"In almost all the world capitalism exists without democracy": Floating capital, democratically elected tyranies and inverted redistribution in the perspective of Ágnes Heller

Abstract

On the occasion of her visit to Berlin in September this year, we had the opportunity to meet Ágnes Heller (1929), Professor Emeritus at the New School for Social Research, where she succeeded Hannah Arendt as Professor of Philosophy. Hosted in the center of Berlin, approximately 500 meters from the famous statue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, we talked with the philosopher who survived the two great totalitarianisms of the 20th century -Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union- about the particularities of accessing Marx's theory based on the distinction between capitalism and democracy. The interview, conducted in German - a language Heller learned as a child on her annual summer vacation in Austria until the well-known annexation of 1938 - attempts to thematize the risks of both the radicalization of savage capitalism and naive criticisms of the latter.