Civic Republicanism and the Properties of Democracy

Taking the revival of civic republicanism as his point of departure, Erik Olsen examines the relationship between property, civic virtue, and democracy in post-socialist political thought. Olsen's "post-socialism" refers to virtue-centered forms of political theory that continue the socialist tradition of being critical of liberal capitalism while remaining critical of the materialist vision of progressive liberation that informs most modern expressions of left-socialist thought. With civic republicans, these concerns are expressed in the framework of a traditional problem of how to sustain the public liberty of self-governing citizens in the face of the corruptive power of commerce. Olsen argues that civic republicans have failed to develop a viable, virtue-centered alternative to the property arrangements of contemporary commercial republics. Olsen also shows that the outlines for such an alternative can be found in the civic republicans' hermeneutic perspective on the "situated