Since the late 1970s, Marcel Gauchet proposed an interpretaton of the advent of democratc society that provides the tools for a radical critque of economism. In partcular, 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 simplifed explanaton of the self-producton of the human world and the infrastructural transformaton of politcal power. Reconsidering the relevance of economics, as a tool for understanding a specifc dimension of the social under specifc conditons defned by politcal choices, then allows us to escape the ghost called «capitalism» and think of democracy as a regime of processual autonomy. htps://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1414/108392