political romanticism

In The Guardian David Graeber has extolled the Occupy movement. However, it is worth noting that public demonstrations still seem to have an effect in nations where civil society is restricted or non-existent (see the “Arab Spring”) and in France (in the form of the general strike), but this political style is pretty much exhausted in the USA, almost to the point of becoming a cliche. The declining significance of street protests is made worse when organizers (if any exist) promise more than they can deliver. Occupy Wall Street… until what happens? The closing of the DJIA? What Graeber purports to be one of the signs of the fall of the American Empire, the tribal drumbeats echoing through the canyons of lower Manhattan, is a spectacle; meanwhile, for criminal banksters and feral traders (like the USB thug Kweku Adoboli) it’s business as usual.

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The anarchist vision apparent in Graeber’s commentary (“This is why protesters are often hesitant even to issue formal demands, since that might imply recognising the legitimacy of the politicians against whom they are ranged”) is no substitute for a real political theory of how the widespread change its author envisions might be actualized. Hardt and Negri suffice for the sound bit imagination of well-meaning demonstrators; the rest of us can still hope for something more profound.

autonomy in heteronomy

I’m skeptical of the idea that any or all forms of externality with respect to the individual can be overcome, surmounted, done away with, or resolved. Also, I’m skeptical of the general claim that when the State grows, the individual loses, that an increase in the scope of the State means a decrease in the range of individual autonomy. What is ignored in the anarcho-libertarian philosophy of the subject is the fact that individuals choose to limit their own claims to absolute autonomy by binding themselves to a legal order or a set of familial relationships. The completely autonomous individual is a fiction, as fictional as the “state of nature” in which such individuals are said to possess unlimited “rights”. But one need not rest the case against the anarcho-libertarian vision of the individual with the Is. Even from the perspective of Ought, the ethical ideal of absolute autonomy for the individual leaves much to be desired. It is an ethico-political theory of the individual that is simultaneously apolitical and unethical; apolitical, because it elides the conditions under which such autonomous individuals might actually thrive (i.e., in concert and in cooperation with other individuals); and unethical, because it recognizes no legitimate external moral constraint on the pursuit of individual wishes and desires.

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Concerning the zero-sum relationship assumed to exist between the State or any other externality and the individual (i.e., more State functions, less individual freedom) something should be noted: institutions, from informal networks to legally codified bureaucracies, do something that enhances the range of individual autonomy. They unburden the individual of the necessity of single-handedly reproducing her entire way of life by herself. Family relationships share the burden of care of children; schools relieve parents of the burden of educating children; the legal system takes on the burden of securing social order, etc. These institutions relieve individuals of the social, psychological, and political burdens they would otherwise have to carry out themselves, individually and in isolation. Perhaps the DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos of the 1970s post-counterculture communes and cooperatives may be an alternative form of social and political organization that would satisfy the autonomy requirements of the anarcho-libertarian philosophy of the subject. However, even here, it is worth noting that such communal forms of living generated a strong sense of interpersonal norms and expectations and, nevertheless, were not sustainable over the long term.

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Short of viewing individuals as political dupes or sheeple (which is part of the anarcho-libertarian explanatory lexicon), one needs to account for the reason why individuals are not currently in a mad rush to assert the absolute autonomy claims prescribed by anarcho-libertarianism, If one is to avoid the unseemly “false consciousness” account, the process by which individuals currently seek to expand the range of autonomy, the pursuit of an expansion of “rights”, which contributes to the further articulation of the State, needs to be explained. Additionally, a case needs to be made for the priority of individualism in relation to various institutional constraints that limit individualism. In other words, what is the fostering of individualism supposed to achieve and why is it incompatible with externalities, which always already inhibit the absolute free play of individual choice?