Abstract

Since the late 1970s, Marcel Gauchet proposed an interpretation of the advent of democratic society that provides the tools for a radical critique of economism. In particular, through the idea of a «discovery of society» that took place between the second half of the 18th century and the early 19th century, we can understand the reasons for the emergence and success of economism as a simplified explanation of the self-production of the human world and the infrastructural transformation of political power. Reconsidering the relevance of economics, as a tool for understanding a specific dimension of the social under specific conditions defined by political choices, then allows us to escape the ghost called «capitalism» and think of democracy as a regime of processual autonomy