation between democracy and (paid) work. In section three, I draw on Honneth's widened but still androcentric concept of work and move towards a more comprehensive and gender-sensitive concept of care/work. The starting point of this concept is the assumption that, rather than work, life has to be placed at the centre; it thus follows that the process of life's reproduction must be equally central. In section four, a brief conclusion explores some implications that flow from this encompassing concept of care/work, which mainly point towards a diverse politics of de_precarisation. In my view, the arguments in the third section are really the nub of the matter, while the second chapter provides some necessary grounding. Moreover, various aspects are interwoven with each other. Due to space constraints, I limit myself only to the central arguments (for more detailed expositions, see Wimbauer and Motakef, 2020).
Ultimately, my critical engagement with Honneth's new text shows that while he very clearly points out the indispensable need for better working conditions, his blindness to gender and care work, in particular, make his project, to my great regret, incapable of reaching the liberatory goals he claims to achieve.

Democracy, labour and the theoretical foundations of democracy
I basically agree with Axel Honneth when he states that there is a 'necessary complementary relationship between a fair division of labour and social democracy' (Honneth, 2023). 3 However, this theoretical foundation of democracy seems to be somewhat truncated, at least in the way it is presented. The overall concept is too labour-centred; for example, when 'apart from education in public schools (. . .) only social labour relations can be used as a lever to promote attitudes and orientations that are a necessary precondition for participation in the democratic formation of will' (Honneth, 2023). 4 This suggests that good, fair work needs democracy and vice versa. However, both require even more, which is why the theoretical foundation of democracy needs more elaboration. I would like to make five points here: First, antidemocratic or conspiracy narrative-supporting attitudes can also be spread by subjects who have good and democratic working conditions. Fair and democratic work alone is not a panacea against such attitudes; all levels of society are needed here.
Second, democracy does not only consist of male working citizens (as the German expression 'der arbeitende Souverän' means). There are, of course, many more bearers of democracy. On the one hand there are female sovereign citizens. On the other hand, any holistic conception of democracy also includes people who are not in the labour force: paid and unpaid carers (often so-called women), children, students, pensioners, the unemployed and unemployable, people with disabilities, people with physical and mental illnesses, people in need of care (a growing group due to the care crisis 5 and demographic change) and people who are unable to work (in view of long COVID, this is also likely to be a growing group). Political and social participation must also be possible for all these millions of people and all of them must be able to experience democratic participation if people's democratic experience is so central to social democracy.
Third, there are also many people living in (national) societies who are not part of 'the sovereign', because they are partially or completely without rights, illegalized and invisible. In view of worldwide migration movements, armed conflicts and global care chains, their number is likely to increase. They also deserve good, fair work and democratic learning experiences, even if they are not allowed or able to vote. Their dignity is also inviolable, whether they work or not.
Fourth, the fact that democracy is a central and desirable good is simply assumed in the book. There is no doubt that democracy is very important, desirable and worth protecting, nor that it is threatened in many ways. However, it is not explained why democracy should be the highest good and what might actually threaten it. Also missing are explanations of other components of democracy, such as the rule of law and of the substantive values that bind democracy and the rule of law. In Germany these latter values are, specifically, the basic and human rights, first and foremost Articles 1, 2 and 3 of the Basic Law: human dignity (Article 1); general freedom of action (Article 2); the principle of equality (Article 3) and further basic rights, including the protection of minorities, which is important in terms of democratic theory. It is precisely these fundamental rights that should first bind how work is organized and shaped. Only on this basis can work then serve democracy -especially social democracy.
This brings me to my fifth and final point: I absolutely agree, as stated at the beginning, with the demand that work should be organized fairly. However, it would have to be explained and justified in more detail why it is work and only work, that should serve as the central underpinning of democracy, leaving aside all other possibilities such as education, family, love, friends, spare time, sport, leisure, art, culture, music, literature, media, religion, voluntary work, care and others. This can be taken further: why should work not serve as the first step for other fundamental things, such as human dignity, care for one another or a sustainable, eco-social way of life?
The fact that all of these cannot be androcentrically reduced to work as paid gainful employment -nor to a slightly expanded definition including paid care work -but necessitates a broad notion of care work, is the core claim of the following and central chapter.

On the need for an encompassing and gendered concept of care/work
Axel Honneth proposes a widening of the concept of work. This is indeed an overdue project that gender research has not just been calling for but already been undertaking for decades. In the book, Honneth defines work as a 'socially necessary activity'. This concept of work offers a great advantage and is intuitively catchy. It could also comfortably incorporate all those activities that, for decades, gender research and feminist Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) or Social Reproduction Feminists 6 have demanded must be valued as work and, at least partly, warrant payment: that is, the various forms of unpaid care work or reproductive work necessary for the existence and reproduction of society. Honneth usually uses the term domestic labour. Now, the famous wages-for-housework debate (e.g. Federici, 1975) dates back to the 1970s. Although the claim is unquestionably still important, in recent years such activities have more often been analysed under other terms, such as care or reproduction work. Moreover, in the case of 'housework' or 'domestic work' it remains somewhat unclear which activities count as necessary: cooking (preparing food) and bringing up children (as future bearers of democracy, to stay in the language) seem necessary, but what about cleaning windows? And are not eating and sleeping also necessary for the reproduction of life, but can hardly be considered domestic work?
Assuming with Butler (2010) the vulnerability and dependence of human beings on others as an unavoidable part of the human condition, the term 'socially necessary' must apply to all care activities that serve social reproduction. These socially necessary activities are not only about the reproduction of labour power, the essential commodity for a capitalist economic system. Rather, it is foremost about the reproduction of life. According to Ferguson (without year), the 'production of goods and services and the production of life are part of one integrated process' -although this relation is, first, contradictory and, second, veiled capitalistic. The production of life is about various reproductive and care activities, such as bearing and raising children, caring for the sick as well as those in need of care, including parents, neighbours and friends, participation in reciprocal social exchanges with friends and acquaintances and people in the neighbourhood at large, in voluntary work and last but not least caring for oneself and other things. Most of these are thoroughly gendered activities.
But despite these advantages of the definition, there are also difficulties. I will outline only three: First, this definition cuts out some activities which have heretofore been considered work and which must also be organized fairly and democratically. After all, some of the activities currently deemed to be work can be considered socially unnecessary activities, such as the production of cigarettes, mass livestock farming (which often takes place in precarious working conditions and which is also highly problematic for animal welfare) or ties, to name just some examples. Second, however, even the definition of such activities as unnecessary is controversial; one need only ask a smoker or meat eater to encounter the opposite judgement on the social necessity of cigarettes and meat respectively. Even more controversial may be activities such as the production of genetically modified food, cars, aeroplanes, or nuclear power plants as well as the trading of shares. Necessary or not? In any case, the demand for good working conditions cannot be resolved by declaring certain activities as socially unnecessary.
A third, and the most urgent, problem arises from Honneth's answer to the question: What is socially necessary and thus the criterion for work? According to Axel Honneth, 'all labouring activities that are necessary to maintain the components of social life that are considered valuable must be considered socially necessary' (e.g. Honneth, 2023: 140). This according to Honneth cannot be determined in terms of content but only procedurally; it would have to be decided by 'the social community' (Honneth, 2023: 141), which 'shares pretty much the same ideas about what activities are necessary to preserve the elements of its culture that are jointly considered valuable' (Honneth, 2023: 141). This 'social community' would also have to decide where the 'boundary between private and community matters lies' (Honneth, 2023: 141f). 7 This assumption of a 'quite shared conviction' comprised of 'pretty much the same ideas' regarding socially necessary activities does provide an answer as to who, according to Honneth, decides on social necessity. However, this assumption appears to be highly problematic, both theoretically and empirically. Assuming a shared conviction of the social good to define which activities are socially necessary and thus what is work and what is not, suffers from three omissions. First, it does not take into account the considerable heterogeneity of plural societies, including differing ideas about the meaning of various activities. Second, this assumption is blind to the great power differences between members of different social categories. Third, it cannot take sufficient account of the manifold inequalities mapping to various intersectional categories such as gender, race, class, migration, sexuality, ability and more. Rather, what is generally accepted and institutionalized as the idea of socially necessary work is the result of social struggles, disputes and unequal power relations -an idea that played a central role in many of Axel Honneth's earlier works (e.g. Honneth, 1995).
When staking out the limits of such supposedly 'quite shared convictions', it is not only majority relations in concrete groups (i.e. numbers) that are important, but also questions of power and the structural possibilities and resources to legitimize majority opinion. It is precisely the unpaid reproductive and care work, often performed by women, that experiences massive social devaluation, non-recognition and invisibilisation in capitalist societies. This is impressively demonstrated by value-abjective approaches in Social Reproduction Theory (for an overview see, e.g. Müller, 2019). In all the studies I have conducted on the division of labour over the last 23 years, childbearing and childrearing, housework, care work and everyday management were not considered 'real' work compared to gainful employment. Men often expressed this directly, women or FLINTAs 8 rather indirectly, which impressively shows how power and inequality are intersectionally interwoven and how highly effective the capitalist 'social matrix of gainful employment' (Wimbauer and Motakef, 2020) proves to be. What is more, gendered care work is also strongly devalued in the field of paid work.
The non-recognition, invisibilisation and privatization of care is deeply rooted in the structure of hierarchical gender relations, especially in capitalist societies. According to Social Reproduction Theory, 'race and gender oppression occur capitalistically' (Ferguson, without year). Unpaid care work is thus allocated to women or FLINTAs and is supposed to be done out of love. Likewise, it is often women who do underpaid care work. In addition, migrants are also 'allowed' to do underpaid care work, in Germany, such as cleaning, child rearing, or nursing. During the pandemic, the conditions worsened to the extent that the majority of people could -at least rhetorically -agree on the need for better working conditions in the health care sector. However, little of this has translated into social reality: rhetorical upgrading of underpaid system-relevant activities like care, as was observed in Germany during the first Corona Lockdown 2020, has quickly been forgotten and nearly never amounted to much more than mere symbolic recognition. This is even more true in the area of previously unpaid care. To argue here that communities would already agree, by virtue of general consensus, that bearing children, caring for parents, children, friends or even oneself is socially necessary for the day-to-day and generational reproduction of human life and, if possible, should also be recognized materially seems rather optimistic. Obviously, under capitalist conditions, it does not seem possible to create a shared value conviction that bearing and raising children and caring for the elderly and for the sick, in other words, the production of life and caring for life, are necessary for society. This is hardly surprising, since such a 'shared value conviction' would deprive capitalism of a central pillar of its existence: the reproduction of labour power for free or at least as cheaply as possible (usually at the expense of women and/or migrants). This is necessary in order to create and skim off more surplus value.
In this sense, the assumption of a shared (labour) value conviction can be interpreted as contributing to the veiling of hierarchical and conflictual subordinations and the devaluation of care according to intersectional categories. In order for the assumption not to appear as a strategy of obfuscation, unequal gender and other unequal social relations would have to be overcome first.
The social reality in Germany and other societies, exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, is one in which gendered caring activities and the multiple burdens of carers are now verbally acknowledged, but then not valorized with all the consequences. Unfortunately, this dynamic is present just as strongly in the book. This invisibility becomes clear, to take one example, in Axel Honneth's remarks on the social division of labour. Honneth does not define this as a gender-differentiated division of labour into female-connotated care work versus male-connotated gainful employment, but instead remains within the sphere of gainful employment. This seems to fall behind the state of understanding achieved in the 1970s. After the highly inspiring and ground-breaking debate between Fraser and Honneth (2003), this cannot be due to a lack of knowledge; Nancy Fraser already impressively pointed out the gendered basis of the unequal production -reproduction division alongside the persistent inequality in recognition (Fraser and Honneth, 2003; see also Fraser, 1996Fraser, , 2016. However, this necessary and overdue inclusion of care work is undertaken by Honneth only half-heartedly via his problematic belief in the existence of a far-sighted societal majority. Yet even in its half-heartedness, this expansion is not consistently carried through to the end, as Honneth only demands an improvement of working conditions in the sense of good paid work, but not an improvement of care conditions in the sense of good care/work. However, good and democratic care work conditions would be necessary for an encompassing democratization of care/work. First, care is work according to social necessity and if care is necessary, this work must also be democratized. Second, and this is simply to argue the other way round, if democracy can only be learned in democratic working conditions, then the people who spend most of their time on care work must also experience democratic care work conditions. Finally, it is urgently necessary to open up a democratic-theoretical and social space for self-care. After all, self-care and leisure are also fundamental and essential for the existence and reproduction of (democratic) society. Honneth shifts leisure activities from the necessary to the individually pleasurable, even while himself stating that leisure and recreation are necessary to engage politically; in the end, exhausted people are often no longer able to meaningfully engage in politics. Yet the problem outstrips even political engagement, as people who are exhausted or ill due to poor working conditions or other illnesses are often also limited in other areas: in their ability to participate socially, to do voluntary work, to care for others and to care for themselves. Thus, absent leisure time and poor working conditions in any social work (paid work or care work) not only pose dangers for democracy, but also carries an extensive social and self-destructive potential (see Wimbauer, 2012;Wimbauer and Motakef, 2020). These far-reaching potential dangers show how urgently free time, leisure and self-care must become regarded as socially legitimate. Rarely in recent decades has this been more evident than in the current pandemic, in which millions of people have experienced and continue to experience severe health burdens and losses. In the face of many deaths and millions suffering from long COVID, these burdens will continue to preoccupy people and society for a long time to come.

Conclusion: Towards a comprehensive de_precarisation of care/work -And of gender
I will briefly summarize some central points and derive some conceptual and social implications.

A comprehensive and gender-sensitive concept of work
As explained above, a broader concept of work is urgently needed. This would include not only paid work but also care for others and self-care. Such a broad concept of work has been called for by gender research for decades. However, any assumption of its harmonious, consensual and reasonable communal determination appears to forget the realities of power and inequality in gendered and intersectionally-differentiated capitalist societies. In a capitalist economy, there is a strong interest in reproducing society as cheaply as possible, preferably free of charge via the labour of women, migrants and other subordinated social groups. The concept of labour, at least with regard to what is necessary for the reproduction of the social and of life, must be defined in terms of content. Otherwise, it is left to the powerful to decide what is socially necessary and what is not -up to and including questions of what life is still worth living and what kind of care capitalist society deigns to afford.
Gender relations, the gender-differentiated, hierarchical division of labour and the unpaid care work done mostly by women must be systematically taken into account, alongside other power and inequality relations and exclusions. This applies to the definition of socially necessary work, but also to the distribution of welfare state benefits as well as to ideas of how work is redesigned and distributed. This reshaping and redistribution cannot only be about the forms of gainful employment addressed by Honneth's very estimable reform proposals but must also include other types of care work.
Accordingly, much more than existing labour relations needs improvement in line with Honneth's highly important claims regarding good work. In the same manner, care work relations must also be democratized and improved in the sense of good care/work. In addition to a new organization of gainful and reproductive work, a new and egalitarian distribution of this work is necessary, as well as egalitarian relations between social spheres. This requires not least (as proposed, e.g. by Fraser, 1996 and many other feminists) an egalitarian organization of or even dissolution of unequal gender relations.

Democratizing work, but even more
Democracy is without any doubt a very important social good. Democracy or democratic elements are also central to fair and good work. Nevertheless, the yardstick of fair work cannot be democracy alone, but the standard of good work must be defined more broadly. It must be based first and foremost on the dignity and integrity of human beings. When people work in precarious, exploitative, alienating and unhealthy conditions, this certainly endangers democracy. Yet it also endangers the lives and dignity of workers -not only for male German or EU citizens who have the right to vote, but also for female persons and all genders and all over the world. It also endangers the lives and dignity of illegalized and migrant workers living in Germany -and in their respective countries of origin. Finally, such exploitation, alienation and precarity endangers society itself.

Implications: The encompassing politics of the de_precarisation of care/ work and of gender
What does this mean for the political and social design of care/work? Axel Honneth outlines an impressive series of 'democratic politics of work'. On the one hand, he would like to expand cooperatives as alternatives to market labour, which could clearly combine well with necessary socio-ecological goals. On the other hand, he calls for a general compulsory service for hard but necessary work. Although this seems very attractive at first and can promote learning experiences regarding solidarity, it is also, in part, highly problematic. Many of these jobs, especially when they involve people, require training-mediated skills as well as a high degree of reliability and motivation. Honneth's further proposals aim at improving the conditions of labour markets, which is to be highly welcomed when focussing on the sphere of employment. However, the orienting framework is at least implicitly the (male) standard employment relationship of 1970s Germany with a lifelong 40-hourper-week full-time job and the assumption of male care-lessness. But neither the care crisis nor the question of reconciliation, which is a particular challenge for women in the adult worker model, can be solved via this route. Moreover, Honneth rejects an unconditional basic income; yet, an unconditionally-secure livelihood for all seems necessary in times of expanded precarity, economic, ecologic, health and care crises. Honneth considers the idea that people, even if they are not forced to work, would nevertheless engage in and for society to be 'nothing more than the spawn of a flourishing imagination'. This cannot but ring false in the ears of all people who raise children, care for others and nurse loved ones in sickness and old age without adequate wages.
If one takes Butler's (2010) assumption of human vulnerability and dependence on others as point of departure -instead of Honneth's assumption of human inertia -then social legitimacy must inevitably be afforded to one's own vulnerability, to physical and psychological limitations and to care and self-care. These are fundamental conditions of human life. Therefore, Mona Motakef and I propose broad and gender-egalitarian politics of de_precarisation (see Wimbauer and Motakef, 2020: chapter 13). Politics of de_precarisation encompass deprecarisation of insecure conditions as much as precarisation of restrictive norms, while the underscore between them symbolizes the space for further action and for ambivalences. Such an approach decentres gainful employment and, according to an enduring feminist demand, places care and the entire life context at the centre. Unpaid working and non-working people are also part of society and democracy. They also must be able to participate socially, culturally and politically. For them, too, human dignity must be the highest guideline: they include people who perform care work, who are unemployed or unemployable, incapacitated, unable (or no longer able) to work, retired or in training, chronically ill, people with disabilities, those in need of care and many more. Ideally, these politics should not only be thought of in terms of the nation state, but globally; social-ecological standards should also be important guiding principle.
Our proposed politics of deprecarisation aim first to improve precarious working conditions, to reduce precarious employment and to redesign physically and psychologically stressful work in the sense of 'good work'. In this context, an improved reconciliation of family, self-care and gainful employment is also central. This requires life and working time models such as a 32-hour week as a new standard working time for all, lifetime working time accounts as well as regular time off and sabbaticals for further education, care and self-care.
Second, they fundamentally require comprehensive social security that is independent of the market as well as of individual market value and, thus, beyond gainful employment. What is at stake here, then, is a decommodification that enables more than just the absolute subsistence minimum and that is not means-tested. Such a decommodification is unconditional and thus not stigmatizing, but instead moves towards a dignified existence and participation for all. This is conceivable in the form of an unconditional basic income for all, based in fair financing models.
Third, they reshape the fundament of society as it must be grounded in care rather than paid work. They are therefore about a 'caring society' (Aulenbacher et al., 2015) or a 'caring democracy' (Tronto, 2013). With Aulenbacher et al. (2015: 67), we criticize the 'carelessness of capitalism', which is structurally inconsiderate and blind to the vicissitudes of life such as illness, death and other strokes of fate; indeed, indifferent to the requirements of life and of a 'good life'. Caring activities must be comprehensively upgraded and recognized financially and socially, with child-rearing and care periods also fully recognized under pension law. Working conditions in health professions and the infrastructure for care must be massively improved (see also Dowling, 2021), especially as the care crisis was extremely aggravated by the pandemic. Finally, there is an indispensable need for social and societal appreciation for and recognition of self-care.
The politics of precarisation aim to dissolve constricting norms and conditions. First, gainful employment and achievement, but also a highly consumeristic way of life, must be decentred and transcended towards a 'caring society' (Aulenbacher et al., 2015). In this way, space and time should be created for diverse care, for socially meaningful activities including care for the ecosystem, for further education, participation, friendship, leisure and even for doing nothing without worry. Second, the social normativity of coupledom should be precarised and hetero-normativity be transgressed and third, gender norms should be unsettled. In the end, this could also dissolve gender differences and the gender-differentiating division of labour and de-gender care.
At the centre of our concept of society is care: care for others, care for oneself, care for the common good, for humanity and for the environment. This also includes care for democracy, as rightly called for by Axel Honneth. All this is more important than ever in these times of pandemic and expanded vulnerability. A Utopia? Probably. But we could try. Together. Today. Right now. 7. Own translation from the German manuscript. 8. German 'acronym that stands for 'Women [Frauen], Lesbians, intersex, nonbinary, trans and a gender persons'.