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Title: The praxis of freedom in society and politics Author: Peter Morgan Date: 23.11.2020 Language: en Topics: Freedom — Praxis — Subjectivity — Contradictions — Commitment — Practico-inert — Counter-finality — Neoliberalism — The Mutitude — The Common — Revolutionary & emancipatory politics — The human condition — Morality in history. Source: https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:145117
The Praxis of Freedom in Society and Politics
Foundational Elements for a Political Theory of Emancipation
Peter Morgan
Thesis Director: Professor Matteo Gianni
Department of Political Science & International Relations
University of Geneva
Switzerland
September 2019
Acknowledgments
This thesis would never have been possible without professor Matteo
Gianni. The only person I have ever known who has understood,
recognized, attended to, and cared for so many dimensions of freedom.
This could only happens when a human relation is an end in itself.
Deeply interested in his students' ideas, his seminars tried to create a
community of learners.
Never seen a moment when he would treat someone as unequal in any way,
even when in terms of knowledge, there is inequality. One on one, with
kindness and generosity, he has never ceased infusing me with
confidence, supporting, challenging, and inspiring me, and showing me it
is always possible to create a humane world already within this one. Our
discussions would continue in my mind and in my readings after our
meetings.
This work -in fact, any decent graduate student life- would have been
impossible without him.
I am very grateful for my mom & my friends particularly Silvia, Deborah,
Jérôme, Grégoire,Cyril, Jagoda and Eva; as well as for the advice and
help of M. Metin Turker and Mme. Eva Kiss.
I am thankful to my friend Dr. Jean-Pierre Rieder and to Me. Bernard
Nuzzo without whom the practical conditions for doing any kind work
would have been impossible.
I have written this thesis in the marvelous company of my playful
-adopted dog- friend Noa. Uncorrupted by the neoliberal zeitgeist, she's
still free.
And she takes me to her world of tenderness where I have always wanted
to be.
I only wanted to live according to the promptings which
came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?
Hermann Hesse
Abstract
For Sartre, Badiou, Unger, Hardt and Negri the majority of humanity is
still unfree. This work explicates why then shifts the focuse on the
conditions for emancipation. Both, the why and the how lead to a
conception of freedom-in-situation, deployed through the 3 dimensions of
personal commitment, emancipatory and revolutionary politics as well as
the Common. And attempting to resist its own inertia, the
practico-inert, as well as historical counter-finality. Thus this work
hopes to lay down some foundational elements for a political theory of
emancipation. Starting from the here and now of neoliberalism, we seek a
revolutionary subjectivity made of universal singularities: the
Multitude. With its diverse, situated and thus context-alienated
moralities, this revolutionary constituent power is guided by a set of
general principles that attempt to unite all the emancipatory forces of
the radical left through revolutionary politics and towards the goal of
a new social order that concretize freedom in the Common.
Key concepts:
Freedom, praxis, subjectivity, contradictions, commitment,
practico-inert, counter-finality, neoliberalism, the Multitude, the
Common, revolutionary & emancipatory politics, the human condition,
morality in history.
Contents
Preface.....................................................................................................................................................p.1-5
The path to the particular questions guiding this research.
Method..................................................................................................................................................p.6-13
The contrast between the analytical and the dialectical method
The reason for choice of dialectical rather than the analytical.
The dialectic between theory-practice.
Freedom as a dialectic.
Instantiations.
Introduction:
Why Freedom?
....................................................................................................................................p.14-28
On the need for a precise multidimensional concept of freedom in
political practice and political theory.
This study in the context of contemporary political
theory.....................................................................p.14-21
How does the conception of freedom defended offer differs from those in
contemporary political theory, what are its peculiarities, and what does
it offer that is absent in contemporary theory..................p.18-19
Freedom and morality of
history..................................................................................................p.19-21
Freedom in practical
politics.....................................................................................................................p.22-23
Why a conception of freedom is important to politics? What does our
conception offer to practical politics?
Preface and introduction
summary..........................................................................................................p.24-25
Overview of the content of the proposed multidimensional concept of
freedom................................p.25-27
Part I. Neoliberalism.
Freedom
Corrupted............................................................................................................................p.28-35
A critique of the current dominant conception of freedom in society and
practical politics.
Parts II, III & IV. A multidimensional conception of freedom.
Part II. freedom as
commitment........................................................................................................p.36-48
The agent and her
context........................................................................................................................p.36-37
Freedom as ontological
commitment......................................................................................................p.37-38
Freedom as ethical
commitment.............................................................................................p.38-48
Freedom between ontology and
ethics........................................................................................p.38-41
Freedom as ethical commitment in 3 sources
Ontological
Intersubjectivity........................................................................................................p.41-43
The agent and the contradictions in her
circumstance...............................................................p.43-46
The agent and the contradictions in the human
condition.........................................................p.46-48
Part III. Freedom as
praxis.................................................................................................................p.49-62
In the emancipatory or revolutionary politics of the Multitude.
Part IV. Freedom in the
Common.......................................................................................................p.63-70
Beyond the corporate-state, an overview of alternatives that protect and
prosper freedom in space-time.
Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................p.71-74
Freedom and the political.
Freedom and human nature.
Bibliography........................................................................................................................................p.75-78
Annex: the main authors of this thesis exemplify the militants-thinkers
practice of political theory................p.79
I. Preface
We live in counter-revolutionary times. The contemporary disastrous
state of affairs for the radical left reminds us of the young Marx times
in the 1840's. In this situation, we propose as a point of departure a
philosophical reflection on the meaning of freedom. A conception upon
which we can build a radical and total emancipation. Second, an analysis
of contemporary society with its conception of freedom and the hegemony
of a tiny minority to which it has given rise. Third, how to build on
this proposed conception of freedom in order to tear down this hegemony.
Fourth, how to organize a libertarian society.
This study can be read as an incomplete tentative examination of these 4
issues.
Few values or ideas gather as much support and confusion as freedom.
However, contemporary political theory lacks a multidimensional
conception of freedom which could be used to understand the whole of the
existing social and political field, and why and how to radically change
it. This work attempts to plant the seeds for such theory. In surveying
the relevant political theory literature of the past few decades, we
have concluded that a multidimensional conception of freedom is lacking.
Such conception would provide a vision -particularly in the aftermath of
the 2007-8 systemic crisis- through which one can analyze politics and
social change as well as the social movements, protests, and occupations
of public places that followed that crisis, what they represented, what
they meant and why they failed. In short, a vision of a new social
order, of what life could be, based on a multi-dimensional conception of
freedom adapted to XXI century's problems would:
1. Explicit and analyze the implicit and yet dominant conception of
freedom at the basis of the hegemonic neoliberal project in democracies
and beyond.
2. Shows the contradictions and defects in the system resulting from
such conception of freedom. Also why bringing to light this implicit
common conception defended and used to create contemporary societies is
important.
3. Propose a multidimensional conception of freedom-in-situation,
deployed not only at the personal level, but also in dyadic
relationships and beyond.
4. Inquire about how this conception of freedom is deployed in groups,
social movements and struggles. Why such resistance, movements and
assemblies represent not only real democracy, but also a far more
elaborate freedom than the neoliberal conception of freedom.
5. Offer a real affirmative alternative to neoliberalism. That is,
offer, a social order where freedom is a real possibility for all,
concrete in space, alive over time, beyond the resistance to a
particular issue or the occupation of a given square. Because we must
remember that even when these movements succeed in obtaining a
concession or some change, even when they caused the fall of a dictator,
they ultimately failed -at least in the short term- to bring forth the
society they hoped, that which they tried to emulate in their movement,
debates , values, methods, and goals.
The question I have started with, and later abandoned, was how can we
reconcile a personal project of self-construction, of life as an
adventure in the world, with a social and political project of
collective emancipation , of liberation of all of humanity?
The two sides of this question, self-construction and collective
emancipation, are oftentimes in tension. In fact, in our neoliberal
system, they are nearly impossible to coexist. However, reconciling and
developing them together is possible in another social order.
Emancipation for all humanity is a social, moral and political is not
merely an idea, it is also project that here differs from previous
emancipatory projects in that it does not defend a single cause or group
but is rather inclusive of all humanity. It also differs in that it does
not see a violent revolutionary moment with the destruction of the state
and the seizure of political power as a prerequisite for collective
emancipation. Instead, this project combines a revolution in
consciousness, in thoughts and feelings, with social transformation. It
is a piecemeal revolution in the structures of society and of culture
that supports antagonistic reformism in addition to resistance,
democratic anti and extra institutional politics, and projects of
libertarian self-government through the Common. As a political project,
it attends to organization and decision making, but it develops these in
ways only compatible with the ends it seeks which is a society free from
all forms of authority, hierarchy, oppression and domination. Lenin's
model of organization and decision making is efficacious, but denatures
the goal of revolution; a free society. In contrast, what we aim for
aligns means and ends, and is far harder to achieve; the praxis of
bottom up politics with its horizontality, consensus, cooperation, and
solidarity. Such praxis is an end in itself as much as a means in so far
as these experiments of democratic life prepares the grounds, minds and
sensibilities, for a social reality too far away from what exists, our
system here and now. These practices help the members of groups,
movements and societies in their individual projects of
self-construction. Because in such project, they must deal with
mutilation1 and mummification2. (Unger, 2014).
Self-construction is an existential and moral project of a being who is
contingent that is it to say whose existence is not necessary; ever one
of us possibly could never have existed. Such being is thus unfounded,
her existence is 'contingente', 'gratuite','lĂ pour rien','de trop'.
(Sartre, 1943. p.120) The idea of self-construction is that that
contingent being whose existence precedes her essence, who is thrown
into the world undefined, is nevertheless (the only being) capable of
defining herself, and only through her actions.
Being is thus a project, rather than an inherited identity. She is
neither defined by her accident of birth nor encapsulated by her given
circumstance. She has a choice of becoming, and her choice of a
particular self within a moral framework in total solitude3 and total
responsibility defines her being ontologically as freedom. Nevertheless,
before freedom even matures and begins this life work of
self-construction, that being faces, upon her birth, the whole weight of
history. This is the practico-inert4. Freedom is therefore always in
situation. A being's circumstance of class, family, religion, nation,
culture, political regime and so on, all challenge her freedom. Because
freedom is always concrete. Even what she has chosen hitherto freely
then comes back later to haunt her as practico-inert :
''Nous concevons sans difficulté qu'un homme, encore que sa situation le
conditionne totalement, puisse être un centre d'indétermination
irréductible. Ce secteur d'imprévisibilité qui se découpe ainsi dans le
champ social, c'est ce que nous nommons la liberté et la personne n'est
rien d'autre que sa liberté. Cette liberté, il ne faut pas l'envisager
comme un pouvoir métaphysique de la «nature» humaine et ce n'est pas non
plus la licence de faire ce qu'on veut, ni je ne sais quel refuge
intérieur qui nous resterait jusque dans les chaînes. On ne fait pas ce
qu'on veut et cependant on est responsable de ce qu'on est: voilĂ le
fait; l'homme qui s'explique simultanément partant de causes est
pourtant seul à porter le poids de soi-même. En ce sens, la liberté
pourrait passer pour une malédiction, elle est une malédiction. Mais
c'est aussi l'unique source de la grandeur humaine.''
(Sartre, 1948. p.27).
What then are the conditions of possibility to wrestle back her freedom
each time it gets frozen into inert social structures, not as a pure
abstraction, an unlimited will or power, but as a creation within these
constraints?
Taking responsibility into what one is born into so that one can
reappropriate it, attribute to it their personal meaning, eventually
transform it with others, through commitment to a vision of how human
life should be, in love and work, through resistance to all forms of
domination, and struggles with all those seeking emancipation, through
everyday connections and the construction of a mode of social
organization that approximates, if not embodies, her ideal of how human
life should be. Of humanity as an end.
The reconciliation of the moral or existential project of
self-construction with the political project of human emancipation may
ultimately occur in the collective history of humanity, beyond the
biographical time of our ephemeral lives. But for it to ever take place,
it must begin within personal lives. Sartre's morality of personal
commitment, his morality of history and his morality of hope converge
here: We have only one life, and the facts, the empirical grounds, upon
which we decide to commit it in one way or another are never sufficient
relative to the gravity of this commitment. Morality then is freedom in
commitment within a context, despite uncertainties, likely struggles,
and against the odds of a success in the short or medium term (of say,
the emancipation of the Multitude from wage slavery, or saving the
planet from destruction). A commitment to some universal ideal in a
particular situation. A universal always in creation. It is a commitment
to life beyond my own life. A commitment to persevere in face of
failures, and (the almost) certainty of dying before seeing the result
of one's commitment for collective emancipation.
In Sartre's morality of history, commitment as ethics starts from the
facts of the historical conjecture of the particular world where the
agent happens to find herself. Today, for instance, it could be the
enormous and widening divisions between humanity, between a tiny
oligarchy and billions of people in misery. From there, the agent takes
a position for freedom in situation, in support of the weak, the victim,
the oppressed such that in her particular struggles here and there. Her
universal ideal of human emancipation is concretized everyday in a
particular situation. Since freedom is only in situation, the point of
departure is always a particular problem, never a universal value since
this can only be apprehended in action. This is why, for Sartre, all the
moral questions have come to signify the political question and the
latter is (for him) to be found at the level of 'action des masses'.
(Beauvoir, 1981. p.41) and its goal is to create a moral society. For
this reason for which he supported the Maos in France. (Sartre, 1976.
p-38-47). In political actions against exploitation such as in mass
strikes, occupations of factories and sequestrations of managers by
workers, we find this: ''affirmation concrète de la liberté du travail :
cela montre que cette aspiration à la liberté n'a rien d'idéaliste et
qu'elle trouve toujours sa source dans les conditions concrètes et
matérielles de la production, ce qui n'empêche qu'elle représente en
chaque cas pour les travailleurs un effort pour constituer une société
morale, c'est-à -dire où l'homme, désaliéné, puisse se trouver lui-même
dans ses vrais rapports avec le groupe.'' (Sartre, 1976. p.46).
The reconciliation between the 2 parts of my question remains almost
impossible today within a human life5 unless both -the personal and the
political- projects designates a dimension of freedom6, and each
dimension is a complementary to the other. This is how I will take them
to be in this work.
It is impossible because the moral project of self-construction requires
particular kinds of social structures, some form of social organization
without domination, a collective life, a community in order for it to
unfold. Such community is still absent; with some exceptions (which are
under pressure). For the consensual conception of freedom today opposes
and limits that of each individual by the other's rather than seeing
them as complementary, enlarging, affirming and consolidating each
other's freedom as would be in a real free community. One purpose of
this work is to show the latter conception has been a real possibility
in history. Also, it is found today in various movements, groups,
revolutionary and empancipatory politics. But they are ephemeral. The
idea of freedom in the Common attempts to overcome this evanescence.
Because as long as this real possibility of social freedom is not
existent for a person, their project of self-construction is unlikely.
The new problem has thus eliminated the reconciliation of the two. It
has become what is meant by freedom as multidimensional concept? What
makes a person (un)free? What makes a group praxis or a social movement
free? What is social freedom? What kind of community enhances that of
each of its member's freedom, rather than managing each one's freedom as
a separate individual unit pitted against one another?
To state the same idea in other words, we start not from 2 separate
projects, but immediately outside the prison of the rigidified self (the
mummy). Life as series of adventures in the world. We try to transform
society (freedom as commitment), and we fail. But it is only through
these failures, we transform ourselves, and we discover ourselves
greater and we give reality the transcendence of our agency over any
particular context. This transformation of the self may be argued as a
transformation of the world. But regardless whether it is or not, it
seems to be the way our individual existence is not an isolated event,
but can be -through the commitment we have chosen to some particular
problem- related to and in a fraternity with many others before us and
after we are gone who were or will committed to that same particular
problem, and to human emancipation in general.
''Sartre is capable of holding two apparently contradictory opinions
simultaneously, and that there is no need to posit a volte-face over
time to explain such divergences. What appears to common-sense,
analytic, binary reason as paradox, self-contradiction or aporia may be
recognized as the heterogeneity of different levels of truth and meaning
potentially susceptible to totalization in the light of dialectical
reason.'' (Howells, 1988. p.94-95)
Method:
The dominant analytic method consists in breaking down complex
structures and conceptions into their components through reason. For
instance, the analytic7 reasoning, in attempting to answer a question,
may analyze it carefully, oppose the available answers to each others
and choose one. The analytic method is valuable as Sartre himself has
noted in Questions de MĂ©thode, having contributed to the liberation of
humans from traditional authorities. However, it has a number of
shortcomings:
1. It seeks a set of timeless features to characterize a phenomenon;
holding these as necessary and sufficient conditions8.
2. It is unable to hold contradictions. It uses 'either', 'or' rather
than 'both', 'and' as in the dialectical method which is able to hold
several contradictory views/theories when it sees there is some truth in
each.
3. It studies the phenomena from outside; the researcher influence by
her milieu and the objects of her study is unaccounted for : ''l'erreur
des « philosophes » avait été de croire qu'on pouvait directement
appliquer la méthode universelle (et analytique) à la société où l'on
vit alors que justement ils y vivaient et qu'elle les conditionnait
historiquement en sorte que les préjugés de son idéologie se glissaient
dans leur recherche positive et leur volontĂ© mĂŞme de les combattre. LĂ
raison de cette erreurest claire : ils Ă©taient des intellectuels
organiques
travaillant pour la classe mĂŞme qui les avait produits et leur
universalité n'était autre que la fausse universalité de la classe
bourgeoise qui se prenait pour la classe universelle. Aussi quand ils
cherchaient l'homme, ils n'atteignaient que le bourgeois. La véritable
recherche intellectuelle, si elle veut délivrer la vérité des mythes qui
l'obscurcissent, implique un passage de l'enquête par la singularité de
l'enquĂŞteur. Celui-ci a besoin de se situer dans l'univers social pour
saisir et détruire en lui et hors de lui les limites que l'idéologie
prescrit au savoir. C'est au niveau de la situation que la dialectique
[...] peut agir, la pensée de l'intellectuel doit se retourner sans
cesse sur elle-même pour se saisir toujours comme universalité
singulière, c'est-à -dire singularisée secrètement par les préjugés de
classe inculqués dès l'enfance alors même qu'elle croit s'en être
débarrassée et avoir rejoint l'universel.'' (Sartre, 1972. p.47-48). So
we do not believe it is possible to have a position of abstract
universality or to be neutral on the moral, political and social
questions we study. Our views necessary influence our objects of study,
what we choose to look at, and how. And if we attempt to suppress them,
they will still come out, perhaps in a more distorted form. It is better
to acknowledge this situation, even if we cannot transform it; at least
keep it out in the open. And if possible, to weed out the prejudices
before arguing for what remains of our believes.
4. Its logic of atomization makes it hardly adequate to study
interlocked, intersecting, overlapping concepts such as
race-class-patriarchy-imperialism or social freedom or
exploitation-domination or highly contested concepts like revolution.
For Sartre, analytical reason 's’applique aux relations en extériorité'
while dialectical reason ''tire son intelligibilité des totalités et
[...] régit le rapport des touts à leurs parties et des totalités entre
elles à l’intérieur d’une intégration toujours plus serrée.''(Sartre,
1985. P. 175)
Some general features of the analytical method such as conceptual
clarity, systematic rigor and deconstestation as well as the
argumentative process remain valuable for this study.
Others such as the emphasize on the importance of reason is defended so
long as reason is seen as a goal to aim for in human affairs. But the
presupposition that reason guides human affairs; that reasoning is how
society or politics actually work is rejected. For humans rarely ever
determine their goals with reason. But rather use reason as means to the
ends they have decided through desires, passions, impulses, hopes and so
on. In other words, we agree with Hume that reason is the slave of
passions, (Russell, 1992) though we disagree with him that it ought to
be so. Our theories should aim at a more reasonable social and political
order, but (unfortunately) they cannot assume a central9 role for reason
in designing or attempting to realize such order. Because, as a glimpse
in the news would confirm, reason does not determine human goals even
though it has other important roles in ethics and politics, like
clarifying ends, and resolving or at least negotiating conflictual ends
or desires.
It is this idea about the roles of reason and passions that lead us to
take a considerable distance from ideal theories which often are based
on the assumption of humans as rational agents who choose through
reason. Ideal theory work may be useful for instance as thought
experiments, but overall less crucial to social organization than non
ideal theories; in particular if you believe that we should start from
our current objective situation rather than from a hypothetical
situation such as in Rawls' theory of justice.
Others features of the analytical method such as seeking a fixed meaning
independent of context or failing to acknowledge the dependence of the
meaning of a concept on other concepts or refusing indeterminacy are
also rejected.10 Attempting to be as parsimonious as possible is one
thing; sacrificing the complexity of something to keep my account of it
logically coherent is another. Thus I use the analytical tools and
method only when the fit my purposes. But whenever possible, I prefer
the dialectical method which attempts to grasp parts in relation to each
other and to the whole. The dialectical method comes from Hegel through
Marx to Sartre, our main thinker-militant for this study. In fact,
Sartre's epistemology is founded on the 'truth of quantum physics'
(Sartre, 1985) that the scientist is part of his experimental system.
The consequences of this are paramount. For they lead us to discard
idealistic illusions (such as a context-independent universal
rationality) and take into account our ideological colors as theorists.
Because we are also full of contradictions, like everyone else. No one
can easily escape or overcome this situation, including philosophers. So
the right attitude towards this situation is neither to ignore it nor to
deny it, but to work with these contradictions; to use their tension as
a fecund source. The dialectical method precisely takes such work as its
goal. In addition, this realism leads the thinker to experiments, to
praxis, to being involved as the only way to understand what she is
studying (just like the scientist). And this is also a distinction of
the dialectical method for Sartre (and for Marx) which does not see
theory and practice as separate. Surely, reflections on the practice
illuminate it and may lead to improvement or at least to avoiding past
mistakes. For theory seeks patterns. And thinking is able to capture far
wider of these patterns than the limited possible experiences of a
single short fragile human life. But practice with its variety of
experiences is a condition for theoretical breakthrough; indeed
existence with its concrete problems, is the raw material of thought.
This is where the philosophy of existence joins Marxism as a way of
studying humans situated within classes, structures, institutions,
society and historical movement, but still never completely determined
by them: ''le principe méthodologique qui fait commencer la certitude
avec la réflexion ne contredit nullement le principe anthropologique qui
définit la personne concrète par sa matérialité. La réflexion, pour
nous, ne se réduit pas à la simple immanence du subjectivisme idéaliste
: elle n’est un départ que si elle nous rejette aussitôt parmi les
choses et les hommes, dans le monde...ce réalisme implique
nécessairement un point de départ réflexif, le dévoilement d’une
situation se fait dans et par la praxis qui la change.'' (Sartre, 1985.
p.30). For Sartre, practice-theory develop dialectically.
Let us now illustrate why the dialectical method is preferred in this
work.
The conception of freedom proposed in this thesis can only be understood
through the dialectical method. For instance, a free agent facing
persecution from the state may join others facing similar situation in a
group to rebel against the state. We see the dialectic of a freedom
oppressed that finds itself alive in a commitment to a form of
emancipatory politics. Then within the group, freedom is enlarged as
each member supports or helps others, but freedom may often disintegrate
if the group is dissolved once it has achieved its goal or through some
other actions by the state (violent dispersion, elections, imprisonment,
murder). For Sartre, it is impossible to understand freedom without the
dialectical method. Because one is not free without commitment and yet
commitment turns into practico-inert (unfreedom).11
To take another example, is the aim of revolution a transformation of
consciousness or a radical change in the structures of society? Rimbaud
and Marx exemplified this debate. '''Changez la vie' disait Rimbaud.
'Changez le monde' disait Marx.'' (Sartre, 1952. P. 383.) The
dialectical method resists the temptation to solve the question by
affirming that veracity exists just on one side, i.e. choose whether the
revolutionary should change life or change society. It rather focuses on
developing the strengths and weaknesses of each thesis through their
clash, rather than choosing one as right and throwing away the other as
wrong. This method thus recognizes the strengths that may be present
even in the weaker thesis, and may opt for a final synthesis between
them or keep them in tension with each other, using them as a real
contradiction present to illuminate the revolutionary processes and
perhaps yet other contradictions.
In his Carnets de la drĂ´le de guerre, Sartre starts reflecting on the
relationship between morality and history: ''L'histoire implique la
morale (sans conversion universelle, pas de sens Ă l'Ă©volution ou aux
revolutions). La morale implique l'Histoire (pas de moralité possible
sans action systématique sur la situation).'' (Sartre, 1995. P.487). A
problem he will take later on as we will see. One of the difficulties
that the dialectical method addresses is that morality and history not
only constitute and presuppose each other, as Sartre notes. But also
oppose each other, as when some ideal or universal value is suppressed
in a historical conjecture by some authority. And yet such repressed
value could come in a different form, merge with another value or it
could develop underground. Or this situation could lead to a tension
with the force repressing it. Such tension may lead both forces to
develop new strategies in parallel, to become even more radical. It
could lead to a clash where one side annihilate the other or to a
synthesis where the authority becomes less repressive allowing that
ideal to develop freely. Indeed, it is one of the characteristics of a
winning ideology to allow some form of constestation against it. In the
so-called liberal democracies, such protest is allowed so long as it
does not go after the real foundation of unjust society. When this
happens all the tolerance and liberal values are quickly forgotten and
repression is back with vengeance.
So dialectical reasoning show us how divergence of views may coexist,
how things may not be mutually exclusive, but even in opposition, they
may help developing each others. Later in this work we see that
acknowledging the contradictions in one's personal situation and
attempting to overcome them is at the basis of freedom as commitment.
Similarly, attempting to live the contradictions inherent to the human
condition, are discussed as another source of freedom as commitment.
For instance in Black Orpheus (Sartre, 1949), Sartre shows how a
historical dialectical movement may unfold by the clash of the ideas and
forces between white supremacy/racism and negritude as a celebration of
black culture. He takes white supremacy as the thesis and negritude as
the antithesis. However, he says that this negative moment of negritude
-in its resistance- is not an end in itself. Negritude as racial pride
is a means to counter the violence of white supremacy. But it is not
sufficient to counter racism with negritude, but rather use it as a
bridge to some higher ideal. Because the aim is the realization of a
human being in raceless society where negritude destroys itself and
white supremacy in this dialectical movement, creating integral
humanity.12 (Sartre, 2015) For even in world with no racism at all, it
will still be absurd to distinguish humans by race. This concept is a
concept that should disappear. The same goes for gender and
class...etc.13 Which means that our politics should only work in the
direction of creating a world that recognizes and gives an essential
place to the attribute of transcendence in every agent. A politics that
resists any world which denies this ability of going beyond context,
social role and identity.
In others words, the ultimate aim is to abolish all inherited,
externally defined (not by the subject herself) identities. Affirming
identities of each is important as recognition. But this recognition of
difference and of identities should only be the beginning rather than
the end of an emancipatory politics. This work is therefore opposed to
the views that make identities and their recognition in their difference
the end of politics. For instance, recognizing the proletarian identity
in Marx's time is important as a beginning, in order to recognize their
exploitation and alienation as well as their potential as revolutionary
subjectivity. But the end is the destruction of the social order that
make such alienated and hierarchical identities (proletariat and
bourgeoisie for that matter) possible. And in the destruction of that
social order to abolish all unfree, assigned, imposed, suffered
identities (beyond the class identities of proletariat and bourgeoisie).
The end is also the creation of a social order where each agent has the
possibility to define their own identity, and where no identity
dominates another. It is is in this recognition of inherited identities
then the destruction of the order that makes them and the creation of a
new one where identities are future projects that we have a politics of
emancipation.
Thus dialectical method can be generalized as follows. In the theory and
praxis of freedom, there is a first moment of affirmation of the
identity. This is when the subject says: 'this is who I am'. Identity
recognition again is essential. But this is merely the beginning of a
quest of freedom to overcome it. Because then comes the question of
whether this particular recognized identity is really who they think
they are and want to be or just what they have been made into, and
through no choice of their own, by society, education and circumstance.
Thus the next moment in freedom is a relation of mutual recognition
where inquiry, research, and the open endedness of self-construction are
possible. This process may then lead the agent to discover that they are
capable of far more than they thought themselves capable of, and to have
their identity based on their projects. Their identity becoming their
own creation. And yet for this to happen some form of recognition14 is
an essential a priori. It is for each subject to figure out how to carry
that open ended work. One proposal (we make later in this work) is that
of commitment (ethical freedom), whereby a project is defined and
carried to face the contradictions of the self and/or of the human
conditions. Another is revolutionary or emancipatory politics, whereby
the agent cooperates with others who share a common goal. Thus
contributing to making a vision of the world she has a reality. Whatever
the project that the agent chooses, there is a discovery of the self
through praxis. The third moment is one of synthesis between the
inherited self and the created self, between the conditioned and the
free.
Make no mistake, by aiming for a politics and for societies that go
beyond these concepts, I am not advocating erasing differences between
humans, such as speaking the same language or believing the same things.
Rather, my point is not to be defined or classified by whatever is
inherited, not to be attributed a role or a station from the outside,
but rather to define oneself by the project, the choices, and the
desires of the agent. Self-construction. These differences, therefore,
should exist politically as a specializations and experiments at the
level of humanity.
Beyond negritude, we could think of countless other examples of the
dialectics in history. In fact, all of history may be seen as ''le
combat rigoureux entre la liberté et le pratico-inerte'' (Sartre, 2015.
p.38). For instance, in the national liberation movements against
colonial powers, colonialism would be the thesis and the movement
towards independence to becoming a nation-state is the antithesis. But
the negative moment of national liberation is insufficient as an end,
because an independent nation-state is merely a lesser evil than a
colony subjugated to an Empire. The aim is an emancipation for all
humanity and not parts of humanity defined through opposition to other
parts. So the liberation movement should not stop there, but carry on
its struggle against oppression within (in society; caste system,
patriarchy...etc.) and beyond its borders (for instance in solidarity
with other emancipatory movements in the world). This makes that
movement a crossing into a humanity that should not remain so
arbitrarily divided; where states and nationalities are no more.
Another reason for choosing the dialectical method is the dominance of
the analytical in our field which leads many to overlook other methods
that may be useful to their work, even if only as a supplement to the
analytical method.
It is useful to simplify complex problems to their components in order
to better understand them. But doing so may change the nature of the
problem. Sometimes, a better understanding comes from keeping the
complexity intact, and looking at the opposing internal dimensions of a
problem as a whole. This applies for instance to a problem as complex as
poverty. Someone may define poverty as a billionaire that always wants
more. Another may reply that it is the opposite, poverty is not having
enough of the basic necessities of life. Both are correct in their
definition, because each is looking at an important dimension of life,
the spiritual or moral and the biological or material. Greed and need.
And both kinds of poverty should be understood by political theorists in
their attempt to find ways to address poverty. But the point is that
keeping these 2 kinds together brings an understanding that tackling
poverty as just one of them does not. In other words, some of the ways
for overcoming material poverty make a person poor spiritually or
morally (for instance if that person overcomes poverty through a job
that is boring and does not engage their capabilities. Or through a job
that exploits others.) Hence, it is not sufficient to tackle the problem
of material poverty on its own (in order to address it adequately; in
the sense we aim for in this work), but along with other kinds of
poverty. As a consequence, some complex problems must be tackled in
their complexity, without dividing them into kinds or components, and
assigning each part a different solution or a field of expertise to deal
with it.
The attempt of the social sciences to emulate the natural sciences does
have some benefits. The point is that it also has important problems.
Because the complexity of a natural science problem does not begin to
approximate that of a human society where general laws, theorems,
regularities, equations, algorithms almost never apply. Further to the
point, sometimes the essential in an individual life or a social group
reside in something so ephemeral, so unpredictable, that it is
impossible to capture that essential analytically. Improvisation,
surprise and innovation are the signs of life. In a word, the difficulty
we face in theorizing about human life and society is precisely freedom,
as opposed to determinism, habit or tradition: a revolution in society
and politics or love within a personal life or a moral invention, as
Sartre would call a choice of moral behavior in a given situation.15 All
these are ruptures, hard to capture in theory with their wide ranging
effects, and yet so essential that even if our theory has everything
else and misses them, it would have missed so much. This is why a
philosopher like Badiou makes these exceptional occurrences the center
of his work. In political theory, the supreme value -for an individual
or a group- could be found in moments that escape our studies. Being
aware of this could at least help us, if such moment escape us, to take
this fact into account when trying to understand patterns, rules, and
norms.
The dialectical method acknowledges that some of the fundamental
attributes of the human condition that should be taken into account for
any normative work are contradictory. For instance, the solitary and
social dimensions in all of us. In attempting to change a society, we
need to understand the conception this society has of what a human being
is. And since the analytical conception is, on its own, inadequate to
guide us, it must be changed as well. For when it starts with universal
rights (prior to our historical situation, prior to politics), it
conceives a certain immutable quality of every human regardless of her
particularities and her circumstance.16 It is understandable why some
want to place such rights above and beyond history and all human
intervention. But it simply does not work. Having the UN Charter as a
foundation for the society of nations does nothing to prevent anyone
(including the little weak dictators and other non-state actors) to
violate every article of it. Instead, one should have the aim (distant
as it is) as universality, not the point of departure. And make it clear
that this universality has nothing of an inevitable; it is always a
process in the making, always on the line in history. In our projects,
policies, and treaties it will become or not. Certainly this analytical
conception has had a good consequences since it contributed to the
collapse of castes and the feudal values and thus abolished an
abhorrently repressive system. But then the bourgeoisie never realized
that since it has destroyed the ancient myths justifying cruelty and has
taken power, it no longer represents the universal cause of emancipation
(i.e. emancipation of all), but has become the main reactionary force
preventing the continuation of its unfolding: ''Après cent cinquante ans
[221 since Sartre wrote this in 1948], l'esprit d'analyse reste la
doctrine officielle de la démocratie bourgeoise, seulement il est devenu
arme défensive. La bourgeoisie a tout intérêt à s'aveugler sur les
classes comme autrefois sur la réalité synthétique des institutions
d'Ancien RĂ©gime. Elle persiste Ă ne voir que des hommes, Ă proclamer
l'identité de la nature humaine à travers toutes les variétés de
situation : mais c'est contre le prolétariat qu'elle le proclame. Un
ouvrier, pour elle, est d'abord un homme --un homme comme les autres. Si
la Constitution accorde à cet homme le droit de vote et la liberté
d'opinion, il manifeste sa nature humaine autant qu'un bourgeois[...] on
se constitue bourgeois en faisant choix, une fois pour toutes, d'une
certaine vision du monde analytique qu'on tente d'imposer Ă tous les
hommes et qui exclut la perception des réalités collectives. Ainsi, la
défense bourgeoise est bien en un sens permanente, et elle ne fait qu'un
avec la bourgeoisie elle-mĂŞme.'' But this universality is not often
presented as reactionary force imposed on everyone. To the contrary, as
figures like Bill Gates (the most philanthropic person in history) show,
it is a cunning defense of the status quo that is not manifest as such,
but rather ''à l'intérieur du monde qu'elle s'est construit, il y a
place pour des vertus d'insouciance, d'altruisme et mĂŞme de
générosité.'' The problem is that this altruism on its own cannot
reconstitute a society of free and equal beings in relations of
reciprocity with each others. And yet it is only in such society would
every human being would be properly universal as the votaries of the
analytical method would want: ''seulement les bienfaits bourgeois sont
des actes individuels qui s'adressent Ă la nature humaine universelle en
tant qu'elle s'incarne dans un individu. En ce sens, ils ont autant
d'efficacité qu'une habile propagande, car le titulaire des bienfaits
est contraint de les recevoir comme on les lui propose, c'est-Ă -dire en
se pensant comme une créature humaine isolée en face d'une autre
créature humaine. La charité bourgeoise entretient le mythe de la
fraternité.'' (Sartre, 1948 p.18-19) Hence, the point of rejecting the
analytical method as the definitive one, and using the dialectical
method to change both society and theory: ''nous nous rangeons du côté
de ceux qui veulent changer Ă la fois la condition sociale de l'homme et
la conception qu'il a de lui-mĂŞme.'' (Sartre, 1948. p.16). Instead of
the analytical conception of a human being, Sartre proposes 'une
conception totalitaire' (Sartre, 1948. p.17) which has nothing to do
with Arendt use of the term since Sartre is talking about an individual
and not a state or any kind of structure. Such totalitarian conception
has a synthetic view of reality in that its principle is that the whole,
whatever is it, remains different from the sum of its parts: ''Pour
nous, ce que les hommes ont en commun, ce n'est pas une nature, c'est
une condition métaphysique : et par là , nous entendons l'ensemble des
contraintes qui les limitent a priori, la nécessité de naître et de
mourir, celle d'ĂŞtre fini et d'exister dans le monde au milieu d'autres
hommes. Pour le reste, ils constituent des totalités indécomposables,
dont les idées, les humeurs et les actes sont des structures secondaires
et dépendantes, et dont le caractère essentiel est d'être situées et ils
diffèrent entre eux comme leurs situations diffèrent entre elles.
L'unité de ces touts signifiants est le sens qu'ils manifestent.''
(Sartre, 1948. p.22) In taking this totalitarian or more comprehensive
view, the dialectical method attacks the distinction between the 'is'
and the 'ought'. Such distinction between the descriptive and the
prescriptive makes sense whenever we are making a localized or episodic
evaluations, but begins to collapse as our view becomes more
comprehensive. A view of how to live must be inspired by a conception of
who we are, and what we can become. And a conception of who we are must
have implications for our view of how to live.
Introduction:
The study of freedom in the context of contemporary political theory:
Thinking about freedom in this work differs from contemporary political
theory. The reason for this is that I follow an alternative model of the
practice of political theory. To ground this model, a short inquiry
about the nature and purpose of political theory.
One way to read political theory is to imagine the field as divided into
2 camps. One of theorists for whom our task is to change the world which
means a fundamental transformation of social organization, the economy,
politics, and international relations. And another camp for whom we must
merely try and prevent the world from getting worse which is to say
keeping it pretty much as it is which is to say on the model of a
liberal parliamentary democracy -with private property, the market
economy, profit, contractual relations, and the rule of law- and trying
to reform it, to humanize it or to halt its degradation.
This classic dichotomy has been a source of conflict including that
between Sartre and Camus17. Almost all the theorists we read at
university courses belong to the latter camp. While all the main
militants-theorists of this thesis (Sartre, Hardt, Negri, Unger and
Badiou) belong to the former. They are thus a collection of outcasts.
Furthermore, the 2 camps do not talk to each others. Naturally, as one
can imagine they would not have nice things to tell. Being worlds apart,
perhaps they would spent most of the time trying to clarify the meaning
of the questions. Beyond these speculations, as a result of this
unbridgeable chasm and the absence of links between these worlds,
attempting to situate this work in relation to mainstream political
theory has been challenging due to the absence of engagement between
these 2 camps or secondary literature relating this marginal group with
even the most studied theorists today.
I will present the work of these outcasts mainly as it relate to the
question of freedom. Unfortunately, it will be far beyond the scope of
this work to criticize their work, and show its contradictions,
difficulties as well as the evolution of their positions over time, even
on this very question.
For instance, Hardt and Negri reject socialism entirely. They do so
because for them all socialism is of the centralized authoritarian
statist variety. Also, Badiou18 sometimes oversimplify. For instance, he
sees just one liberalism19; economic liberalism. And as he considers it
the philosophy of capitalism, he takes it as the enemy. But such
problems, incoherences and contradictions are found in every thinker.
For instance, Rousseau had his libertarian20 (Discourse on the Origins
of Inequality) and authoritarian (Social Contract) moments. The same for
Marx where only his early works like The Philosophical and Economic
Manuscripts as well as some other later writings like those on the Paris
Commune are libertarian. Idem for the anarchists Proudhon, Bakunin, and
Bookchin. The concern for these issues are warranted, but more in
studies focused on the work of these thinkers. The purpose here is more
to take whatever we see relevant and useful in their work (and ignore
the rest) in order to advance our understanding of freedom. This is too
partial, for sure. And it is one of the weaknesses of this thesis, but
it is inevitable to keep its scope limited. In short, while we do not
overlook the weaknesses in their work, we do not discuss them here in
order to solely focus on their contribution to concrete freedom.
Unger notes that the right and left today promote shallow freedom and
shallow equality respectively. He rejects both views. So do Hardt and
Negri.21 The 'shallow' denotes precisely the acceptance of the current
institutional framework, and working within it. Adding, that in the case
of the left (he refers to statist social democrats), it prioritizes
equality. And the right (he refers to political conservatives in
general), prioritizes freedom. Both of the shallow kind.
In political theory, the typical votaries of shallow equality are the
egalitarian theoreticians of justice. Having rejected all institutional
transformation, and the current institutions supporting an extremely
inegalitarian system, what remains is ''the humanization of the
inevitable''22:the current structures of the market economy and the
so-called democratic politics are to be made less savage. For this
humanizing process, they fall back on after the fact corrective,
redistributive and compensatory mechanisms of money transfer, taxation,
and social entitlement programs. This focus on 'resources outcome rather
than institutional arrangements' and 'equality rather than empowerment
or greatness' (Unger, 2001) is from the perspective of freedom proposed
here, indefensible. It lacks equality of respect and opportunity which
are inherent to deep freedom. At the level of personal freedom, it lacks
the key which the empowerment of the agent to be autonomous, to inquire
and to create; opening up opportunities for her self-construction. It
rather merely gives her the crumbs of the masters and keeps her alive in
hard toil, wage slavery, job insecurity, and dependency on the state's
compensatory redistribution which could be, and have been, weakened or
annulled easily by some predatory capitalists taking power through
elections. At the level of social freedom, money is an extremely weak
social cement. It cannot build sympathy towards the least favored. It
frustrates the giver and humiliates the receiver. It fails to hold a
society together, especially a modern diverse society with less of the
ethnic and culture homogeneity that had once made people sympathize with
those who were (deemed) just like them. But in a large cosmopolitan
country, they perceive high tax as an obligation to pay to those they do
not know, and who seem so different from them. Such resentment can have
serious electoral implications when populist right-wing figures use it
for their agendas.
At best compensation and redistribution are insufficient. Only a form of
direct engagement, through care and volunteering for instance, can
lessen the apprehensions or fears of the other, and create the bonds of
sympathy towards those who seem so different. And this is a prerequisite
for a free society. Because such a society cannot be one divided into
classes that ignore each other's lives, with each class having its
interest and lobbying for them, and caring only for itself; competing
against one another for resources and tearing the social and democratic
fabric apart. A conception of the common -good, art, project, wounds and
disasters- is indispensable for a free society. Meetings open to all,
common projects, recognition, friendships across all those real -and yet
so illusionary- dividing lines are necessary to be free in a society. As
Victor Hugo had reminded us, 'c'est par la fraternité qu'on sauve la
liberté.' (Hugo, 1880-1889. p. 460) The work of going to meet with the
other, listen to her pain, try to understand her thoughts and feelings,
to hear her stories and see from her perspective. This work is an
everyday work for everyone. It is laborious and demanding, but
rewarding. And it is necessary to live in a free society, especially
when it is multicultural. Money redistribution can never replace this
work. Furthermore, compensatory redistribution alienates those who pay
for people and things they do know little or nothing about. It
concentrates too much power and bureaucracy in the state when it is
precisely the opposite -that is, engagement from below in politics as we
will see at the section on freedom as praxis- that makes us free.
Through such praxis and experimentation with ideas and projects, we get
to better know each others and the world, but also ourselves. We get to
make informed decisions and try alternatives for future structures in
the kind of society we want and choose together to inhabit. Based on
this knowledge, we get to build23 together step by step the structures
and institutions that suits us, that respect and nourish our freedom.
Instead of this, what mostly happens today is that we tacitly accept the
subjection to some contract we have never seen nor signed, and a whole
edifice of existing structures that keep us ruled by the dead (like the
framers of the constitution).
Unger rejects deep equality which is prioritizing the equality of
circumstance or outcome (Unger, 2014. p.317). Deep equality converges
with shallow equality in according primacy to equality of circumstance,
but diverges from it in rejecting the institutional arrangements of the
market economy.
For him, only equality of respect and of opportunity should be
guaranteed, but these are inherent to deep freedom. As for the market
economy, he argues there are so many versions of it. Rejecting the
current one does not lead him to reject all possible forms of market
economy. (Unger, 2001. p.480-491)
What he proposes is deep freedom which combines an effort to lift up
ordinary humanity with a program of institutional experimentation and
reconstruction. In other words, it is a mixture of revolutionary reforms
that brings immediate improvement in the lives of individuals and groups
here and now as well as a long term project of radical transformation in
the quality of the structures. (unger, 2014. p.290-340) Unger rejects
contemporary progressives common assumption that all of the heresies
that can be developed and applied against the universal orthodoxy should
be local heresies. And according to this view, the local heresies are
created from elements of the universal orthodoxy and variations of
deviations required by the egalitarian commitments of the progressives
and suitable only to the local context. Unger rejects this assumption.
For him, a universal orthodoxy (and he is thinking of the dominant
neoliberalism) can only be effectively combated and successfully
replaced by universalizing heresies; such as liberalism and socialism
were in the XIX century. In this, Unger shares the view of thinkers like
J.S. Mill or Karl Marx --whose ideas he otherwise disagrees with-- that
the content of the heresies, the believes about alternatives, should not
in principle be restricted to any particular place. Mill and Marx have
not presented their proposals to Britain and Germany, respectively, but
to the world.
Unger's perspective is at odds with Miller's for whom political the
heresies can only be local. That is the theorist must be guided by
political feasibility, and should never propose something that cannot
command sufficient political support to be adopted. (Miller, 2008.
p.29-48)
But the question is not whether political theory should be Utopian or
for the earthlings. For political philosophy exists by and grow through
these kind of contradictions, as we discussed in methods. Thus, we do
not progress attempting choosing one side or the other. The question is
how to combine both parts, because both are real; and both have grounds
in the human condition. The issue is not whether we recognize the
context and make our political theory based on it for there is no escape
from that. Contexts should be our points of departure, but not our
goals. Because we often need to smash these contexts. Similarly, the
point is not whether we should think of utopias, but how we do it. If
utopia is possible world far from what exists then thinking about it is
a part of this field, provided we argue for mechanisms to get from here
to there, to the world as it could and should be, for we must do that if
we have any longing for peace and justice that the majority of humanity
lacks today.
The whole point of political theory is carrying the work of the
context-smashing imagination from philosophy, anthropology, sociology,
and history into politics; it is breaking the frozen status-quo of the
structures for the sake of a better future for the human family as a
whole. And doing so by living in a certain way in the present; a way of
beings who refuse to be defined by the context in which they find
themselves, by their social roles, and by the rules established by the
dead.
Political theory should be an area of imagination for a universal
project of emancipation. Diverse experiments, transformative play and
revolutionary thought connected to specific needs and aspirations can be
carried into series of local concrete projects. These can test, refine,
and revise aspects of this universal project. In other words, political
theory aims at bringing into existence a vision, a set of thoughtful and
coherent ideas of what collectivity can and could become and then to
experiment these ideas at the different levels of organization (groups,
associations, unions university... etc.). There will be then a constant
dialectic in this process between the ideas and experiments on one hand
and the ultimate vision on the other hand which may and should lead to
changes in the vision. Because first we do not know enough about human
nature to sketch a complete and coherent vision. (Foucault & Chomsky,
2006. p.2-45). Second because there is a very high likelihood of defects
in any vision. Third, because there is no single vision that can
accommodate every principle and value ; that
can exhaust the infinite self and infinite humanity. And fourth because
a detailed vision is not enough flexible to adapt to the diversity of
groups and societies and is thus likely to be oppressive.
In the the vast and widening space between the world as it is and the
world as it should be, political theory has many functions in these
territories. Some of us work close to what exist, others too far from
what exist. And yet others refuse both ideal theories and feasibility
(closeness to what exist) as a criterium for realism. They are torn
apart between a world where they do not belong, but exists. And the
world they hope to bring forth, and that is yet to exist, but you can
see glimpses of it here and there.
The thinkers-militants in this work are in that 3rd group. They are
extreme realists who do not confuse feasibility with conformity. They
see that a fundamental change will have to overcome so much and is not
going to be easily achieved but they have not despaired of the
possibility of radical transformation to a more humane and just world.
As we get closer to a better world, political theory preoccupation and
problems will change. So to the extent we have some success, the
problems will become narrower in scope, though perhaps deeper.
Political thought is a dialectic between vision and goals. In its
attempt to imagine alternative and better ways of organizing social
life, it does not overlook the reality of the world here and now. To the
contrary it must understand it and explicate it, but a part of this
understanding comes through a vision of what it should or could become
as well as through the political perturbation to the current state of
affairs and the incursions into the regions of the adjacent possible. As
Unger remarks, understanding a state of affairs is knowing what it might
become under certain provocation or change. (Unger, 2001, p.253) This is
exactly another was to state Sartre's dialectic between praxis and the
practico-inert in history. And Marx's claim* that philosophers have
hitherto attempted to understand the world, the task is to change it.
(Engels, 1976. p.65) He is correct because without at least attempting
to change it, we cannot develop any deep understanding. It is not just
by learning and thinking and discussing that you understand such complex
matters ; it also through getting in trouble, protesting, contesting,
civil disobedience. It is through struggling with structures, with
traditions and ideologies, states' bureaucracies, laws, and social
customs that you enlarge and correct your understanding. Engagement with
social movements and civil society is required to understand what exists
and develop ideas about what should change and your own vision. We will
return to this in freedom as commitment and as politics of emancipation.
This becomes clearer when reading Unger whose political adventures and
disappointments in Brazil have been essential in the development of the
depth of his social, legal and political thought . In the real world,
profound changes in structures usually only happens in response to
severe crises; war or economic collapse. (Unger, 2001. p.313) For the
political theorist, this deeper understanding and revolutionary change
need not wait for a crisis. They can and should happen through her
imagination, which replaces crises, anticipates them and thus hopefully
contributes to averting their materialization. It is true that ideas
alone cannot change the world, but it also impossible to change the
world without ideas. And developing these ideas comes through
reflection, research, analysis, deliberations...etc. These procedures
increase our understanding an thus constitute a way to diminish the
probability that our intervention make things worse than before. Other
ways to decrease that probability is humility, the diversity of input,
and the experimental approach to politics. Such caution -pending more
understanding and knowledge- is de rigueur when the consequences of our
action are decisive, the degree of uncertainty is too high, and the
experience of the subject (or group) is limited.
Now, what does the conception of freedom defended offer that is absent
in contemporary political theory? The conception of freedom I defend
here differs from contemporary political theory in the following ways:
I. It sees freedom simultaneously as possible only within history, and
as struggling against history.
As Engels noted, ''les hommes font leur histoire eux-mĂŞmes mais dans un
milieu donné qui les conditionne.'' (Sartre, 1985, p. 60) In other
words, it rejects determinism, but insists on the weight of history for
any future project, and on what counter-finality which are the monstrous
unintended consequences, in history, of repetitive actions that reifies
human agents and frustrate their goals. (Sartre, 1985. p102)
II. It sees social conditioning and the practico-inert in a constant
dialectical struggle with freedom and praxis. As humans, we are also
made by the movement of history (i.e. those particular events that led
to the present) since it determines our situation at birth (in a
particular era, class, nation, religion, and culture) which in turn
determines the conditions of possibilities for each of us. But neither
this situation in which we find ourselves, nor our rigidified form of
the self, the character, are necessarily a destiny. They are not so
precisely because of freedom.
III. This work sees freedom as a multidimensional concept, contested at
every level by diverse ideologies. In fact, its meaning differs from one
ideology to another because of its relation to other concepts (such as
equality), and whether it is a core or a peripheral concept within an
ideology. (Freeden, 1996)
IV. It attempts to ground freedom in an ontological conception of
consciousness as intersubjective. (Sartre, 1991). This will be discussed
later.
V. It sees freedom and responsibility as directly proportional. The more
you have one, the more you have of the other. And vice versa. Hence,
Sartre's 'condamné à être libre' (Sartre, 1946). It follows that the
moral responsibility one carries for a decision, choice or action is
proportional to their degree of freedom.
The multidimensional conception neither starts nor ends with the
individual. But, according to the dialectical method, is circular. From
consciousness with its social and individualistic tendencies to dyadic
relations to groups and movements and societies, and humanity.. At each
level, a dimension of freedom faces obstacles as well as support,
dangers and possibilities, setbacks or progress.
VI. Just as freedom is contested conceptually between ideologies, it is
contested in relationships, social life, policies and so on. For
instance, in the practical politics of neoliberalism, freedom is
disfigured as it is turned into seriality. In such a situation, a free
community is not possible. Instead, we have social atoms that occupies
social stations, either because they have no desire but to occupy a
place or because such station had been prescribed to them. This happens
in serialization, a Satrean notion we will return to.
This project could be read through this lens: how our understanding and
conception of freedom translates into a social and political reality.
And in reverse, how society and practical politics offer conceptual and
argumentative problems of freedom that political theory could work
through.
Freedom and morality of history:
I hope this work contributes in the rehabilitation of a morality of
history (which is beyond our scope here). A morality that is neither
neither cynical in its realism nor naive in quickly universalizing.
Because understanding concrete freedom leads to neither of these, but
rather to a commitment without hope. Since the latter is a result of
actions. Now, how could a work on freedom open a way for a morality of
history? Since freedom is the source and basis of a moral life, in
grounding freedom in situation24, this work grounds ethics in history.
For Sartre, the concrete situation always leads to history. This is not
to say that history makes ethics, but rather that any ethical choice has
to be thought, made and evaluated within the possibilities available in
the particular present worldwide historical conjecture (not in the
particular tradition, religion, society or culture) rather than with a
reference to an absolute good or some universal value. In other words,
the moral comes out of the political.
Let us take the example of Sartre decision to be a 'compagnon de route'
of the communists to illustrate this morality of history. Sartre is
often condemned for his four year communist adventure as a 'compagnon de
route' of the French communist party which was ossified, following the
authoritarian state socialism of the East. But the choice he has made
can only be evaluated in the particular situation which has made
neutrality -between an imperial capitalist America and an repressive
ossified USSR- impossible for him. Because he had tried the
alternatives, including trying and failing to sustain a political party
-he had founded- to the left of the French communist party; le
Rassemeblement DĂ©mocratique RĂ©volutionnaire (RDR). He also had to take
sides because his aim was freeing the proletariat. And all the workers
then considered the Communist Party as their representative so there was
no possible way of being involved in the politics of emancipation25
without supporting that party. He also had to take sides, and this was
the precipitating event, when the French State arbitrarily arrested the
communist party leader in its widening and unjust persecution of
communism. Nevertheless, despite all these factors, he still took a
critical stand towards the party, never adhering to it. But accompanying
it in it struggle while criticizing it. If these were the known facts,
(but keeping in mind all the unknown facts then, when the decision was
made in 1952, which may be known now) and if in addition we must take a
stand, and not taking a stand is also a choice (which Sartre considered
as an escape from freedom, 'lâcheté'), and if he chose freely then that
particular choice is a moral one, assuming he takes responsibility for
it. This example shows what is mean by a morality of history.26 As we
will see in the freedom as a commitment has to start from the givens of
the situation, and not start from an ideal or from the world as we wish.
Some anarchists found their conception of freedom on their ethics. This
leads them to overlook some serious potential and real conflicts,
because the dominant ethics around them is too different, too divergent
from theirs. Other anarchists found their ethics on a conception of
freedom. The latter are close to the conception we defend here. Freedom
as a commitment, as emancipatory and revolutionary politics, and in the
Common, which does not fall into the problem of overlooking the
conflicts based on divergent conceptions of ethics. This is because
there is no moral value prior to freedom-in-situation, but also because
the ethics that comes out of it is carved out within the current
society, with its inequalities, struggles, contradictions...etc.; not an
ethics for parallel system to it. It is not an utopia. It is not an
imagined community with absolute freedom and absolute love that is
disconnected from this world. This is why the construction of my thesis
goes progressively from neoliberal freedom through commitment and
resistance to injustice in emancipatory politics to the Common. It
cannot start from the latter.
We adhere neither to determinism nor to freedom as an abstraction, but
always to freedom-in-situation. Throughout this work, in whatever
dimension of freedom, I am thinking of freedom-grappling with the
practico-inert all the way, defining the self and humanity in this
contest, like the worker Sartre describes:
''Si la société fait la personne, la personne, par un retournement
analogue Ă celui qu'Auguste Comte
nommait le passage à la subjectivité, fait la société. Sans son avenir,
une société n'est qu'un amas de
matériel, mais son avenir n'est rien que le projet de soi-même que font,
par delà l'état de choses présent, les millions d'hommes qui la
composent. L'homme n'est qu'une situation : un ouvrier n'est pas libre
de penser ou de sentir comme un bourgeois; mais pour que cette situation
soit un homme, tout un homme, il faut qu'elle soit vécue et dépassée
vers un but particulier. En elle-même, elle reste indifférente tant
qu'une liberté humaine ne la charge pas d'un certain sens : elle n'est
ni tolérable, ni insupportable tant qu'une liberté ne s'y résigne pas,
ne se rebelle pas contre elle, c'est-Ă -dire tant qu'un homme ne se
choisit pas en elle, en choisissant sa signification. Et c'est alors
seulement, à l'intérieur de ce choix libre, qu'elle se fait déterminante
parce qu'elle est surdéterminée. Non, un ouvrier ne peut pas vivre en
bourgeois; il faut, dans l'organisation sociale d'aujourd'hui, qu'il
subisse jusqu'au bout sa condition de salarié; aucune évasion n'est
possible, il n'y a pas de recours contre cela. Mais un homme n'existe
pas à la manière de l'arbre ou du caillou : il faut qu'il se fasse
ouvrier. Totalement conditionné par sa classe, son salaire, la nature de
son travail, conditionné jusqu'à ses sentiments, jusqu'à ses pensées,
c'est lui qui décide du sens de sa condition et de celle de ses
camarades, c'est lui qui, librement, donne au prolétariat un avenir
d'humiliation sans trĂŞve ou de conquĂŞte et de victoire, selon qu'il se
choisit résigné ou révolutionnaire. Et c'est de ce choix qu'il est
responsable. Non point libre de ne pas choisir : il est engagé, il faut
parier, L'abstention est un choix. Mais libre pour choisir d'un mĂ´me
mouvement son destin, le destin de tous les hommes et la valeur qu'il
faut attribuer à l'humanité. Ainsi se choisit-il à la fois ouvrier et
homme, tout en conférant une signification au prolétariat.'' (Sartre,
1948. p.27-28)
The hope is that in knowing more about the practico-inert, and the
obstacles to freedom in history, we can anticipate better and deal
better with these obstacles so we could become freer. Because what
matters most, personally, is how to realize concrete freedom for all,
here and now in ways that open up more concrete freedom for later.
Neoliberalism is only discussed because, as a concentrated form of
unaccountable power, it remains the gravest obstacle to a project of
concrete freedom for ordinary humanity. Nationalism is another one, but
it is beyond the scope of my thesis. In some instances it is a vicious
reactionary (sometimes neofascist) way of resisting global governance
with its unelected bureaucrats, an the extreme inequalities and
disasters it has brought to the populations it continues to keep under
the dictatorship of globalized financial Capital. Hence, Badiou's remark
that if no alternative to neoliberalism is offered, we will inevitably
have to contend with fascism (Badiou, 2017). For if the electorate come
to believe that the state cannot eradicate inequalities and has no
control over over anything but the borders then they will concentrate on
the candidates who promise them to protect the nation, the identity and
culture, and to prevent the economic situation from getting worse
through high immigration.
Sometimes neoliberalism and nationalism merge as we observe in the
current Trump regime27. They are compatible though constant in-fighting,
incoherence, and firings are partly explained by the rivalry of these
ideologies to suppress the other, and come to determine on its own the
path of the regime.
This leads us to the question of why a conception of freedom is
important to politics. And what does our conception offers to practical
politics.
Freedom in practical politics
''Dès 1760, des colons américains défendaient l'esclavage au nom de la
liberté : si le colon, citoyen et pionnier, veut acheter un nègre,
n'est-il pas libre ? Et, l'ayant acheté, n'est-il pas libre de s'en
servir ? L'argument est resté. En 1947, le propriétaire d'une piscine
refuse d'y admettre un capitaine juif, héros de la guerre. Le capitaine
Ă©crit aux journaux pour se plaindre. Les journaux publient sa
protestation et concluent : « Admirable pays que l'Amérique. Le
propriétaire de la piscine était libre d'en refuser l'accès à un Juif.
Mais le Juif, citoyen des États-Unis, était libre de protester dans la
presse. Et la presse, libre comme on sait, mentionne sans prendre parti
le pour et le contre. Finalement, tout le monde est libre. » Le seul
ennui c'est que le mot de liberté qui recouvre ces acceptions si
différentes -et cent autres- soit employé sans qu'on croie devoir
prévenir du sens qu'on lui donne en chaque cas.'' (Sartre, 1948. p330)
An idea of freedom forms the basis of many moral theories as well as
most political theories, doctrines and democratic political regimes.
Such an idea is often at once the source, the cause of action, laws,
changes and policies as well as their the result or end goal they seek.
So much so that it is impossible to understand someone's (or a group's,
party's...etc.) given position on most social or political issues
without knowing the underlying conception of freedom of these
interlocutors, be they neutral, opponents or supporters of that
position. Nevertheless, this effort of understanding the conception of
freedom of -say the anti-immigrant's or the gun right voter's/militant's
or her opponent's- that underlies or motivates or justify their position
(on migration, gun rights...etc) is rarely taken seriously. In fact,
such understanding is often absent. Instead of trying to understand how
they get to a position (which may lead to their conception of freedom),
people mostly care about the position in itself. In other words, they
focus to much on the result than on the process; the reasoning behind
coming to that position or result (of defending or attacking such and
such policy). They care about whether they agree with them or not, but
not the reasons that lead them to take that position. In fact, sometimes
there is a deeper agreement between 2 people that do no hold the same
position on a given issue than between 2 people who agree28. For
instance, I would agree with an international relations realist that the
US military should have never invaded Iraq. But for totally different
reasons. For that realist, the reasons are based on an evaluation of
costs and dangers versus strategic importance and gains in terms of
national security. As for me, I think they should not get involved
because international law prohibits it, not to mention all the moral and
humanitarian reasons.
One reason the effort of inquiring about the source of a position or an
opinion is not undertaken is the existence of implicit conceptions of
freedom that are taken for granted. For the political theorist, this is
a problem that demands their intervention. For these conceptions should
be made explicit. They should be brought in daylight, discussed,
dissected and analyzed in order to begin communicating clearly between
allies as well as across classes and indeed across all social and
political divisions (ideologies, parties, movements, and so on). My
argument here that this work is indispensable to make tangible progress,
relief suffering, and resolve social conflicts.
This is because these implicit conceptions have been either corrupted29
(as in the case of the conservatives conception of freedom with a
neoliberal wing and a nationalist or ethnocentric wing) or otherwise
reduced to formal, though still important, basic and civil liberties as
in the case of many other political forces like mainstream parties, and
liberal egalitarian theorists. These theorists do not take the question
of power seriously. And yet power, be it private or state, especially
when concentrated is detrimental to freedom and equality.
Today, in the flawed democratic liberal democracies of the West, the
problem is less civil liberties since these have been already achieved
(though always threatened and under attack) then what they actually mean
for each of us, and for all as a collective. And how this inquiry and
debate into their meaning (which is still found wanting) may lead those
engaged in it to realize for themselves that these civil liberties
cannot be really meaningful unless the social, economic, educational and
environmental rights accompany them. And that these rights should be
thought for all humanity. Because by their nature they do not recognize
class, state, and others boundaries just as the most serious problems
humanity faces (epidemics, climate change, nuclear war, poverty) do not.
So the solutions cannot be confined to only a part of humanity. Hence,
any politics of liberation must be transnational. That is not
to say, of course, that no local , regional or national projects are
valuable, but that they should always be linked to, compatible with,
inspired by, supportive of, and synergistic with an international vision
and goals. Most Americans thought they could be free and live in a free
country when millions of their fellows were not, because of the color of
their skin. And today, many think that we could be free by building
walls and barriers around us and guarding them with guns so that we do
not see that so many behind these walls are not free. What then is left
of that freedom we have within the walls? What meaning can we give to
it? Can we still continue to enjoy and value this freedom we are denying
to so many though no fault of their own? Can we go on living free in a
world of unfreedom?
These questions are inescapable in a personal and a collective quest for
freedom. They are inescapable regardless of the past and our
responsibility, of colonialism and its new forms, of leaders of the
'free world' allying with dictators and shipping weapons for them to
fight proxy civil wars. Because freedom anywhere is affected by
unfreedom somewhere. This is why we insist that an emancipation is for
all humanity.
And when we begin to look at these inescapable questions, they lead to
internationalism. It is not a good solution for MĂ©lenchon to counter the
EU disastrous bureaucracy with a retreat to the national (like LePen).
Sovereignty-seeking leftists will always be beaten by their nationalist
right-wing counterparts. Because they are more radical (in the other
direction), they do benefit from support funds from many reactionaries
(Putin, for instance, in this case), Because they are playing their
favorite game, on their field, and with long experience to bear.
Within domestic politics, one should not therefore prioritize the
acquired liberties more than those which are still not guaranteed and
which affects a person daily life far more than civil rights. One should
seek social liberties while still defending civil ones. There is no
contradiction here. Because to really benefit from civil liberties, one
must first acquire economic and social ones. For Sartre, this means
contesting the ''caractère abstrait des droits de la « démocratie »
bourgeoise non pas qu'il [l'intellectuel] veuille les supprimer mais
parce qu'il veut les compléter par les droits concrets de la démocratie
socialiste, en conservant, dans toute démocratie, la vérité
fonctionnelle de la liberté.''(Sartre, 1972. p82). What use is freedom
of expression to the hungry? What use is voting right for the homeless?
This functional truth of freedom is the quantity of choices, of
opportunities and their quality, and above all the fulfillment of basic
needs including social and educational ones. A life not determined by
the tyranny of these needs is central to the understanding of this
material and practical multidimensional conception of freedom we defend.
Therefore, they should always be prioritized over non essential needs
and desires. What we have is often the opposite, the vital needs of most
of humanity are often sacrificed in the name of the freedom (i.e.
luxury) of a tiny minority.
A contribution this work hopes is bringing this problem of building
everything on an implicit conception of freedom (that is itself
questionable) to attention through 3 messages.
One, we ignore the contestability of conceptual meaning at our peril.
Yes, the terms of political discourse are not exactly models of
precision. There is no way to start a discussion or a political or
policy debate with a precise meaning of a political concept or value. In
part, because the moral outlook that differs between the participants is
influencing their understanding of political concepts. However, it is
part of a political theorist/philosopher work to show what clear
definitions of these terms and conceptions are possible. And to further
follow where each the different conceptions of a term leads in terms of
practical politics; policies, law, projects, consequences, structures,
amendments and so on. For we cannot overcome our vast divisions and
extreme social and political polarization let alone hope to solve some
of our social, economic and political troubles unless we know what the
others (be they friends, neutrals, allies or opponents) are speaking
about when they use a particular concept. If we do not know their
meaning of use, if each is using the concept in their own way without
knowing what their interlocutors mean by that same concept then debates
are likely to be endlessly sterile, frustrating, and lead to dead ends
at best. At worst, they will make enemies out of possible friends,
allies or people between whom there may be a peaceful coexistence.
Second, once we start delving into the meaning of the concepts we use,
and I only focus on one here, that of freedom, we begin to see not only
the diversity of meanings we attribute to them, but also the emphasize
we put on one aspect or another, how the meaning changes depending on
its relation to other concepts, the ambiguities we may hold...etc. We
begin to understand the logic (if there is any) behind someone's
position on a particular question as we trace this position back to
their understanding of a conception of freedom that is, as a value,
pushes them to adopt such an opinion. It maybe then be even possible to
show them that their position on a given issue is far off or
incompatible from their avowed values. Or that they defend their
position on the basis of freedom, but it has nothing to do with freedom
(according to how they define); perhaps it has to do with another value.
In fact, this is how Socrates proceeded. He would not attempt to
convince anyone of anything. But through his dialectic, the method of
knowledge through questioning and dialogue, he will bring his
interlocutor to see the contradictions in their reasoning. He will bring
them to see the problem on their own and admit they did not really know
as they thought they did. So changing the position of someone from
within herself, as Socrates used to do, is far better than pushing
around interlocutors in arguments.
Third, we discover that some of our conceptions as in that of freedom
have been hollowed out or have become distorted beyond recognition from
the conceptual and practical meaning given to them originally by, say
the liberals and socialists (as well as anarchists) of the XVIII, XIX
centuries. For all of these thinkers, the overriding objective was not
property or profit or doing as one wishes. It was not equality, but a
larger life for the ordinary man and woman, and the instrument was the
institutional reconstruction of society. (Unger, 2014. p.294) The
problem with the proposals of these liberals and socialists are twofold.
Their conception of a larger life was based on an aristocratic view of
self possession, and their institutional proposals were far too
detailed, making them too dogmatic like blueprints, as if you must have
the entire indivisible package or nothing at all. Today, political
theory needs to go back and rescue their insights while avoiding these 2
flaws. By being more inclusive, seeking an emancipation for all
humanity. And less dogmatic, avoiding blueprints altogether, and
favoring musical notes instead. (Unger, 2014. p.294)
In the preface, we have started with how the initial question has led to
this topic. In the introduction, we have attempted to situate this
project in relation to contemporary liberal political theory. The
divergence between the conception of freedom is contemporary liberal
political theory and ours led us to inquire about the nature of the
practice of a political theory. After that we have seen the
peculiarities of the conception of freedom I propose and why it is
important to have an explicit concept in our debates and policies. We
have then briefly discussed how this conception is important for a
morality of history; in our view, the most interesting one Sartre has
elaborated, and the most relevant to freedom as commitment, to
revolution and emancipatory politics. Finally, we have shown how the
conception of freedom defended may contribute to practical politics and
in which ways it is similar and in other ways different from that of the
XIX century liberals and socialists.
Now before criticizing the distortion of freedom in neoliberalism and
offering our alternative multidimensional conception of freedom, we will
summarize the content, the substance, of this alternative conception of
freedom I advocate here.
Overview of the content of the proposed multidimensional concept of
freedom
This thesis proposes a conception of freedom deployed through 3
synergistic levels that make the core parts of this work. First, the
ethical commitment an agent. Second, the praxis of emancipatory and
revolutionary politics in social movements and various groups. Third,
the Common. The focus at each level is on a particular dimension of
freedom. Though these dimensions are different, in our view they can be
mutually reinforcing. Thus freedom is deployed:
I. At the personal level. Freedom as an ethical commitment of the agent.
II. At the group and the Movement level. Freedom as praxis resisting the
structures and institutions of power, in particular those the
neoliberalism of the corporate-state.
This praxis therefore takes the form of emancipatory or revolutionary
politics -depending on a given country particular situation- where
Freedom is deployed in resistance to oppression, hierarchy, and
domination30. Freedom in the insurrection of the groupe-en-fusion, in
social struggles, in revolution and the emancipation from various
repressive and anti-human practices, structures and relations. The aim
is what Sartre, following Kant, calls the Kingdom of Ends where no human
being is means anymore. (Sartre, 2005). In Sartre's morality of history,
the goal is becoming human from a condition of sub-humanity. (Sartre,
2015)
Here, therefore, we deal with the problem of means and ends which is at
the intersection of morality and politics. At this level, freedom is
dealing with the organization, decision making which are necessary to
transform society, to realize its vision of the world.
III. At the level of communities, communes and their eventual union into
federations. Freedom in the Common. For Hardt and Negri, the common is
what has open access and governed through democratic decision-making
(Negri, Hardt, 2009, 2017), as opposed to private property monopoly over
access and exclusive decision making, a situation detrimental to the
vast majority of people's freedom. For them both private property and
public property should be replaced by the common.
The previous dimension (II) is circumstantial, temporary, located,
oriented towards a particular enemy, question or problem. While in
thinking the common, we inquire whether this particular emergence of
group freedom can be the basis of a universal. Can freedom go beyond
groups and movements to a stable institutional form? Is it possible that
beyond the current system we build a form of society that embodies
freedom (in work, production, relationships, education...etc.) and also
resists its own ossification, its slipping into the practico-inert? Can
freedom be stable in time and in space and for a large society?
The idea of the Common attempts to be a concrete answer to these
questions.
It is how that freedom conquered earlier from power, through some form
of struggle, can be maintained once the external enemy or the cause that
united a group or made a movement cohesive is gone, capitulated or
destroyed.
There is a dialectical relation between subjectivity and
social/political structures where subjectivity is formed, shaped,
conditioned by structures. But also being transformed in resisting them.
The structures attempt to make and maintain subjectivities that
perpetuate them.
The first level is about the becoming of an intersubjectivity that
becomes free in a commitment, the second about a revolutionary
subjectivity acting within a group action, seeking to free itself and
others along through the the practice of politics. The third level is
about building with others a humane society from below. Levels II and
III are also about how the group, the movement and perhaps institutions
could be built in such a way so that they could, in return, support and
nourish that kind of revolutionary subjectivity that makes them. Again
the dialectics! Just as a free society nurtures free individuals and is
thus indispensable to personal freedom, only free individuals can create
such a society as a milieu in which the freedom (sustenance,
development, stimulation, joy and creativity) of each is the condition
for the freedom of all.
I think the complementarity between the 3 levels is a condition for a
better understanding and a practice of freedom. One that precisely
brings these dimensions together. An articulation of these 3 dimensions
is today mostly either absent or implied conflictual. (as when the
individual is seen as necessarily opposed to the collective). A central
of aim of this study is to argue and instantiate all sorts of ways where
these dimensions are not conflictual, but synergistic. It is argued that
the particular conception and practice of freedom defended here makes
the lessening of conflict within a society, and the logical and ethical
coherence between these 3 dimensions of freedom possible, and even
likely.
Part I: Critique of Neoliberalism
The evisceration and corruption of freedom:
Beginning in the closing decades of the XX century, neoliberalism31 as
an elite ''class hegemony and as dominance of the US'' (Duménil & Lévy,
2011. p.7) has embarked on ''the destruction of the social order'' of
post-WWII to restore ''the most violent features of capitalism.''
(Duménil & Lévy, 2004. p.1). What interest us here from the perspective
of freedom is that the ideology of neoliberalism took freedom to be its
alpha and omega, and yet its conception of freedom was imposed on the
populations (by the forces of the state, contract, corporations,
military, supra national institutions...etc.) Furthermore, it is a
conception that has been an anathema to freedom for the vast majority of
humankind. Now, every society has always a made up ideology to
legitimate inequalities and privileges (Piketty, 2019. p.13). And
neoliberalism has been used with great success to subvert the quest for
freedom that had animated the civil rights as well as the social
struggles of the 1960s all over the world to reverse the historical wins
for a more decent, humane and fair society.32
The total corruption of liberalism's conception of freedom is thus
relatively recent, dating back to the 1970s. Till the mid XX century,
liberalism conception of freedom, as the liberal philosopher Dewey puts
it, was concrete, emphasizing the liberation of the multitude from
repression and materiel insecurity: ''During the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries it meant liberation from despotic dynastic
rule. A century later it meant release of industrialists from inherited
legal customs that hampered the rise of new forces of production. Today,
it signifies liberation from material insecurity and from the coercions
and repressions that prevent multitudes from participation in the vast
cultural resources that are at hand.'' (Dewey, 1963. P. 48)
By the corruption of liberalism's conception of freedom I mean that it
has maintained the conclusion of early liberals -namely limiting the
state intervention in economic and social life- unchanged without going
into the reasons that had lead these early liberals to this conclusion,
resulting in a total discrepancy between ends and means.
If we actually go through these reasons today, in such a different
society than theirs, we will come to a very different conclusion33 For
in the XVIII and XIX centuries, when these theorists elaborated
liberalism, the threats to freedom and the source of repression was
mainly state power; the rulers then being then totally undemocratic.
While the dangers of the state remain today, to the extent that a state
like Sweden or even France is under some measure of democratic
control34, it is far less threatening than predatory unaccountable and
undemocratic forces like multinational corporations35. Thus in limiting
state power today (mainly the welfare part of the state) while freeing
these extremely powerful supranational predators (which are treated by
law like private citizens), neoliberalism has crushed all other
freedoms. In the West, while the danger of authoritarian rifts is
possible and in fact happening, the problem with the state goes beyond
its concentration of power and violence. The problem is its mere
existence. Because its very raison d'ĂŞtre, that which makes it an enemy,
is the defense of extreme inequalities, in particular private property.
As Adam Smith noted: “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for
the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of
the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against
those who have none at all.” (Smith, 1857. P. 299). The neoliberal state
is thus one that has all of its democratic, welfare, and environmental
protection elements reduced bit by bit to nil while its raison d'ĂŞtre
and all of its dangers (protection private property, police repression,
military adventures, surveillance) increase exponentially. Wilhem von
Humboldt, one of the earliest liberals, writing The Limits of State
Action in the 1780’s and early 1790’s, criticized the paternalist state
encroaching on individual autonomy. He contrasted state constitution and
national community, noting that; ''it is strictly speaking the latter -
the free cooperation of the members of the nation - which secures all
those benefits for which men longed when they formed themselves into
society''. For Humboldt thought that ''a community of enlightened men -
fully instructed in their truest instances, and therefore mutually
well-disposed and closely bound together'' was ''infinitely to be
preferred to any State arrangements.'' (Marshall, 2008. p.153-5).
However, writing in the XVIII century, he had no idea how capitalism
would develop. He could not have predicted that multinational
corporations; entities more powerful than most states with trillions of
dollars in capital. His liberalism therefore is not concerned about the
threat to freedom from the private power of these corporations, and
their ultra rich owners. In fact, for him all private citizens were
pretty much equal in power; having no idea that in our era, a huge
corporation would have the rights of a citizen before the law. So when
someone today insists on equal basic liberties, he insists that the
judiciary treats individuals and corporations as equals which is absurd
since almost no individuals can begin to match a corporation power and
financial capacity to attack, hire the best lawyers and win in court.
Hence contemporary liberalism, even with the best intentions, fails by
its own standards to guarantee the rights of all. Because insisting on
treating 2 extremely unequal individuals equally is injustice. Humboldt
could not predict “that democracy with its model of equality of all
citizens before the law and liberalism with its right of man over his
own person both would be wrecked on the realities of capitalist economy.
'' (Rudolf Rocker, 1998. P.23) Therefore, in maintaining Humboldt
conclusion of limiting state power -in a society so different from his-
while ignoring the reasoning behind his conclusion, classical liberal
conception of freedom has been corrupted into the neoliberal one. While
neoliberalism is not a focus of this work, it remains the bitter enemy
lurking behind. It also represents the anathema to all 3 dimension of
the conception of freedom. From this perspective, it is useful to see my
project through the lens of its opposite; the most powerful force today
preventing a free humanity, the scourge of neoliberalism.
The worldwide hegemony of neoliberalism is fast approaching the half
century mark. Since neoliberalism is incompatible with democracy36 as
its founding theoreticians know, their norm is freedom. If you look
carefully to the writing of Hayek and Friedman, they never call for
democracy to the contrary as we will see later. But the question is
freedom for whom? The conception of freedom that neoliberalism calls for
is a most distorted and pathological one. For neoliberals, freedom is
that of ''private property owners, businesses, multinational
corporations, and financial capital.'' (Harvey, 2008). For Hayek,
economic freedom is a prerequisite to personal and political freedom.
(Hayek, 2001. p.13). His conception of freedom is restricted to the
individual level. Similarly, Friedman conception of freedom is based on
an economic freedom37 that is for him an end in itself as well as a
requirement for political freedom. (Friedman, 2002. p. 8). Economic
freedom for him is that of that of a competitive free market. And
Political freedom is the negative freedom of the atomic individual from
state coercion. (Friedman, 2005. p. 15) For the Chicago School founders,
freedom was only limited to that ''of corporations to conduct their
affairs as they wished.'' (Mirowski and Plehwe, 2009). Freedom so
defined leads neoliberals, to fear any popular forms of democracy and
aim for a censitary suffrage. (Piketty, 2019. p.904), and following this
logic, they have come to support dictators. Hayek, for instance, said he
prefers ''a liberal dictator to a democratic government lacking in
liberalism.'' This was in an interview on one of his visits to Chile to
meet and support the Pinochet military dictatorship. (Biebricher, 2018.
p.74) . Friedman was an advisor to Reagan and to the Chilean dictator in
his neoliberal cuts to social spending and other savageries that
followed the coup. (Klein, 2007. p.7; Biebricher, 2018. p.131). Despite
the perfect experimental conditions in Chile , since no dissent
whatsoever was allowed, the experiment failed miserably. But we have to
realize that the actually existing neoliberalism diverges widely from
its theoretical underpinnings that has been used to justify it. As Wolin
shows, neoliberalism ''was instrumental in proposing a strong
controlling state'' that he then shows how it developed into a
totalitarian one. (Wolin, 2008). In fact actually existing neoliberalism
is socialism for the elites, and predatory capitalism imposed on
everyone else. For in theory, in the name of individual freedom, state
intervention in the economy must cease. All market transactions are
free, and those involved are responsible for the consequences of their
choice. In practice, however, the state has been there all the way to
bail out the banks and corporations after crises; using taxpayer money
and adding the politics of austerity in some places. But the taxpayers
were left to fend for themselves after crises and crashes; as happened
in the last one a dozen years ago. The reason given by the ruling elites
for the discrepancy helping the corporations and letting the population
drown was that the banks and corporations are ''too big to fail'', a
statement which is admitted as an axiom. (Badiou, 2016b. p.24)
Harvey, summarizes some of the grave issues with the neoliberal state.
(Harvey, 2008. p67-70) One is the monopoly of power resulting from
extreme competition whereby richer strong corporations drive out smaller
and mid-sized ones from the market. The fate of the workers of these is
not an issue of course. Two, market failure. Firms driven by the goal of
maximizing profit do whatever it takes to reduce their costs. So they
shed their liabilities outside the market. Harvey points out to the
resulting pollution. A particularly serious consequence resulting in the
destruction of the environment when firms dumb waste and toxic materials
in nature to avoid paying for properly disposing of them. Third, how
powerful players on the market exploit their better access to
information even as neoliberalism in theory still supposes that everyone
has the same access to information. This leads to more and more
concentration of wealth and power. We could add, for instance, that
today 26 individuals have more than 3.8 billion people, according to
Oxfam (Lawson, et al., 2019). Fourth, the belief that technology solves
any problem leads to technological development running amok, that is
''creating new products and new ways of doing things that as yet have no
market (new pharmaceutical products are produced for which new illnesses
have to be invented)'' (Harvey, 2008. p69). Recently, I have asked my
Swiss doctor why my blood pressure is too high (stage I hypertension)
according to the Association of American Cardiologists, but normal (not
even prehypertension) according to him. He pointed out to the market
pressure on the medical professionals and researchers in the US to lower
the threshold for normal blood pressure in order to expand the market.
Because many new drugs and high end technologies have been produced to
treat high blood pressure, and these could be used on the patients only
when they cross the threshold into high pressure. So it must be lowered
in order to make more patients. Fifth, neoliberalism paints a rapacious
human ego where nothing has a value, but everything has a price,
transforming the market economy into a market society. (Sandel, 2013). I
would go further. In effect, disposability as an aim of profit-making
for Capital has gone beyond things to infect relationships. Such that
others have also become disposable objects. The route to this
degradation goes way back, even Marx wrote about it though things have
gone much worse in the past decades: ''Vint enfin un temps oĂą tout ce
que les hommes avaient regardé comme inaliénable devint objet d'échange,
de trafic et pouvait s'aliéner. C'est le temps où les choses mêmes qui
jusqu'alors étaient communiquées, mais jamais échangées; données mais
jamais vendues; acquises, mais jamais achetées - vertu, amour, opinion,
science, conscience, etc., - oĂą tout enfin passa dans le commerce. C'est
le temps de la corruption générale, de la vénalité universelle, ou, pour
parler en termes d'Ă©conomie politique, le temps oĂą toute chose, morale
ou physique, étant devenue valeur vénale, est portée au marché pour être
appréciée à sa plus juste valeur'' (Marx, 1847. p.7). Indeed,
neoliberals go so far as denying that society exists (Thatcher) claiming
only individuals are real. Harvey notes that in a neoliberal state,
''while individuals are supposedly free to choose, they are not supposed
to choose strong collective institutions.'', snuffing out ''the desire
for a meaningful collective life.'' Harvey concludes that: ''faced with
social movements that seek collective interventions, therefore, the
neoliberal state is itself forced to intervene, sometimes repressively,
thus denying the very freedoms it is supposed to uphold. In this
situation, however, it can marshal one secret weapon: international
competition and globalization can be used to discipline movements
opposed to the neoliberal agenda within individual states. If that
fails, then the state must resort to persuasion, propaganda or, when
necessary, raw force and police power to suppress opposition to
neoliberalism. This was precisely Polanyi’s fear: that the liberal (and
by extension the neoliberal) utopian project could only ultimately be
sustained by resort to authoritarianism. The freedom of the masses would
be restricted in favour of the freedoms of the few'' (Harvey, 2008.
p.70). If we put all the consequences of neoliberalism together, we get
the following. Profit above all, extreme competition, monopolies and
centralization of power, market failures, the destruction of the
environment, the internal police repression of dissidents and we add the
free movement of capital and goods, the privatization of all public
goods and disappearance of the common, financialization of the economy,
the repeated crises, the monstrous inequalities it creates, the
militarization of the domestic repression, and new imperial wars (like
Iraq, Yemen and Libya) to maintain access to Oil and help allied brutal
regimes (like Saudia Arabia, Egypt, and UAE) to quell any resistance to
the consequences of neoliberalism in the Middle East.
The result situation where a large part of humanity is forbidden from
existence. Today billions of people are still denied basic goods, rights
and dignity. Still living in extreme conditions of scarcity and not
allowed from even trying to escape the hell of unlivable swaths of this
planet. But who made these places so? After all, it was not natural
disasters, but human decisions and policies. And is it not a normal and
human reaction to escape an unlivable situation?
The so-called migrants, millions of humans trying to live in dignity,
are not a 'crisis' as the medias and the NGOs parroting the politicians
repeat. Those 'prolétaires nomades' (Badiou, 2019) are not a cause, but
rather an effect of a crisis of planet ravaged by neoliberal greed. The
masters of humankind accept neither to acknowledge these facts, and help
them out nor to treat the original problem, the planet they have
devastated and continue to do so. Instead, they use the patina of
democracy; turning the justice system into a criminal one by enacting
laws to punish anyone who help those trying to escape the hell of war,
poverty, and climate change. In such a situation of reciprocity modified
by scarcity, freedom is not possible. The notion of scarcity is
paramount in Sartre's Critique, because it shows how our planet, run by
neoliberalism transforms our relations with each others as well as
between groups and between nations, and so on.38 Scarcity is not only
that of material resources, but also of time, understanding,
sympathy...etc. For Sartre, violence and wars are made possible by a
particular view of human nature that make our society. The cultivation
of fear of the other happens through soaking this conception (by all
means available into the public conscious) of a competitive, predatory,
and evil human nature from which we must protect ourselves. It says even
though we maybe secure, there is not enough for everyone, not for these
outsiders coming at us anyway, that we must defend ourselves, build
walls, attack preemptively, do whatever it takes to protect ourselves
from those others or we will loose our comforts, prosperity and freedom.
It uses extremely dehumanizing words that turn into attitudes and
violence. This Manichean ethics of good (by definition us) and evil
(them), insiders (those who happen to be of the same color, religion and
nationality) and outsiders can only work if our way of life makes
everything disposable, to be bought and sold on the market; when what
matters most is material possessions (neoliberalism). Because only
material things can be taken by force (Russell, 2009. p.152)39. This
Manichean ethics can only grow in a society ravaged by the neoliberal
idea of freedom. A society where profit for few comes before the vital
needs of many, where everyone is for herself, and no one is responsible
for the other. A society that holds that happiness in an individual
project, that whatever bad happens to a person is their fault, and that
the pecuniary goal determines the kind of relationships with the others.
The horrific result is that we come to see the others at best as
competitors for the same goods, jobs or whatever; at worst, as dangers
to be quickly neutralized or eliminated. In such a ruthless society,
outside of a small circle of family and friends, the choice comes down
to be either a victim or a perpetrator. Even that small circle is not
immune to the extreme egoism that invades the attitudes and feelings of
the neoliberal homo economicus. Sartre notes that scarcity modifies the
basic pure reciprocity with my fellow, turning him into a radical other,
'un contre-homme', holding a death menace since: ''nous comprenons en
gros ses fins (ce sont les nĂ´tres), ses moyens (nous avons les mĂŞmes),
les structures dialectiques de ses actes; mais nous les comprenons comme
si c’étaient les caractères d’une autre espèce, notre double démoniaque.
Rien en effet -ni les grands fauves ni les microbes- ne peut ĂŞtre plus
terrible pour l’homme qu’une espèce intelligente, carnassière, cruelle,
qui saurait comprendre et déjouer l’intelligence humaine et dont la fin
serait précisément la destruction de l’homme. Cette espèce, c’est
Ă©videmment la nĂ´tre se saisissant par tout homme chez les autres dans le
milieu de la rareté[...]Le contre-homme en effet, poursuit la
liquidation des hommes en partageant leurs fins et en adoptant leurs
moyens; la rupture apparaît au moment où cette réciprocité trompeuse
démasque le danger de mort qu’elle recouvre ou, si l'on préfère,
l’impossibilité pour ces hommes engagés dans des liens réciproques de
demeurer tous sur le sol qui les porte et les nourrit.'' (Sartre, 1985.
p.208) Once this scarcity is interiorized, reciprocity is destroyed, and
with it the very possibility of the bonds of fellowship with those who
are seen as outside the group. For we no longer need scarcity anymore to
see the Other as objectively inhuman since their very being has already
become anti-human, and their very labor is seen as famine coming to us.
Scarcity interiorized explains violence through this Manichean vision of
life we find all around us in the world today: ''Et n’allons pas
imaginer que cette impossibilité intériorisée caractérise les individus
subjectivement : tout au contraire, elle rend chacun objectivement
dangereux pour l'Autre et elle met l’existence concrète de chacun en
danger dans celle de l’Autre. Ainsi l’homme est objectivement constitué
comme inhumain et cette inhumanité se traduit dans la praxis par la
saisie du mal comme structure de l’Autre '' (Sartre, 1985. p.208).
Sartre takes the example of nomadic tribes that has been studied by
ethnographers and historians. The result of these studies have contested
historical materialism. Because they showed that the economic motive is
not as essential, and that it is sometimes undetectable. For some of
these tribes have such wealth of resources as all the Savannah is for
them. But the question is not here, he adds, because scarcity does not
have to be explicitly raised: ''ce qu’il y a, c’est que, dans chacune de
ces tribus, l’homme de la rareté rencontre, dans l’autre tribu, l’homme
de la rareté sous l’aspect du contre-homme. Chacun est constitué de
telle sorte par sa lutte contre le monde physique et contre les hommes
(souvent à l’intérieur de son groupe) que l’apparition d’inconnus — en
posant à la fois pour lui le lien d’intériorité et le lien d’extériorité
absolue — lui fait découvrir l’homme sous la forme d’une espèce
étrangère. La force de son agressivité, de sa haine réside dans le
besoin mais il importe peu que ce besoin vienne d’être assouvi : sa
renaissance perpétuelle et l’anxiété de chacun finissent par constituer,
chaque fois qu’une tribu paraĂ®t, ses membres comme la famine venant Ă
l’autre groupe sous forme d’une praxis humaine. Et, dans le combat, ce
n’est pas le simple danger de rareté que chaque adversaire veut détruire
en l’autre, mais c’est la praxis même en tant qu’elle est trahison de
l’homme au profit du contre-homme. Nous considérons donc, au niveau même
du besoin et par le besoin, que la rareté se vit pratiquement par
l’action manichéiste et que l’éthique se manifeste comme impératif
destructif : il faut détruire le mal. C’est à ce niveau également que
l’on doit définir la violence comme structure de l’action humaine sous
le règne du manichéisme et dans le cadre de la rareté'' (Sartre, 1985.
p.208-209). For Sartre, the reason we are unable to overcome scarcity
despite science and technology is that social organization in a
capitalist state turns us into series. His concept of seriality which
refers to individuals as passive social atoms explains our political
impotence40. Each pursuing her own goal along side the others but in
isolation from them, rather than in coordination, cooperation, and
solidarity. In seriality, which is our condition in neoliberalism,
individuals are passive with regard to the external order; the
structures that define and dominate them. Furthermore, individuals are
objectified such as each is replaceable or interchangeable with any
other. Sartre explicates this concept through a French factory where
working conditions were so appalling that the workers called it
'Buchenwald' and yet for 12 years never made a strike because: ''les
forces atomisantes agissaient constamment sur les ouvriers et les
sérialisaient. Un ensemble est dit sériel quand chacun de ses membres,
bien que voisin de tous les autres, demeure seul et se définit par la
pensée du voisin en tant que celui-ci pense comme les autres :
c'est-Ă -dire que chacun est autre que soi et se comporte comme un autre
qui, lui-même, est autre que soi. Les travailleurs énonçaient et
affirmaient la pensée sérielle comme si c'était leur propre pensée, mais
c'Ă©tait en fait celle de la classe dominante qui s'imposait aux ouvriers
du dehors[…] racisme (on ne peut rien faire avec les ouvriers immigrés),
défiance envers l'environnement (les Vosgiens sont des paysans, ils ne
nous comprendraient pas), misogynie (les femmes sont trop bĂŞtes) etc.''
(Sartre, 1976. p.42-43).
In the neoliberal dogma, freedom is understood as independence of
individual feelings, thoughts and actions from everyone else. This fails
to acknowledge that some goals are collective, that is my own goal can
only be realized when others share and realize that goal with me. For
instance, building a good school is a collective endeavor. Of course,
their answer would be to privatize the school system, and those who can
afford it may send their children to a good school. What this seriality
leads to is an inability to (even try to) understand each others let
alone to create common goals and to act together; hence social
dissolution and political impotence. This leads to the perpetuation of
scarcity as a condition of existence, regardless of the real
possibilities of avoiding it or surpassing it since these are not barely
considered.
Neoliberalism is nowadays often regarded as centrism with Clinton and
Macron as its typical political figures. In fact, whether in political
history or political theory41, neoliberalism is a right wing ideology,
with the like of Clinton, Blair and Macron being its socially
progressive wing while Bush and Fillon represent its socially
conservative wing. As Robin notes, ''Hayek and the Austrian School of
economics reflect certain ideas contained in Burke’s writing about the
market''. (Robin, 2013. p.xvii)
Neoliberalism differs from far right conservatism by its embrace of a
cosmopolitan rather than nationalist or ethnocentric variant of the
authoritarian top down hierarchical management of society on the model
of a corporation42 which is a totalitarian model of governance (Chomsky,
1996). Power flowing through orders without resistance from above.
Responsibility flowing through obedience from below43. No
accountability. Total freedom to the owners; almost none for those
selling their labor power to live. Honneth notes that ''within the
market economy, freedom consisted in unbridled individualism, which
condemned the propertyless classes to poverty and thus contradicted the
demand [of the French Revolution] that not only “freedom”, but also
“fraternity” and “equality” should be realized.'' (Honneth, 2017. p. 77)
Part II. Freedom as commitment.
''Seule la liberté peut rendre compte d'une personne dans sa totalité,
faire voir cette liberté aux prises avec le destin, d'abord écrasée par
ses fatalités puis se retournant sur elles pour les digérer peu à peu,
prouver que le génie n'est pas un don mais l'issue qu'on invente dans
les cas désespérés.'' (Sartre, 1952. p.645)
The Agent and her context:
For Sartre, following Marx, a human being is freedom in possession of
its destiny. However, this is so far away from our situation that it
could also be seen as the goal of the revolutionary (Sartre, 1949.
p.210). In this work, to replace being with political terms, I use the
agent and the subject interchangeably. By subject, I do not the legal
subject that obeys the laws, but the subject that thinks, acts and
creates. We reject the Marxism that is pure objectivity which turns into
an economism. We also reject focusing on the structures as in the work
of LĂ©vi-Strauss and the structuralists tradition. Without a free
subject, we have neither morality nor politics. An agent, in contrast to
an individual is defined by being rather than having. An agent is a
being capable of determining herself internally through the synthetic
unit of the norm or the value through an unconditional rejection of all
past and exterior determinations. (Sartre, 2015. p.19) Thus the agent
''se constitue par là comme avenir indépendant de tout passé, mieux :
comme avenir réclamant de s'instaurer sur les ruines du passé [...] Par
lĂ il s'oppose Ă I'avenir positiviste qui est retour offensif des
circonstances extêrieures. La norme comme possibilité permanente de me
produire sujet d'intériorité apparaît au contraire comme avenir pur,
autrement dit avenir sans aucune détermination par le passé.''(Sartre,
2015. p.20-21) So the agent is a being through whom freedom creates
value which is something lacking in the present situation, because of
need, oppression or violence...etc. By bringing freedom into a world of
physical constants, regularities and determinism, the agent makes
morality possible. For if we were only reacting to the past and external
factors and commands we would not be free.
An agent is a being capable of positing a value beyond her facts of
existence and transforming the indeterminacy of the present towards the
creation of that which does not yet exist. The agent is thus shaped by
her context, and made who they are by her milieu. Nevertheless, they are
not completely captured or defined by any context: ''l'impératif vise en
moi la possibilité de me produire comme une autonomie qui s'affirme en
dominant les circonstances extérieures au lieu d'être dominée par elles.
Et le véritable aspect du normatif apparaît ici : la possibilité
inconditionnée s'affîrme en effet comme mon avenir possible quel que
soit mon passé.'' (Sartre, 2015. p.20). Thus the late Sartre favored
definition of freedom precisely underlined this point: ''un homme peut
toujours faire quelque chose de ce qu'on a fait de lui.'' (Sartre, 1972.
p101) Formulated negatively, in the preface to Fanon's Les Damnés de la
Terre, Sartre puts this freedom of the indigenous as a reason why
colonialism will ultimately fail, no matter how much savagery is used
for conditioning the colonized: ''nous ne devenons ce que nous sommes
que par la négation intime et radicale de ce qu'on a fait de nous''.
(Fanon, 2002. p.25). What has been done to us is important and must be
taken into consideration. Sometimes Sartre called this 'le coefficient
d'adversité' (Sartre, 2005. p.387) For they determine the margin of real
freedom we have. Sometimes, the circumstance is such that all that
remains of what we can do is to assume responsibility of what has been
done to us. A resistant who is taken prisoner and forced to confess
about the other members of the resistance has one choice left. To speak
and betray his friends or to endure torture. Here the norm is always
given as unconditionally possible, provided we put our life on the
line.44 (Sartre, 2015)
In most circumstances, however, freedom is neither this limited nor an
unlimited absolute, but a: ''petit mouvement qui fait d'un ĂŞtre social
totalement conditionné une personne qui ne restitue pas la totalité de
ce qu'elle a reçu de son conditionnement; qui fait de Genet un poète,
par exemple, alors qu'il avait été rigoureusement conditionné pour être
un voleur. Saint Genet est peut-être le livre où j'ai le mieux expliqué
ce que j'entends par la liberté. Car Genet a été fait voleur, il a dit :
« Je suis le voleur », et ce minuscule décalage a été le début d'un
processus par lequel il est devenu un poète, puis, finalement, un être
qui n'est plus vraiment en marge de la société, quelqu'un qui ne sait
plus où il est, et qui se tait. Dans un cas comme le sien, la liberté ne
peut pas ĂŞtre heureuse. Elle n'est pas un triomphe. Pour Genet, elle a
simplement ouvert certaines routes qui ne lui Ă©taient pas offertes au
départ.'' (Sartre, 1972. p.101-102)
Commitment: the ontological and the ethical:
Freedom as an ontological commitment:
The ontological commitment in the early Sartre of Being and Nothingness
refers to consciousness attempt, in every being, to escape contingency,
to ground being's existence into an absolute. To become necessary. To
become the cause of herself. This commitment to self grounding is,
however, vain from an ethical standpoint. Furthermore, it is condemned
to perpetual failure. Because we will never succeed in becoming the
cause of the self, which is what religions call 'God'. So Sartre
concludes in Being and Nothingness:
''Toute réalité humaine est une passion en ce qu'elle projette de se
perdre pour fonder l'ĂŞtre et pour constituer de mĂŞme coup l'en-soi qui
Ă©chappe Ă la contingence en Ă©tant son propre fondement, ens causa sui
que les religions nomment Dieu. Ainsi la passion de l'homme est-elle
inverse de celle du Christ, car l'homme se perd en tant qu'homme pour
que Dieu naisse. Mais l'idée de Dieu est contradictoire et nous nous
perdons en vain: l'homme est une passion inutile." (Sartre, 1943. p.660)
The failure of self-grounding, of ens causa sui, turns Sartre into
ethics. The fundamental commitment (passion) is freedom as ontological.
It is in the nature of consciousness to be committed to ground the self.
So this commitment is necessary, inescapable, ineluctable. It is the
agent thrown into history. However, it is ethically meaningless since it
involves no agency exercising a choice. There is no will acting here. It
is merely the given of human reality. The situation we find ourselves in
as humans by the mere fact of our existence. To make this a little less
abstract, we can make an analogy with the situation of the proletarian
described by Marx. Oppression and alienation is their condition. It is
so by birth. Ethical freedom is not involved yet here. This question
comes when a choice, a decision is made by the proletarian: Will he
submit to oppression to survive or try to change his situation which is
impossible unless he takes on the whole system of capitalism?
Only through commitment (praxis, resistance, revolution...) will the
proletarian exercise his freedom in situation within the historical
conjecture in which he finds himself. This freedom exercised in
situation brings the question of morality. If morality content is not
determined by any doctrine or religion but varies historically, then
what distinguishes morality is that despite all the social conditioning
of the agent, the power of the situation and the weight of history,
there is still no determinism, rather there is invention or at least its
possibility: ''Ce qu'il y a de commun entre l'art et la morale, c'est
que, dans les deux cas, nous avons création et invention. Nous ne
pouvons pas décider a priori ce qu'il y a à faire'' (Sartre, 1946.
p.77).
This is important for the thesis defended here. And it is a central
point of Sartrean conception of freedom and his morality of history.
Morality is freedom exercised in a particular, contingent, historical
situation. It is not a set of intangible values we attempt to live by.
There is no moral value or rule applies to all situations: ''Le normatif
comme sens de I'histoire Ă faire se manifeste Ă travers la lutte de
I'homme historique contre l'homme de la répétition. C'est-à -dire de
I'homme historique contre lui-même en tant qu'iI est, par l'aliénation
même, complice de cette répétition et produit de son propre produit.''
(Sartre, 2015. p.45)
''Cette résponsabilité totale dans la solitute totale, n'est ce pas le
dévoilement même de notre liberté?'' (Sartre, 1949. p.13)
Freedom as an ethical commitment:
The ethical plan of freedom should be distinguished from its ontological
plan, even though both share failure as result. Freedom becomes ethical
once we realize the fundamental divisions in history, take a position
regarding this fact by rejecting inequality as constitutive of the human
situation. Thus joining the oppressed, against all forms of unjustified
authority, ultimately seeking the destruction of such authority, and of
the power of a human over another, with an ideal of emancipation of all
humanity. One failure, in the ontological commitment, happens as one
tries to save oneself. The other failure, in the ethical commitment,
happens as one participates in the emancipation of all humanity. In
Unamuno's words: 'the victorious are those who adapt to the world; the
defeated are those who demand that the world adapt to them. Therefore,
the entire progress of humanity rests on the shoulders of the
defeated.'45 It is a failure in the sense that the agent will not
witness the goal of emancipation of humanity within her biographical
time, although as a result of this failure, there is often a success in
self-construction or self-transformation. This commitment is ethical
because the agent desires freedom and in desiring it for the self, she
desires it for all. So in its action, she takes the freedom of others as
an essential condition for the realization of her freedom. And since the
victims of racism, imperialism, economic exploitation lack this freedom,
in struggling for it with them, she is struggling as well for her own
freedom: "Lorsque je déclare que la liberté, à travers chaque
circonstance concrète, ne peut avoir d'autre but que de se vouloir
elle-mĂŞme, si une fois l'homme a reconnu qu'il pose des valeurs dans le
délaissement, il ne peut plus vouloir qu'une chose, c'est la liberté
comme fondement de toutes les valeurs. Cela ne signifie pas qu'il la
veut dans l'abstrait. Cela veut dire simplement que les actes des hommes
de bonne foi ont comme ultime signification la recherche de la liberté
en tant que telle. Un homme qui adhère à tel syndicat, communiste ou
révolutionnaire, veut des buts concrets ; ces buts impliquent une
volonté abstraite de liberté ; mais cette liberté se veut dans le
concret. Nous voulons la liberté pour la liberté et à travers chaque
circonstance particulière. Et en voulant la liberté, nous découvrons
qu'elle dépend entièrement de la liberté des autres, et que la liberté
des autres dépend de la nôtre. Certes, la liberté comme définition de
l'homme ne dépend pas d'autrui, mais dès qu'il y a engagement, je suis
obligé de vouloir en même temps que ma liberté la liberté des autres, je
ne puis prendre ma liberté pour but que si je prends également celle des
autres pour but. En conséquence, lorsque, sur le plan d'authenticité
totale, j'ai reconnu que l'homme est un ĂŞtre chez qui l'essence est
précédée par l'existence, qu'il est un être libre qui ne peut, dans des
circonstances diverses, que vouloir sa liberté, j'ai reconnu en même
temps que je ne peux vouloir que la liberté des autres." (Sartre, 1946.
p.84) Therefore, the agent does not renounce struggling for their
freedom because of the uncertainty, dangers and almost certain failure
of a project of emancipation for all. We find this conception in the
common saying: 'il n'est pas nécessaire d'espérer pour entreprendre ni
de réussir pour persévérer.' This is how we understand Gramsci's
pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. The facts point to
our historical conjecture verging on the catastrophic. But the will acts
despite or perhaps even because of this extremely bad state of affairs.
Because without action there surely will not be any change for the
better or even hope of change. But with action comes hope, unforeseen
possibilities, and perhaps radical change. Even though it is possible
that even doing the best we can in the situation, we still fail. What is
important is to avoid seeing a radically unjust world and do nothing
about it.
This latter conception of failure as a basis of revolutionary morality
is found throughout Sartre's life and work: “I assumed that evolution
through action would be a series of failures from which something
unforeseen and positive would emerge, something implicit in the failure
unbeknownst to those who had wanted to succeed. And these are the
partial, local successes, hard to decipher by the people who did the
work and who, moving from failure to failure, would achieve progress.
This is how I have always understood history.” (Sartre, 1996. p.66.) His
life embodies this maxim. From a series of commitments that mostly
failed, he ultimately, in our view, made progress in his as well as our
search for what freedom, morality and the good and meaningful life might
be.
The point of departure is therefore the present existing conflict; the
division within humanity: ''The history of all hitherto existing
societies is the history of class struggles.'' (Marx, Engels, 2008.
P.6).
We are thrown into history; this pool of blood and dirt, were we
discover ourselves in violence; floundering in this pool like everyone
else. On est 'embarqué', 'nous sommes dedans jusqu'aux cheuveux.'?
Freedom as ethical commitment starts with a crushed, humiliated and
mutilated humanity, and tries to situate the self within this humanity
and with regard to a vision for the emancipation of this humanity as a
whole. In so far as the praxis of the exploited -against their inhuman
treatment- contains the seeds of a more human future of integral
humanity. An ethical commitment starts with the refugee, the orphan, the
victim, the undesired, the deported, the sick, the lonely, the tortured,
the dying. It starts with Eric Garner's last words 'I can't breath',
while being murdered by the police. So Sartre tells Camus:
''je ne vois autour de moi que des libertés déjà asservies et qui
tentent de s'arracher à la servitude natale. Notre liberté aujourd'hui
n'est rien d'autre que le libre choix de lutter pour devenir libres. Et
l'aspect paradoxal de cette formule exprime simplement le paradoxe de
notre condition historique. Il ne s'agit pas, vous le voyez, d'encager
mes contemporains ils sont déjà dans la cage; il s'agit au contraire de
nous unir Ă eux pour briser les barreaux. Car nous aussi, Camus, nous
sommes encagés, et si vous voulez vraiment empêcher qu'un mouvement
populaire ne dégénère en tyrannie, ne commencez pas par le condamner
sans recours et par menacer de vous retirer au désert, d'autant que vos
déserts ne sont jamais qu'une partie un peu moins fréquentée de notre
cage; pour mériter le droit d'influencer des hommes qui luttent, il faut
d'abord participer Ă leur combat; il faut d'abord accepter beaucoup de
choses, si l'on veut essayer d'en changer quelques-unes.'' (Sartre,
1964. p.110)
Freedom as ethical commitment thus starts down to earth. What is this
conflict around me is all about? Which side is the oppressed? What do I
do about it?
In other words, the good is not to be found by the moral subject in an
intangible heaven then an attempt is made to change the world based on
this conception of the good. But rather, the good is to be searched
together through personal commitment and collective praxis; the good is
to be explored and tried and discovered and changed and created in
common. The good -creation, love, friendship, art, prosperity- is to be
conquered intersubjectively every day. As a consequence, morality, or at
any rate the moral project here, must abandon any transcendental values
such as good or just as a starting point for a better society. It must
learn what they mean in the dirt and blood and confusion of history.
Instead of starting with any such ideals, we start with a realization of
the violence, repression, oppression and hierarchy resulting from the
arbitrary and unjust but very real divisions within humanity. The world
into which we have been thrown functions through these divisions.
Internalizing them, and committing to end such violence is the basis of
this realist morality of history.
This realization brings a deeper understanding of freedom (as the
ontological nature of being) in chains (scarcity, conflict, oppression).
Commitment brings a praxis process of freedom involved in resistance and
towards emancipation, and understanding itself, and the other through
such involvement. Starting from the social and political situation into
which we are thrown instead of ideals is precisely what Sartre, Negri,
and Badiou have done. Truth being inaccessible or impossible for us is a
part of the human condition. But there are truths to be discovered in
the facts around us. That our world is radically injust, that a very
small number of people have amassed extreme wealth while the majority of
humanity barely survives. Such little truths are the point of departure.
It for this reason that Alain Badiou insists that philosophy cannot
abandon the search for truth because if it does then human existence
will continue to be enslaved by consumerism: ''On ne peut s'opposer […]
à l'infini chatoiment de la circulation marchande, à cette espèce de
pluralité flexible auquelle le désir se trouve enchaîné [...] que si on
a un point d'arrĂŞt d'une exigence qui serait inconditionnelle.''
(Badiou, 2015. p.22-23.) Each of us should find for herself what makes
this unconditional point because ''tout ce qui, dans ce monde, est sous
condition tombe sous la loi de la circulation des objets, des monnaies
et des images.'' (Badiou, 2015. p.22-23). This unconditional point is
for everyone to define for themselves through their freedom as
commitment.
Freedom as an ethical commitment finds its source in an ontological
intersubjectivity (1) and the agent feeling of the fundamental
contradictions in her particular circumstance(2) as well as in the human
condition (3). Freedom as commitment acknowledges our human situation
and aspires to overcome these 2 sets of contradictions, the personal and
the human, as well as the sterile ontological freedom of being,
separateness, scarcity, and death. It seeks to achieves this overcoming
through commitment; ultimately belonging to a group. It is still at the
level of the subject or at most dyadic.
Let us first see what this means.
1. Ontological intersubjectivity:
As we have seen, in Sartre's early philosophy consciousness was
absolutely free. But as early as the immediate post war period, he
changed his mind. And near the end of his life, in Hope Now, his
conception has become one of intersubjective consciousness which forms
the core of a moral being: ''Aujourd’hui, je considère que tout ce qui
se passe pour une conscience dans un moment donné est nécessairement
lié, souvent même engendré par [...] l’existence de l’autre. Autrement
dit, toute conscience me paraît actuellement, à la fois comme se
constituant elle-mĂŞme comme conscience et, dans le mĂŞme temps, comme
conscience de l’autre et comme conscience pour l’autre. Et c’est cette
réalité-là , ce soi-même se considérant comme soi-même pour l’autre, que
j’appelle la conscience morale.'' (Sartre, 1991. p.39-40). The other is
constitutive of my own consciousness. For instance, everything around
me, and anything I am using now to type this, the place, the software,
the laptop, electricity, internet...etc. But also the ideas, the
inspiration, and experiences written, even the language itself...etc.
All of these are indebted, dependent on, related to, and reminders of
the other. The same goes for what is to become of this work. Hence:
''Toujours autrui est là et me conditionne'', de sorte qu’il y a
''dépendance de chaque individu par rapport à tous les individus''.
(Sartre, 1991. p.40). Our conception of freedom as ethical commitment is
grounded in this intersubjective nature of consciousness. ''cette
dépendance elle-même est libre. [being constitutive, as we have just
seen, of my own consciousness]. Ce qu’il y a de caractéristique dans la
morale, c’est que l’action, en même temps qu’elle apparaît comme
subtilement contrainte, se donne aussi comme pouvant ne pas ĂŞtre faite.
Et que donc, quand on la fait, on fait un choix et un choix libre.''
(Sartre, 1991. p.41) So the point of departure is in intersubjectivity
rather than in the ontological (but ethically vain) commitment of
consciousness, i.e. ontological freedom. From the most basic
ascertainable truth, that of the cogito, I come to realize that even my
consciousness is engendered by and for and through the other.
If I have no thesis to submit, I may not be writing this now or perhaps
ever. And even if I would write, I will not write it in this format
within the specific rules of the department and according to a deadline.
Neither will I be taking into account the reader, their background.
Thus the others, including my audience, condition my actions here. It is
a form of constraint. But I am still free. Because I have freely chosen
to do this work and can still always choose not to do it. But precisely,
the idea of freedom here is that I will do it not because of an external
constraint, but because of a commitment46. And in a commitment, there is
an internal constraint that goes back to the intersubjective nature of
my consciousness: ''Dans chaque moment [...] oĂą je fais quoi que ce
soit, il y a une sorte de réquisition qui va au-delà du réel, et qui
fait que l’action que je veux faire comporte une sorte de contrainte
intérieure qui est une dimension de ma conscience[...] c'est le départ
de la morale'' (Sartre, 1991. p.38).
The antagonism is not between individual freedom and social solidarity,
but inside each of us, between the individualistic selfish impulse and
sociable cooperative impulse. The particular circumstance including
education and community determine to a large degree which of these
impulses, which side of the antagonism, will prevail.
Freedom is just as central to liberalism. What distinguishes the first
dimension of the conception of freedom defended here from the (negative)
freedom of liberalism is how to make it concrete. Liberalism attempts to
do so by enshrining it in charters, constitutions and laws; by
protecting it through the justice system and the police. In short, the
state and international treaties and law. In such a system, the
individual has little role to play beyond perhaps reporting unlawful or
unjust behaviors.
In our conception of freedom as commitment, however, we say regardless
of whether we have a state or not, freedom is (or at least should be)
everyone's task. Enlarging and protecting freedom is everyone's task. In
other words, to live in a truly free society, it is not enough to reject
and condemn injustice while letting it happen; leaving for others the
task of setting free and bringing justice. It simply is not enough to
disapprove of injustice. After all, if I was not free (to act), I could
still disapprove of it. So being free changes nothing in how I react to
injustice?
There is little to no value for me to condemn slavery if I just let it
happen. Those affected by it are hardly affected let alone liberated,
and neither myself (since I would still remain as I am before condemning
it; totally ignorant of what is means to live as a slave). What matters
is not my rejection of it, but rather -and here is the conception of
freedom as a commitment- what do I do in practice to abolish it. In its
most blatant form, but also in its more hidden and subtle ones, like
wage slavery. But the point is that I cannot begin to understand this
without intervention in concrete situations where my freedom is on the
line engaged with other freedoms. Certainly, my own action as one person
may have little or probably no effect at all, but it is only in acting
that my rejection of slavery has any meaning, that I come to understand
better what I am really fighting for and against, and why, and who I am.
It is only in acting -in our random example, to fight slavery- that I
come to connect to others who are acting with me for a similar goal, and
have that intense and infinite freedom of the groupe-en-fusion (we
discuss later). It is only in acting that I come to know my degree of
freedom as an agent, because I come to see what and how and where my
freedom is limited. And only when I know that that it becomes possible
for me to act in ways to enlarge my freedom, and discover that to
enlarge it often means to share it with others, and to enlarge others'
freedoms.
Only in actions, that I come in contact with those who accept slavery or
even defend it, and engage with them. And above all come in contact with
those who are enslaved, their situation, their feelings, their thoughts,
their needs. It is only in this commitment that I am free.
What we said for slavery goes for rape, inequality, repression...etc. Do
I prevent it or try to change it (with others)? Or do I simply
disapprove of it when I see it?
Answering this question for oneself is fundamental to what it means to
be free.
2. The agent's realizing the fundamental contradictions in her
individual circumstance47:
This comes from the realization of the arbitrariness of existing
divisions within humanity and the impossibility of justifying them. As a
result, the subject rejects these divisions, and aims to overcome them.
But while rejecting them, the agent realizes that, no matter what, they
have already been taking part in these injustices. Either because they
were at a disadvantage and had no other way to claim their due, but to
fight. And since the powerful has taken all the precautions to destitute
him from any legal or even moral means to fight, he resorts to violence.
Or by virtue of their accident of birth, which makes any privileges they
may have acquired as a result of this accident unjustified, and how
these are not deserved any more than for the majority of humanity that
actually lacks them. But since they are these privileges, they cannot
renounce them unless they renounce life. Hardly possible, when the
instinct to live is so profound in human beings.
A theoretician of multiculturalism for instance feels the contradiction
between the universal principles of freedom and equality she seeks and
the neoliberal situation that has effectively decimated them. Between
the universal principle that every human being -particularly in a
democracy, every denizen- has an equal right to be heard and to be
recognized and to find a place in society. That who she is has no effect
whatsoever on evaluating the coherence or veracity of her argument. And
the fact that such universal principles are almost never applied in
practice. In fact, your voice, your argument are not only affected by
who you are (which approximately means what you own), but pretty much
determined by it. You could be the most idiotic, least articulate
person, and even lie all the time. But if you are rich, your opinion
will be heard and will have an influence even on policy. You could even
become the president of the most powerful country in history, and have
the largest megaphone to voice more obscenities. However, if you are a
Muslim refugee escaping Syria to survive. Then no matter your goodness
of character, intelligence or knowledge, and your ability to articulate
your views, you are likely to have no influence whatsoever. In fact,
your argument will hardly be heard at all; you may just as well be
singing the national anthem of Andorra.
Furthermore, our political theorist lives not only discovers these
contradictions -between the universal principles and the neoliberal
structures- outside, but also within herself. Since that refugee -who is
most affected if her argument for the universal principles of freedom,
equality and democracy are successful- is unlikely to ever read her.
While those who actually read her arguments are precisely those who have
no personal stake in it. And those who already have an influential voice
in practical politics; who can resolve the contradictions she feels are
unlikely to take the time to read and think and debate her contribution.
And even if they did, her arguments may be sound, logical, coherent, and
moral. But they may not be good electoral arguments. They are not
ambiguous to help a politician win different constituencies that believe
different things.48 not the empty and easy slogans that will help win an
election in a western democracy. Thus the very universal principles she
defends and which are supposed to be the basis49 of a modern western
democracy are precisely why it is impossible for them to be concretized,
to become policy.
In short, her work will reach neither those in power, nor those whose
life is on the line, on the border, in a concentration camp50 somewhere
or in a Libyan torture cell. It will remain behind the paywalls of
professional journals. And the chasm in the contradictions between the
universality of the principles she argues and the neoliberal maelstrom
will remain as vast as ever. How she deals with this contradiction,
however, may open a way for freedom. So let us now take a concrete case
of how one could use these contradictions, making them the source of
freedom as a commitment.
Sartre's life exemplifies the commitment of an intellectual. We will
take his discussion of it since this dimension of freedom is something
political theorists, philosophers, students and professors must reckon
with.
Sartre defines the intellectual as a technician of practical knowledge
that originated from the needs of the bourgeoisie. This includes
teachers, writers, engineers, doctors, scientists, professors, and so
on. The practice of one of these professions is a necessary but not
sufficient condition to be an intellectual. The technician becomes an
intellectual when she discovers outside herself, suffers within herself,
and contests the contradictions between the universality she seeks in
her work and the laws governing the structures of a neoliberal world.
These technicians learn, think, experiment, write and create in
universal terms then stumbles in a world where such universality remains
a fiction. For her research has universal methods and leads to a
universal knowledge (i.e. A physical law or a theorem applies
universally, to everyone equally. The truth that all human life is
equally precious. A vaccine or a drug is makes no distinction between
humans on the basis of their particular identity...etc.). But her
situation as a privileged as well as the effective use of her discovery
is not universal. It is restricted to those who can afford it: '' En
bien des cas, avec la complicité du technicien du savoir pratique, les
couches sociales privilégiées volent l'utilité sociale de leurs
découvertes et la transforment en utilité pour le petit nombre aux
dépens du grand. Pour cette raison, les inventions nouvelles demeurent
longtemps des instruments de frustration pour la majorité : c'est ce
qu'on nomme paupérisation relative. Ainsi le technicien qui invente pour
tous n'est finalement — au moins pour une durée rarement prévisible —
qu'un agent de paupérisation pour les classes travailleuses. C'est ce
qu'on comprend mieux encore lorsqu'il s'agit d'une amélioration notable
d'un produit industriel : celle-ci, en effet, n'est utilisée par la
bourgeoisie que pour accroître son profit.'' (Sartre, 1972. p.35). When
the technician realizes, furthermore, that they contribute to this
situation and that the universal ethics of bourgeois humanism that has
been inculcated to them is not universal but remains a form of class
humanism; she is constantly struck by the contradictions in the world.
If she denounces these contradictions, she becomes an intellectual. It
is only through her work that she discovers these contradictions, and so
as long as she continues doing this work, she goes on living these
contradictions.
Thus she is constantly torn apart inside by her own contradictions;
seeing herself as a monster which is to say a being created by societies
to serve purposes other than their own:
''Ainsi les techniciens du savoir sont produits par la classe dominante
avec une contradiction qui les déchire : d'une part, en tant que
salariés et fonctionnaires mineurs des superstructures, ils dépendent
directement des dirigeants (organismes « privés » ou État) et se situent
nécessairement dans la particularité, comme un certain groupe de secteur
tertiaire, d'autre part en tant que leur spécialité est toujours
l'universel, ces spécialistes sont la contestation même des
particularismes qu'on leur a injectés et qu'ils ne peuvent contester
sans se contester eux-mêmes. Ils affirment qu'il n'y a pas de « science
bourgeoise » et pourtant leur science est bourgeoise par ses limites et
ils le savent. Il est vrai, cependant, qu'au moment précis de la
recherche, ils travaillent dans la liberté, ce qui rend plus amer encore
le retour à leur condition réelle.'' (Sartre, 1972. p35-36).
Sartre gives the example of nuclear scientists whose work has been used
or abused by politicians to make the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and use
it to annihilate the populations of entire cities. As scientists, the
practice of universality is everyday in nuclear physics, and in its
discoveries. As scientists, they create, but do not reflect on the use
of their creation. However, when these very scientists, horrified by the
destructive power of what they have made, get together and sign a
manifesto to warn the public against the use of the bomb, they become
intellectuals. This is an instance of freedom as commitment. They feel
the contradictions between the universality of knowledge and the
sectarianism of ideology inside them and realize these contradictions
are their world. They overstep all the limits of their profession by
taking a moral position on the use of their work; creating nuclear
technology is one thing, deciding how to use is another. They even use
their notoriety or their skill to steer and violent the public opinion;
as if their political intervention on the use of the discovery was not
separated by an unbridgeable chasm from scientific knowledge. Third,
they do not contest the use of the bomb because of any technical defects
in it, but rather ''au nom d'un système de valeurs éminemment
contestable qui prend pour norme suprĂŞme la vie humaine.'' 51 (Sartre,
1972. p.13-14).
Such a norm should be not be so contestable, but it is. We think that
this particular norm belongs to an important categories of norms that
are ''doubly universal'' in that it is ''virtually always professed'',
but simultaneously ''almost universally rejected in practice''.
(Chomsky, 2015. p. 60)
For in setting public policies, -whether for nuclear disarmament, gun
control, healthcare, the environment, you name it- states have shown it.
That not only for non-citizens, but even for their own disenfranchised
majority, the supreme values remain profit and love of power.
We have seen in the situation of the intellectual freedom as commitment
unfolding from the motive of contradictions. The realization of grave
injustice, and her participation in it, powerless to stop it but
nevertheless revolting against this abuse of her work, contesting
authority, affirming the universality by claiming the freedom of all in
order to be herself free. That is not being alienated from the product
of her work that is used to ends contrary to the universality she
pursues and through which she explores and discovers.
“That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end
they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears,
his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental
collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought
and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all
the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the
noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the
vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s
achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe
in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so
nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation
of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely
built.” (Russell, 1993. P.67)
3. The agent becoming aware of the fundamental contradictions in the
human condition:
These are the contradictions between our finite circumstances and our
longing to the infinite.
That ''everything in our existence points beyond itself. We must
nevertheless die.'' (Unger, 2014. p.1 ). The contradictions between our
inevitable death and the fecundity of our possibilities, creations and
ideas. Between our capacity to learn and to know and our ignorance of
the ultimate reasons.
For Unger the agent is a paragon of contradictions: ''The human agent,
shaped and manacled by context and tradition, by established
arrangements and enacted dogma, fastened to a decaying body, surrounded
in birth and death by enigmas he cannot dispel, desperately wanting he
know not what, confusing the unlimited for which he longs with an
endless series of paltry tokens, demanding assurance from other people,
yet hiding within himself and using things as shields against others,
somnambulant most of the time yet sometimes charged and always
inexhaustible, recognizing his fate and struggling with it even as he
appears to accept it, trying to reconcile his contradictory ambitions
but acknowledging in the end or, deep down, all the time that no such
reconciliation is possible or if possible not lasting.'' (Unger, 2007.
p.37)
This is the idea of personal freedom; we are the beings who cannot be
defined or contained by any existing structure; we spill over. As Unger
notes, the structures are finite in relation to us. And we are infinite
with regard to them. (Unger, 2014. p.2) We can see more and do more and
make more than any structure can accommodate or predict. But we cannot
understand this personal freedom, let alone practice it (and there is a
dialectic between understanding and practice) without starting first
from current problems in our societies, from our current historical
conjecture. Because if we do start from the self as a separate
standalone unit, we are likely to arrive at a distorted conception of
freedom.
Unger notes, there is always more in us, in each of us individually, as
well as in all of us collectively, the human race, than there is or ever
can be in them. We cannot only defy the contexts and the structures, but
we can seek to transform their character so that they are no longer just
there beyond the reach of challenge, but come to respect and to nourish
our structure-revising freedom.
A third way to state the project, is that by realizing how little we
have advanced in the political realm, the personal project of a
meaningful life has been extremely difficult to live.
Because personal freedom, as it will be argued develops in a collective;
work, projects, relationships...etc. Just as a person happiness, be it
intellectual, material, affective or spiritual is a collective
enterprise. Its conditions of possibility are laid down and enhanced
through the work, ideas and affections of others. Similarly freedom is
not an isolated free conscious in an indifferent universe. The status of
others' freedom and the relationships between the agent and the
collective is primordial for the freedom of that agent. For instance, if
the realms of work and politics are too ossified into a hegemonic system
-what Badiou, for instance, calls capitalo-parlementarisme52 (Badiou,
2012)- then the cost of any deviation, of non-conformity from an
individual is too high to bear alone. This is why the second dimension
of freedom I discuss here, in groups and social movements is important.
Emancipatory or revolutionary politics could act as a buffer between a
rigid state with too little flexibility in its structure and an
individual living, in a non orthodox way, her project of self-invention.
Because a meaningful life cannot be constructed as a concept let alone
lived or realized through an individual moral psychology alone.
A conception of freedom, as at once commitment, praxis,
emancipatory/revolutionary politics, and the common will be my focus.
Such conception will show that understanding or living freedom at one
level requires the others as well. If this is right then this conception
will challenge the division commonly agreed upon, and even the
irreconcilability seen between private life and public life, means and
ends, morality and politics.
We have seen how the nature of consciousness as intersubjectivity, the
realization of the contradictions of one's situation and of the human
condition all contribute to a move towards commitment. Nevertheless, we
are not just our conscious, we carry the burdens of our stories and
experiences, of traditions and cultures, of biases, stereotypes and
prejudices. In short, we are dragged down we are not yet those beings
who can recognize one another as context transcending agents. So what do
we do in the meantime?
''The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,
guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood
in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now
hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a
revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin
of the contending classes.'' Marx and Engels, 2008.
III. The group and movement dimension. Freedom as praxis53.
A social freedom independent of the corporate state.
A materialist conception of freedom is concrete. It assumes that freedom
includes fulfilling our basic needs and at least some of our desires and
aspirations. Therefore, to be free, we are bound to live in societies
because of most of our needs, desires and hopes cannot be fulfilled in
isolation. But what we gain through society in access to the conditions
of possibility for freedom, we loose by accepting what has been termed
the social contract. We surrender to the rule of the dead over the
living.
But what if we could only have the gains of a life in society without
the loses?
My argument here is that this is possible if we transform the social
order or the model of social organization we have, and replace social
fetters with social bonds: ''the whole tenor of the ideas and arguments
unfolded in this essay might fairly be reduced to this, that while they
would break all fetters in human society,they would attempt to find as
many new social bonds as possible. The isolated man is no more able to
develop than the one who is fettered.'' (Humboldt, 1969. p.98 ). In this
part, I will try to show how we can move from freedom as a commitment of
an agent to the group and the movement. And in the next part to more
durable (in space-time) freedom in the Common without lose of individual
freedom. In this part, we deal with the difficult problem of how and
when a group of people can still enjoy, and even expand, the freedom
that each had on their own as an agent .
Freedom is most often thought of as an individual concept, but this is
only its simplest form. We may know this dimension best because we live
in a system that values this particular one, and only this one. However,
other dimensions exist. We refer to them here and there when we say
freedom of assembly or a free society. But even then, it is only a
reference to their negative form, that is even collective freedom is
only conceived as absence of interference or repression from the state
upon individuals. Other aspects are forgotten. So when a group of people
come together to help each others, to build something or share an idea
that benefits everyone, there is a form of social freedom here. We
become freer not through isolation within private property and the
accumulation of things to replace our need for each other, but rather
through openness to others and to the new, through social solidarity,
cooperation, and the creation as well as the development of our passions
and capabilities. All of this depends on the others. So for Bakunin, the
“liberty of everyone which, far from finding itself checked by the
freedom of others, is, on the contrary, confirmed by it and extended to
infinity.” (Bakunin, 1953. p.270). We become freer in a society where
agents are solidaristic, where they care for, cooperate, create and
develop with others, because almost nobody would then need to see life
as a zero sum game of competition for survival, and hurt others for fear
of getting hurt by them.
If the corporate-state power constrains free agency, as we will argue,
then collective freedom is necessary to defend and enhance individual
freedom. We become freer not through begging an almighty state to grant
us liberties, police and protect our neighborhoods, institute and
guarantee individual rights, enforce contracts, and obedience through
judiciary system with pecuniary and penitentiary threats. Because
freedom cannot be given from an outside authority. It cannot be based on
exclusion of the majority of the poor, on the preservation of
inequalities, on equal rules and laws applying to unequal persons. It
cannot be protected by fear, threats, penalties, violence, punishment
and prisons.
Social freedom is a process that requires understanding and sensibility,
a change of consciousness. It is a constructive project. It is conquered
through actions such as civil disobedience. As practiced for example by
the US Civil Rights Movement and nowadays by Extinction Rebellion. It is
built on the field; communicating openly, working together, solving
problems, experimenting and learning. It requires inclusion, diversity,
and adaptation to the difference in each of us. It requires an interest
in the other. It requires the flowering of plurality. It grows in the
efforts and investment of time in relationships. Freedom requires
practice, and this practice happens collectively. And it carries risks
that a police state with a closed unfree society may be able to avoid.
But if we decide we want a free society then there is no shortcut to the
millennium. I would argue that there is no way for a free society to
develop unless individuals are given freedom, despite the problems,
mistakes and conflicts that may arise from misusing or abusing it.
Everyone acquires its taste through the practice and experiments of what
it means to be free with others. The usual arguments of many politicians
and others who justify authority , domination, hierarchy and oppression
with expressions of deception like these: 'The people are not yet ready
for freedom. They need guidance. They need representation. They cannot
make such important decisions. They still do not know what is best for
them. We must use force and severe punishment or we will have high
crimes and anarchy.'' All this is designed to keep power indefinitely
concentrated in their hands, in the hands of the few. Rousseau had
already seen these arguments and denounced those politicians who
“indulge in the same sophistry about the love of liberty as philosophers
about the state of nature. They judge, by what they see, of very
different things, which they have not seen; and attribute to man a
natural propensity to servitude, because the slaves within their
observation are seen to bear the yoke with patience; they fail to
reflect that it is with liberty as with innocence and virtue; the value
is known only to those who possess them, and the taste for them is
forfeited when they are forfeited themselves. " (Rousseau, 2005. P. 83).
The practice of freedom will be fruitful if the milieu and education are
inclusive, cooperative and solidaristic rather than exclusive, selfish
and greedy. This is because freedom is an essential attribute of the
human condition, and only its corruption makes us surrender freedom,
seek the little material security of the corporate-state, and sing in
our chains: “We cannot therefore, from the servility of nations already
enslaved, judge of the natural disposition of mankind for or against
slavery; we should go by the prodigious efforts of every free people to
save itself from oppression. I know that the former are for ever holding
forth in praise of the tranquility they enjoy in their chains [... ].
But when I observe the latter sacrificing pleasure, peace, wealth, power
and life itself to the preservation of that one treasure, which is so
disdained by those who have lost it; when I see free-born animals dash
their brains out against the bars of their cage, from an innate
impatience of captivity; when I behold numbers of naked savages, that
despise European pleasures, braving hunger, fire, the sword and death,
to preserve nothing but their independence, I feel that it is not for
slaves to argue about liberty.”(Rousseau, 2005, p.83-84). One can think
of many contemporary examples here.
One of the founding thinkers of liberalism, Wilhem von Humboldt,
expressed this very same idea, that freedom, being the core of human
nature, is the “indispensable condition”, the “true end of man” which is
the “highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete
and consistent whole.'' (Humboldt, 1969. p.16)
Humboldt explicitly notes that the “most important duty” for the
revolutionary is that “he must make men [...] ripe for freedom by every
possible means”. For Humboldt, it is also the “simplest” duty because
“nothing promotes this ripeness for freedom so much as freedom itself”.
So here we have a confluence of the means and ends of an emancipatory
political project. And again, like we have seen in Rousseau, a warning
against those who reject this truth, using “unripeness for freedom as an
excuse for continuing repression”. For Humboldt, as for Rousseau, this
truth follows “unquestionably from the very nature of man. The
incapacity for freedom can only arise from a want of moral and
intellectual power. To heighten this power is the only way to supply the
want, but to do so presupposes the freedom which awakens spontaneous
activity.” (Humboldt, 1969. P.136)
It is the task of an education that presupposes freedom in the natural
constitution of every human being to heighten these moral and
intellectual powers; to empower. It is no wonder that Humboldt was a
theorist of education, as were many liberals who shared his view, like
Mill, Dewey, and Russell.
In our era, neoliberals and authoritarians justify restrictions on
freedom by arguing that this is the price to pay for a market society
which provides humans the little comforts and enjoyments they crave and
prefer to a larger life. But is freedom really only or mainly that of
possessing, of having? Or is it of being and doing, of connecting and
developing? The problem is even starker when having leaves no time and
energy for being and developing, and self-government. Humboldt
criticizes those of his time who espoused such views ''may justly be
suspected of misunderstanding human nature, and wishing to make men into
machines.” (Humboldt, 1969. p. 24). Similarly, in his defense of the
French revolution despite its violence aspect, Kant wrote that ''Freedom
is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift
to be granted when such maturity is achieved.'' He rejected the
proposition that violence shows that people are not ripe for freedom.
Because ''if one accepts this assumption, freedom will never be
achieved; for one can not arrive at the maturity for freedom without
having already acquired it; one must be free to learn how to make use of
one’s powers freely and usefully. The first attempts will surely be
brutal and will lead to a state of affairs more painful and dangerous
than the former condition under the dominance but also the protection of
an external authority. However, one can achieve reason only through
one’s own experiences and one must be free to be able to undertake
them... To accept the principle that freedom is worthless for those
under one’s control and that one has the right to refuse it to them
forever, is an infringement on the rights of God himself, who has
created man to be free.''54 This defense
of freedom happened in the context of the violent episodes in the French
revolution which lead some to reject it.
Humboldt concurs: “We cannot call it giving freedom, when bonds are
relaxed which are not felt as such by him who wears them. But of no man
on earth -however neglected by nature and however degraded by
circumstances- is this true of all bonds which oppress him. Let us undo
them one by one, as the feeling of freedom awakens in men's hearts, and
we shall hasten progress as every step.” (Humboldt, 1969. p. 136)
The late Sartre goes so far as to affirm that freedom is only possible
in a group. But a free group is certainly not made of clones, but of
individualities. So not only should it tolerate and accommodate the
extreme diversity of humans, but value it, encourage and help develop,
as a universal singularity55, to its own ideal. So much so that the
supreme moral task of each member within a group would be to enlarge the
other's freedom, to recognize, and give it more depth and scope. In a
sense, we do this all the time, but in a very restricted social role or
station and generally towards a small number of people. The task is to
generalize it. For example, in the case of an educator and his pupil: to
the extent the educational task of the educator is successful, the pupil
is free; that means that through this education her future is no longer
determined by her past. The point is extending each other's freedom
independent of our roles, and beyond the social station we occupy.
Conservatives who have been -since the origins of conservatism-
preoccupied with fear of loss have a different conception of freedom.
Fearing the loss of freedom where it has been achieved, conservatives
have tried to limit its extension in order not to risk loosing the
negative freedom they have. (Jones, 2017) This is the opposite of the
anarchists' (as well as the Sartrean) conception of freedom who risk
their own freedoms through engagement, activism and politics in order to
enlarge and extend freedom to those who lack it. The oppressed and
exploited for instance.
In general, idealistic conceptions of freedom are so focused on inner
freedom, barely going beyond the feelings of the individual. The stoics,
for instance, on this basis said even a slave is free. The dimensions of
freedom we defend here are all, on the contrary, concrete and affected
by circumstance and the situation. They relate to behavior and action as
well as attitudes.
Individualistic conceptions of freedom are dominant, and tend to result
in a split between morality and politics. In fact they see politics as
necessary precisely because we cannot rely on human morality or the
world will fall apart. As such, these individualistic conceptions of
freedom often lead to reactionary attitudes in politics. (see our
discussion of Hayek and Friedman). Social freedom recognizes our
dependence on each other to develop in every realm (intellectual,
spiritual, material...), that it is impossible to be truly free
surrounded by others who are not. It is concrete as it takes the form of
''indignation about a particular event, the will to change a particular
institution''...etc. (Sartre, 1998. p.33) It takes the form of
solidarity, cooperation, and the social and political struggle for the
emancipation of all humanity. One essential aspect of this conception of
freedom is that it frees the self from the burdens of the accident of
birth; preference to those similar, cultural bias, tribal loyalties.
Thus extending the circle of sympathy, solidarity and cooperation
outside of its original limited circle of friends and family
selfishness. Such freedom which Sartre called engagement cultivates the
field of emancipatory politics. Freedom in this sense bridges politics
and morality: ''lorsque nous combattons pour quelque chose, il y a une
manière de vouloir cette chose qui est une façon de vouloir
implicitement la liberté. On peut lutter simplement pour élever le
niveau intellectuel d'un group de gens, pour revendiquer pour ces gens
ou pour d'autres des droits précis, et c'est en faisant cela quon
perpétue et qu'on affirme la liberté humaine.'' (Sartre, 1998. p.32) and
again: ''La liberté se fait au jour le jour et concrètement dans des
actions concrétes où elle est impliquée.''
(Sartre, 1998. p. 33)
The Multitude as an emancipatory and revolutionary subjectivity.
Beyond the dyadic relationship, the social freedom we just discussed
requires a form of organization, of decision making and self-government
that does not denature it. Without treasuries and armies, organization
is the only form of power the Multitude possesses to resist, to
transform, and to create. A constituent power, For Hardt and Negri, the
Multitude are singularities that act in common. (Negri, Hardt, 2004.
p.105). It is an immanent 'biopolitical self-organization' (Negri,
Hardt, 2000. p.411) where biopolitics is the 'power of life' (Negri,
Hardt, 2009. p.57-58) rather than the power over life (which is
biopower, a Foucauldian Concept). Singularity and commonality are the
conditions of the possibility of the Multitude. In addition to these
conditions, a political project is needed to bring the Multitude into
existence. (Negri, Hardt, 2004. p.212). This project is the Common. The
Multitude is a class concept that updates the revolutionary subjectivity
of the working class, the former proletariat, to the 21st century
society. (Negri, Hardt, 2004. p.104). The metropolis is to the Multitude
what the factory was for the working class. (Negri, Hardt, 2009. p.
250). Such shift of the exploitation -and thus of the struggle from
freedom- from the industry or even the economic sphere in general to the
whole of social life has already been observed by Negri in the 1970s in
Italy. Similarly, the political concept of class results from
''collective acts of resistance'', from ''struggles in common'' against
exploitation and domination. (Negri, Hardt, 2004. p.104) The Multitude
attempts to capture the complexity of these changes. Multitude is
''latent and implicit'' ( Negri, Hardt, 2004. p.112) in ''all of those
whose labour is directly or indirectly exploited by and subject to
capitalist modes of production and reproduction''. (Negri, Hardt, 2000.
p.52). Because one fundamental problem in social struggles is the
prioritization or the ranking of struggles. There is no agreed upon
answer to the question of which is more urgent or which is more
important among those involved in these struggles (the anti-racist, the
feminist, the environmentalist, the class struggle...etc.). Furthermore,
it has always been the case that the dominant against which any of these
struggles aim attempts to divide and rule. In addition, it seems that
the insistence on one struggle may alienate some, rightly or wrongly,
against all other struggles. For instance, in the past decades, many in
the rural areas or the working classes have not recognized themselves in
the environmentalist movement, because they are not enough informed or
just too worried about their living necessities to care for anything
else. As a consequence, these people may switch to somewhere from the
center to far right. So instead of insisting on the environment with
them, we should start from where they are, their daily problems, and
join them in their own class or whatever struggle before asking them to
join ours (environmentalism, anti-racism, feminism...etc.). Examples
along these lines can be multiplied. Indeed, in the life of one person,
a struggle may become more or less prioritized depending on where they
live, and how, their relationships, their work...etc. In high school, as
a good old liberal, I was not much aware of how crucial feminist and
environmentalist struggles are in this world. Having lived in a military
dictatorship, civil rights were mostly what was meant by freedom. In any
case, one should always seek to enlarge their perspective and put their
own struggle in relation with and in dialogue with others'. So Hardt and
Negri would say the question is not which axe of domination and
corresponding struggle is more important, but rather where are the
points of intersection and communication -and we would add
reconciliation- between the subjectivities engaged in various and
occasionally conflicting struggles. The Multitude attempts to fill this
role in the organization of a project of liberation. We agree with them
in general, though we add that in some places, some particular struggles
may be more important or more urgent than others.
What is interesting in the concept of the Multitude, and the reason for
adopting it in my work is its inclusiveness and its international
emphasis. It is no longer fixed on the industrial working class; thus
adapting to our current situation. The Multitude includes those who work
in the service industry, in the caring economy as well as part time
workers, the precariat, the so-called illegal workers...etc. But it goes
beyond oppression and exploitation at work. It includes the homeless,
the unemployed, the disabled, single parents families, students,
migrants, and so on. In short, it is the 99% rather than the proletariat
which becomes the potential revolutionary force in politics. However,
being potentially within the Multitude does not mean having this
subjectivity yet. So in Commonwealth, the insistence is on making the
Multitude rather than being it. (Negri, Hardt, 2009. p.169)
Yet one problem with the idea of the Multitude as revolutionary
subjectivity is that Negri and Hardt do not deal with the reactionary
subjectivities56 which may just as well result from the current
neoliberal vicissitudes. Such counter-revolutionary subjectivities would
not be antagonistic to neoliberalism, they may oppose their emancipatory
politics or even engage in struggles against any progressive moves. What
do we do with them? One of our tasks as militants-thinkers is precisely
to analyze how and why, under what conditions the suffering from a given
situation, like wage slavery, may lead to the development a reactionary
subjectivity in a group (kick out all the foreigners, small state so cut
taxes, medicare, education subsidies...etc.) and a revolutionary one in
another group (seeking to free all labor from wage slavery). Offering a
real alternative to neoliberalism is one proposition of this work; in
the form of freedom in the Common and in the subjectivity of the
Multitude in its praxis of emancipation and revolution. Because if no
alternative is available to the vast majority of humanity which is
excluded from neoliberal gains, some will definitely join the various
forms of fascism, be they Western or Islamist. In fact, we think this is
what is happening. For Badiou, since these reactionary subjectivities
are the result of capitalism alliance either with modernity in the West
or with tradition in other societies, his proposition is to break
capitalism monopoly on modernity. To develop through emancipatory
politics an alternative modernity to the only modernity available now
(the capitalistic). And through this same move to affirm that the main
contradiction should no longer be between modernity and tradition, but
rather between capitalism and communism. (Badiou, 2016a. Ch.8)
Reform or revolution?
We live in a counter-revolutionary moment after a long period of
upheavals in the XIX and XX centuries. In such reactionary times, any
such project radical transformation appears as a fantasy or a danger. If
we add the postmodern rejection of truths, meta-narratives,
transcendence and progress, then what is remaining?
The reform versus revolution is an old leftist debate, but also a real
conflict between various figures, and movements. Some have switched
sides, not always because of a moral conviction. For instance,
revolutionary communist William Morris fell back to parliamentary
reformism after the 1887 bloody Sunday when the state violently
repressed a mass demonstration in Trafalgar Square. (Prichard, et al.
2012. p.41). Without getting into this false binary choice -reform
versus revolution- that has long haunted leftists, it is worthwhile
explicating the difference simply as follows. We cannot totally reject
reform, but we should relegate it to a secondary order. We must not
reject it a priori, because there are emergencies which have to be
addressed now with whatever inadequate instruments we currently have
such as the courts and the legislation of political representatives.
Nevertheless, even then, we should bend and stretch these instruments,
using them incongruously; to the end of transforming them for our
purposes, rather than adapting our goals to their limits. Yet reform is
surely not enough since it exists and is enacted through the oppressor.
In its dynamic it acknowledges this imbalance, and often times
legitimates the forces of reaction. Because reform involves submitting a
demand from a group or a movement to their so-called representatives in
order to effect this or that change like raising the minimum wage, and
the process at best resulting in a policy change.
Freedom as emancipatory and revolutionary politics.
Emancipatory politics is a globalization of democratic struggles and
aspirations. It redefines globalization as it redefines democracy so
that both are popular, horizontal, bottom-up movements of constructive
and creative solidarity. The aim is to end power as a form of coercion,
exploitation and domination of class or a group or an agent over an
other while simultaneously increasing their power over their material
world and circumstance. But precisely, how can you those who are
emancipated do not become the oppressors of tomorrow? This is problem we
are trying to deal with in this study by thinking of freedom in other
ways in other settings:
''Si un homme est libre, ça signifie qu'il a un pouvoir, mais ce pouvoir
ne doit absolument pas être un pouvoir de contrainte. Dans une société
oĂą les membres seront tous hors d'Ă©tat d'exercer une contrainte les uns
sur les autres, puisqu'ils sont tous Ă©galement libres, nous aurons des
formes de pouvoir qui ne seront plus le pouvoir politique, bourgeois ou
socialiste, tel que nous le connaissons. Impossible alors qu'il y ait
dans les institutions, quelque chose qui soit contre les individus.''
(Sartre, 1974. p.345). In other words, some conception of freedom that
is multi-dimensional may help us deal with the problem of the
relationship between freedom and power. In fact, Negri built on his
interpretation of Spinoza 2 conceptions of power: 'potestas' versus
'potentia' or 'pouvoir' versus 'puissance' where the first means the
''centralized, mediating, transcendental force of command'' while the
second means ''local, immediate, actual force of constitution'' power.
This distinction marks ''two fundamentally different forms of authority
and organization that stand opposed in both conceptual and material
terms, in metaphysics as in politics-in the organization of being as in
the organization of
society.'' (Negri, 1991. p.xiii) Potentia is thus as Hardt notes in his
forward: ''an effective "other" to Power: a radically distinct,
sustainable, and irrecuperable alternative for the organization of
society.'' (Negri, 1991. p.xi). In the context of our study, freedom
would be at once be the destruction of potestas at its sources of
concentrated private and state power, and the conquering of potentia for
ordinary humanity. Or, as Negri puts it, ''in Hobbes, freedom yields to
power. In Spinoza, power yields to freedom.'' (Negri, 1991. p.20) For
Negri, this makes Spinoza's thought the ''birthplace of modern and
contemporary revolutionary materialism'', ''an enormous anomaly'' that
attaches itself permanently to ''the revolutionary contents of the
humanistic proposal.'' (Negri, 1991. p.20)
Unlike revolutionary politics, emancipatory politics may happen in
countries where it is not a priority to get ride of the state.
Emancipation can aim for radical and antagonistic reforms and
resistances as subsidiary goals to the one outlined above in relation to
power. Therefore its actions against and outside the state are -in so
far as it is necessary to pay any attention to the state- unfortunate.
To the extent that the state is more democratic than the corporation, it
is possible for the political subjects to exert some influence (however
marginal) on its decisions and policies. For this reason it is coherent
that emancipatory politics should support reinforcing some state sectors
(e.g. health care, education, research and development) while
simultaneously attempting to shut down others (e.g. military-prison
complex), and ultimately aiming at abolishing the state if required. In
other words, the primary enemy is not the state, but what all that it
represents which is the aberrant form of human relations. It is that
form –cold,conformist, hierarchical, unequal and oppressive-- that we
shall be most concerned about. As for the state, it is merely the
symptom (albeit a monstrous one at that!) of that deeper illness. This
is why anarchists had no illusion that the mere absence of state does
not mean more freedom; public censure or social control could be just as
intrusive and oppressive. (Godwin, 1842. p.163; Kropotkin, 2008. p.74 &
p.86)
The primary aim of revolutionary politics is the becoming of a humane
society of free and equal beings. Its aim is thus still revolutionary
since we start from where we are. The goals of such revolution would be
the transformation of consciousness, the overthrow of the established
order, and the institutional reconstruction of society.
Every revolutionary movement has its own constituency. Its constituents
is not merely the proletariat (as for Marx) or the lumpenproletariats
(as for Bakunin); the workers or the unemployed, the migrants or the
locals. But rather what Hardt and Negri call the Multitude which is ''a
radical diversity of social subjectivities that do not spontaneously
form together but instead require a political project to organize''
(Negri and Hardt, 2017, p.69) Inclusiveness is one of its values. Its
perspective is that of the vulnerable, excluded and oppressed. Its aim
is the democracy of the Multitude which is only possible through sharing
and participating of all in the Common.
Hardt and Negri develop an ontology of the Multitude which makes them
think that, against all odds, the subjugated Multitude holds sway over
Empire:
"From one perspective Empire stands clearly over the multitude and
subjects it to the rule of its overarching machine, as a new Leviathan.
At the same time, however, from the ontological perspective, the
hierarchy is reversed. The multitude is the real productive force of our
social world, whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives
off the vitality of the multitude—as Marx would say, a vampire regime of
accumulated dead labour that survives only by sucking off the blood of
the living.” (Negri and Hardt, 2000. p.62)
Sartre's discussion of the pratico-inerte takes as the example the
workers becoming a passive tool of the machine which thus turns from a
creative idea of someone to an idea of its own. Thus the exploited new
producers no longer enjoy freedom of action despite being the real
source of production of all goods: “Les « damnés de la terre » ce sont
précisément les seuls qui soient capables de changer la vie, qui la
changent chaque jour, qui nourrissent, habillent, logent l’humanité
entière.” (Sartre, 1985. P. 296)
But precisely, being the producers and creators for all, give them power
over their exploiters:
This is an interesting way to restate by that the real power resides in
the people, not the dominant class, and this remains true no matter how
exploited they are.
In Commonwealth, Hardt and Negri use the concept of biopolitical to
emphasize our times blurred boundaries between labor and life, and
between production and reproduction. The result is that exploitation no
longer resides in the factory, rather the pillage of Capital extends to
our very bodies.
Hardt and Negri attempt to show how bioproduction, despite being a
source of even more exploitation, could be turned around, in the
transition for revolution, as a way for liberation. This is because
-they argue- Capital pursues its interests less through material
production than immaterial production. But the latter requires Capital
to educate and train its subjects in cooperation, communication, and the
organization of social events. And these very skills which are needed
for power and autonomy could be also be used for revolution. Thus in its
blind quest for ever more profits, Capital is producing its
gravediggers. (Hardt and Negri, 2009) From the perspective of the
Multitude, therefore, it is Qui perd gagne.
This may sound a far fetched or at least too optimistic an analysis. But
it may very well be possible. The first example that came to my mind
reading this was Snowden. To extrapolate Hardt and Negri's idea to the
an arm of Capital; the mammoth surveillance state: in its attempt to
gather so much information on everyone on this planet has given freedom,
skills, and top secret access to many contractors. They included this
young man whose conscious was not dead. The result may not have been
exactly a revolution, but highly significant with repercussions to this
day. Perhaps, here too, by ever increasing the exploitation of its
subjects, the surveillance-state, one of the many ugly faces of Capital
is sowing the seeds for its own destruction. (Greenwald, 2014) But then
one could argue that Snowden is precisely an exception. Among the armies
of contractors, very few take the side of the people rather than that of
private or state powers.
Still, there is a lack of concrete focus on the material basis of
revolution in Hardt and Negri works. The Sartrean notions of need and
scarcity attempt to mop up this deficit.
The Multitude counterpart for Sartre is the groupe-en-fusion; each for
each, all for each, each for all, instead of independent individual as a
norm.
In the groupe-en-fusion we find social freedom. Because inorganic matter
no longer mediates between subjectivities, the praxis of each is no
longer a hindrance to the other(s)57. That is, each member of the group
does not experience the practico-inert as a result of others' actions.
Instead, within the groupe-en-fusion, common praxis leads to reciprocal
relations whereby the freedom of each is equivalent and supportive to
that of the other.
How to seek the common good of a group while keeping each subject
belonging to that group free?*
This seem impossible to achieve in society, and yet it happens in all
sorts of ways. If you think of Liverpool winning the Champions League
Final; before, during, and after the match the condition of freedom for
each were the freedom of all. In seeking the common good (the league
cup, fame, money...etc.), the team was able to reconcile their
collective freedom with the freedom of each. So much so that the
concretization of the common good was only possible through such
reconciliation.
So why are we not able to have this in society? One important difference
is that the system (outside the group or society) in one case make it
possible, and in the other hinders it. In the case of Liverpool,
cooperation and solidarity are encouraged by the government, owners,
coach and fans. In other words, the well being and success of each
(scoring a goal, avoiding injury, feeling well, enjoying good relations
with others members) makes it more likely that other members of the team
become successful.
In the case of a society under the neoliberalism, as we have seen in our
discussion of scarcity, it is the opposite. So the answer for many
theorists to the question above* is the contract through which all
delegate their will to a representative. Each group member sacrifices a
part of their freedom for the common good. For Sartre, who rejects all
forms of representation, for who only direct democracy is a democracy,
the delegation,the mediation, indeed all intermediaries between the
subject and her project, this is not a solution. For him, the subject
original unbounded impetus joins or fuses with those of others sharing
the same goal. In a spontaneous revolutionary movement crossing all the
individual projects of the members and uniting them into a common
project where the freedom of each becomes equivalent to that of the
other: "le caractère essentiel du groupe en fusion, c’est la brusque
résurrection de la liberté. Non qu’elle ait jamais cessé d’être la
condition même de l’acte et le masque qui dissimule l’aliénation, mais
nous avons vu qu’elle est devenue, dans le champ pratico-inerte, le mode
sur lequel l’homme aliéné doit vivre à perpétuité son bagne et,
finalement la seule manière qu’il ait de découvrir la nécessité de ses
aliénations et de ses impuissances. L’explosion de la révolte comme
liquidation du collectif ne tire pas directement ses sources de
laliénation dévoilée par la liberté ni de la liberté soufferte comme
impuissance; il faut un concours de circonstances historiques, un
changement daté dans la situation, un risque de mort, la violence."
(Sartre, 1985. p. 425). Freedom here is neither a being nor status, but
an act unfolding. The group is leaderless, and everyone feels
rejuvenated by what they offer to the group. The problem is that such
fusion is only possible in exceptionally difficult circumstance.
Granted, we are in such circumstance now. But still, it is only possible
in the a negative sense, which is to say against a given external enemy
for example. It is therefore unstable; not durable since what
constitutes it one day is what will fragment it in later, once the
objective is achieved: ''c’est que leur unité pratique exige, tout
ensemble, et rend impossible leur unité ontologique. Ainsi le groupe se
fait pour faire et se défait en se faisant.'' (Sartre, 1985. p.573).
Just like the subject freedom is alienated through the practico-inert,
the group freedom faces the inertia of an objective achieved that had
united what could not be united without it.
The groupe-en-fusion reaches a pinnacle of freedom, where all members
are acting spontaneously. As if embodied spirits, their creative freedom
seem to transcend all institutional oppression, before reaching its goal
then dwindling and breaking down. Unger refers to this as the Sartrean
heresy. By which he means that we are only truly free at those
interluding moments of resistance to structures. (Unger, 2014. p.162-7).
A temporary interlude between our long oppression and the ultimate
reaffirmation of the structures as the hands of mighty, crushing the
spirit. In fact, Sartre has not stopped at the groupe-en-fusion, and has
tried to figure out a solution through the pledge. That is when the
groupe-en-fusion attains its goal, and still tries to maintain its
unity. But with the pledge, it succeeds in keeping its unity only
through the threat of extreme force towards any defector. Its unity is
then called 'fraternité-terreur': ''l’assermenté a usé de la médiation
par le groupe pour transformer entièrement le libre rapport spontané que
nous avons découvert au début de notre expérience. Dès le serment, la
réciprocité est centrifuge : au lieu d’être un lien vécu, concret,
produit par la présence de deux hommes (qu’il y ait ou non médiation),
elle devient le lien de leur absence : chacun dans sa solitude ou au
milieu du sous-groupe tire ses garanties et ses impératifs de la
qualification en inertie d’individus communs qu’il ne voit plus.''
(Sartre, 1985. p.479) So the purpose of the next part, freedom in the
Common, is to avoid such fraternité-terreur. To find a way keep that
kind of freedom we have found in the groupe-en-fusion without resorting
to threat and fear. While making that freedom stable across space-time
not only without the ossification resulting from the bureaucratic and
hierarchical institutions. Sartre had recognized this problem in the
Critique, but never really solved it. As Sartre's collaborator Gorz
explicates in a film, ''La Critique de la Raison dialectique apporte les
fondements théoriques de la ligne politique qui preconise la démocratie
révolutionnaire de masse. Et repousse toutes les formes d'organisation
des appareils de contrôle, de direction, comme étant déjà des rechutes
de libération collective en train de se faire dans des formes inertes
institutionalisées qui vont se retournées contre les agents de la praxis
collective.'' Contat et Astruc, (Sartre par lui mĂŞme. 2007)
In taking revolutionary politics as a form of freedom in praxis, we do
not mean that revolution is necessary for freedom. Only that in some
cases, it is. So while it in Switzerland, reforms and emancipatory
politics may suffice, this is not the case in societies where no such
politics is even allowed as in dictatorships.
What characterizes the revolutionary is being in situation in which it
is impossible to share the privileges of her oppressors. Precisely
because these privileges are based on her oppression. They are not
secondary to, but constitutive of the social order. Therefore, the
revolutionary can obtain what she desires only by the destruction of
this social order. (Sartre, 1949. p.178). If within a given situation,
none of the possible paths proposed by those in power is taken. Instead,
the impossible is invented, we have a revolution. Impossible from the
perspective of those in power. The consequences are so great though not
all known, and will have to be assumed for a while by freedom as they
change the ordinary course of history.
We distinguish revolutionary change from reform not only by the
profundity of change in the social and political structure, but also by
the agency of the subject enacting change (rather than the structure
acting from the top) as well as by its the universality of its
aspirations.
Revolution therefore involves:
1. A negative element that contests, resists, and destroys the
foundation of the corporate-state and the very principles of
neoliberalism. For this element, we take Skocpol definition of
revolution which involve: ''basic changes in social structure and in
political structure occur together in a mutually reinforcing fashion.
And these changes occur through intense sociopolitical conflicts in
which class struggle play a a key role.'' (Skocpol, 1979. p.5). The
result is abolishing wage slavery, contractual relations, monopolies,
private property and the violent, coercive and repressive
surveillance-police-military state apparatus. This must be international
otherwise any small island of freedom (such as a libertarian ecovillage)
will face pressure and may not be able to resist absorption into
neoliberalism (although some can resist). It also must be global so that
no part of humanity is excluded or pitted against one another58. This
means establishing connection, coordination, communication and
solidarity between the local struggles and experiments. For instance,
with the deindustrialization of the West, the industrial working classes
are now mostly in Asia. Therefore, a global revolution must include the
emancipation of the workers in Bangladesh, India, China...etc.
2. A reconstruction of the basic structures of political and social life
and a transformation of consciousness. This positive element starts from
within the current system, using it to destroy it. This positive element
must vary according to the local, regional situation, all the
differences and particularities between countries, societies,
cultures...etc. A change of consciousness would be reflected in the
change to the dominant modes of expression and of relationships from
domination, hierarchy, oppression and repression to sympathy,
sensibility, solidarity, cooperation, and a form of tenderness: ''Those
who realize the harm that can be done to others by any use of force
against them, and the worthlessness of the goods that can be acquired by
force, will be very full of respect for the liberty of others; they will
not try to bind them or fetter them; they will be slow to judge and
swift to sympathize; they will treat every human being with a kind of
tenderness, because the principle of good in him is at once fragile and
infinitely precious. They will not condemn those who are unlike
themselves; they will know and feel that individuality brings
differences and uniformity means death. They will wish each human being
to be as much a living thing and as little a mechanical product as it is
possible to be; they will cherish in each one just those things which
the harsh usage of a ruthless world would destroy. In one word, all
their dealings with others will be inspired by a deep impulse of
reverence.'' (Russell, 2006. p.14)
The second part of the positive element, though central to revolution as
we understand it, is often ignored by revolutionaries. Only a minority
does attend to it. One anarchist, Landaeur, goes so far as to make it
the central element of transformation, so he writes: ''The state is a
condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of
behavior; we destroy it by behaving differently.''59 Following this
prepares everyone for the great changes a revolution involves and leads
to a smoother transition, rather than abrupt ruptures. It minimizes
violence. It leads to the coherence between the ideals of the future for
which we struggle and the our way of life in the present. Like all the
alternatives -we will mention in the part on Freedom in the Common- such
as social and temporary property. They aim at the coincidence of means
and ends or the moral with the political as they attempt to 'build the
new within the shell of the old'. In anarchism, this is called
prefiguration.
This second positive element of revolutionary politics is thus just an
early stage of Freedom in the Common.
The working of a university department is a good place to start since
(some) are far closer to a real democracy than states. Faculty
departments lack of rigid hierarchy between the graduates students,
nontenured, tenured faculty, administrative personnel, and the dean.
There is a cooperation in research and teaching, independence of
thought, opinion, choices for work. There is deliberation about
decisions, what needs to be changed, and so on. People generally are
passionate or at least interested in what they are doing, rather than
the work being imposed on them or taking their job to survive. These
elements are prefigurative; being from a new social order yet to be
within the current injust social order.
Revolution in this sense need not involve major violence, because unlike
the XX century revolutions, the goal here does not involve taking over
state power. It does, however, involve a radical transformation of power
structures, of the distribution of power, and of our conception of
power. This transformation ultimately aims at the destruction of the
power of a human being over another (managers, landlords,
patriarchy...etc) and the power of structures over human beings
(corporate-states). The strategy should not be, as in classic
revolutions, around armed confrontations, which is what these elites and
structures excel at, and are prepared for to defend their privileges.
Instead, in addition to resistance and struggles, the strategy should
focus on the politics of emancipation, outside and against these
structures. Through alternative models of sociability, of organization,
of work, solidarity and problem solving like the Common and the other
models I refer to later. By marginalizing the current abusive powers,
demonstrating their ineffectiveness and making them obsolete, they lose
most of their support before any shots are fired. Over time, the
momentum of such bottom up processes may lead to the disappearance of
these repressive structures. International, and intersectional
revolution, wider in scope and time: ''La révolution qui vient sera très
différente des précédentes, elle durera beaucoup plus longtemps, elle
sera beaucoup plus dure, plus profonde […] il faudra au moins cinquante
ans de luttes pour des conquĂŞtes partielles de pouvoir populaire sur le
pouvoir bourgeois, avec des avancées et des reculs, des succès limités
et ,des échecs réversibles, pour arriver finalement à la réalisation
d'une nouvelle société où tous les pouvoirs seront supprimés parce que
chaque individu aura une pleine possession de lui-même. La révolution
n'est pas un moment de renversement d'un pouvoir par un autre, elle est
un long mouvement de déprise du pouvoir. Rien ne nous en garantit la
réussite, rien non plus ne peut nous convaincre rationnellement que
l'Ă©chec est fatal. Mais l'alternative est bien : socialisme ou
barbarie.'' (Sartre, 1976. p.217-218)
It will be longer because it demands more than replacing a class by
another or a group by another, but the end of this form of power in
human relations. And this requires a revolution in consciousness so that
each comes to think and to feel that their praxis finds expression in
others': ''l’opération se définit à chacun comme la découverte urgente
d’une terrible liberté commune'' (Sartre, 1985. p.394). So the
revolutionary moment crystallizes when the majorities of the exploited
and oppressed become so conscious of their situation in the face of
their oppressors that the power they hold as a collective is clear in
their minds: ''contre le danger commun, la libertĂ© s'arrache Ă
l'aliénation et s'affirme comme efficacité commune. Or, c’est
précisément ce caractère de liberté qui fait naître en chaque tiers la
saisie de l’Autre (de l’ancien Autre) comme le mĂŞme : la libertĂ© est Ă
la fois ma singularité et mon ubiquité. Dans l’Autre, qui agit avec moi,
ma liberté ne peut se reconnaître que comme la même, c’est-à -dire comme
singularité et ubiquité.'' (Sartre, 1985. p.426)
These questions about revolution are still relevant today since we have
recently witnessed in many countries revolutionary aspirations that has
defied expectations and even managed to blow away heavily entrenched
military regimes or police states. But then only for a moment. The
revolution goal is the 'making of the human' (Sartre, 2005, 2015) This
is the unconditioned end of its pursuit. Sartre morality of history aims
at the creation of a society where human relations are humane, that is
from one being to another. And no longer from an image to an image or a
mask to a mask. In such process, relations are discoveries by the being
involves, adaptable to their internal beings rather than dictated or
imitated or constrained by rigid roles, hierarchies or institutions.
The means for that end, that is the praxis is almost indistinguishable
from that end since it is merely the everyday unfolding, little by
little, step by step, bringing into society of that kingdom of ends.
In other words this is the idea of prefigurative politics which consists
in embodying the vision, personally and collectively, in the building of
the transformative movement and its praxis. To take just one concrete
example. If a given subject (or a collective movement) is concerned
about the rights of refugees, their dignity, and they sign petitions and
militate for the end of oppression or wars that has made them refugees,
this would be based on a vision of how human life should be. Now, what
is defended here is a position that consists in combining such vision,
awareness, ideals with prefegurative politics (the combination of both
being the seeds of) which in this case, for instance, would be welcoming
some of those refugees at their homes, communities, helping them find
work, learn the language and so on.
''Communauté est ce par quoi la philosophie entend la proposition
socialiste puis communiste.'' Badiou, 1992.
''In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class
antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development
of each is the condition for the free development of all.'' Marx and
Engels, 2008.
III. Freedom in the Common
Can the multitude create durable structures that are then administered
or governed by it rather than from above it? How can these alternatives
to private property and state work?
In what follows, and due to the limited scope of this thesis, we will
deal only briefly with the first question. As for the second question, a
detailed answer on a global scale is still largely unknown; on a local
scale, it should contain general principles, but not be detailed to
adapt to the particular situation of geography, needs, culture...etc.
The persistence of the initial personal constraint:
There is a dimension of constraint that is inherent in freedom. We have
seen it from the beginning in intersubjective consciousness. The Common
attempts to sustain revolutionary politics in space-time.
This means that a commitment to a collective project is essential.
Because once a decision is made, we have to try to carry it out.
Certainly, some changes or revision are possible in light of the
evolving situation, but some form of collective commitment to the
consequences of a collective decision is necessary to overcome the
inevitable obstacles and hardships required to transform a decision into
reality. And attempting to change it (or abandon it) too soon60 makes it
impossible to live in a free society. Because the alternative to such
collective commitment is to have a higher power (police, judge,
prosecutor...etc.) impose that the decision is applied; akin to the
system we have now.
On the possibility of a society beyond neoliberalism:
The first issue is whether such community is possible since the
objection raised immediately is that any social life without the
corporate-state is an utopia since none has ever existed before.
However, in thinking about such community, we find a wealth of
contemporary and historical experiments. Anthropologists, however, have
studied many such societies. (Graeber, 2004, p. 20). Even in modern
industrial countries, libertarian communities have existed, the most
famous of which are the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Spanish revolution
of 1936-1939. (Dolgoff, 1974) They were brutally crushed by the state
since the worst nightmare of the ruling classes is that people make them
obsolete through self-organization, decision making by consensus,
managing everything according to the common good, the interest of the
community and direct democracy.
As for current alternatives to neoliberalism, there are vast and
diverse. And we find them everywhere.
Some alternatives are for now just ideas, some are whole existing
societies, many are in various experimental phases in between a mere
idea and a whole society. So the idea of the Common as a possible way
out of our current neoliberal predicament is only just one of these
alternatives. Some individuals would find it too demanding a conception
of freedom to ascent to. Others would object that it is too far away
from what exist. Others would wonder about what the individuals who are
not interested to live in the Common do. These are all legitimate
critique. However, the conception of the Common neither pushes nor even
attempts to convince anyone to live in a particular way. Nor does any
individual who is in the Common pressured to stay. The idea of the
Common presents just one affirmative path to a more humane work,
relationships, leisure for all. It is a positive alternative to the
current social order. And variations of this idea are possible; that is,
it can and in fact should be deployed at different forms. Furthermore,
the idea of the Common is neither an utopia nor a fixed unchanging
system. Other than the Common, many interesting alternatives models of
social organization exist. They include Thomas Piketty's recent work
where he notably proposes temporary and social property (Piketty, 2019),
and Michael Albert's participatory economics that can start within
capitalism but replaces it (Albert, 2003). Also, Janet Biehl and Murray
Boochkin libertarian municipalism and social ecology (Bookchin, 1996,
2005, 2014. Biel, 2014.). These approaches could start and, in fact, do
in local projects where municipalities gain more independence and more
funds to attend to the precise needs and circumstance of those directly
affected. It extends beyond villages though; some large cities like
Napoli, Barcelona and Madrid practice forms of municipalism. This can
develop further to combine social anarchism on their small scale with
ecology.
In Asia, an anthropologist has studied Zomia where a hundred million
people live stateless (Scott, 2010). They are not living in a Hobbesian
state of nature, but are doing pretty well.
In the US, Gar Alperovitz has extensively documented cooperatives, and
has done in field studies of real workers-owned industries and community
land trusts (Alperovitz, 2011, 2013). The former finance minister of
Greece at the height of the 2015 crisis, economics professor Varoufakis
has joined a young philosopher to found Democracy in Europe Movement
202561. Contrasting their movement with the EU shows what should be
evident; how the latter democracy62 has ossified into a bureaucracy. But
the idea of social freedom cannot be realized if the earth becomes
uninhabitable. Thus whatever progressive changes or transformation we
hope to see should take into account the natural environment. Just as in
Scandinavia, there are no green parties. Because any political party,
whatever its orientation, must have the green element. Socialism and
anarchism should not be thought independent of ecology. Along these
lines, in addition to Bookchin work we mentioned, Michael Löwy, who
visited us early this year discussed his work on ecosocialism (Löwy,
2015). One of Sartre students, André Gorz, has founded Political Ecology
(Gorz, 1975, 1977, 1991, 2008) which relates to ecosocialism. Other
alternatives focusing on political economy include those of Seymour
Melman who has done interesting work on democracy in the workplace, and
on alternative economies to the US military oriented and war driven
economy. (Melman, 1970, 1974, 1988, 2001.). Also, Cole's Guild socialism
(Cole, 1980) whereby workers control their industries is a part of any
democratic society. A step lower tan workers-managed industries is found
at the federation of workers cooperative in Mondragon (Whyte, 1991)
where tens of thousands of workers are the owners. These alternatives to
neoliberalism (among many others) could all be developed and pursued
simultaneously to reinforce each others thus, as Hardt and Negri note,
''expanding networks of productive social cooperation, inside and
outside the capitalist economy'' (Negri, Hardt, 2017. p.60) The choice
of the Common rather than any of these other alternatives is due to the
space limits of this work. And because the common, in practice, goes
much further than these alternatives. It either include (i.e, is more
general) them or is compatible or synergistic with them. Also, in
theory, the concept of the Common helps us develop a new way of thinking
and living -for instance devoid of the concepts of property and of
domination in human relations- and thus better understand and practice
these other alternatives.
Two main obstacles on the way to the Common: private property and the
corporate-state.
Le premier qui, ayant enclos un terrain, s'avisa de dire: Ceci est Ă
moi, et trouva des gens assez simples pour le croire, fut le vrai
fondateur de la société civile. Que de crimes, de guerres, de meurtres,
que de misères et d'horreurs n'eût point épargnés au genre humain celui
qui, arrachant les pieux ou comblant le fossé, eût crié à ses
semblables: «Gardez-vous d'écouter cet imposteur; vous êtes perdus, si
vous oubliez que les fruits sont Ă tous, et que la terre n'est Ă
personne». Rousseau, 2005.
Abolishing private property
This forgotten idea has been at the heart of all the emancipatory
projects of the XIX century. Private property is probably the greatest
obstacle to freedom. It is extremely entrenched, and it is almost an
invisible violence. Most progressives do not even question it. Since we
are not against possession, it is important to distinguish private
property from mere possession. For anarchists ,the difference between
them is in usage. Private property is a possession that is used to
exploit others. (Walter, 1949. p.40) If you own a tool that you
personally use, this is a possession. If you own this same tool, and
offer others to a job to use it lend it so that someone who cannot
afford having one use it, your tool becomes private property. This is
because that person can no longer benefit from the tool for the own
purpose exchange for money. Similarly, Marx and Engels note that they
are not for abolishing property in general, but only bourgeois property
by which they mean, exactly like the anarchists, property based on ''the
exploitation of the many by the few''. For them, this is primordial, so
much so that ''the theory of the communists may be summed up in a single
sentence: Abolition of private property.'' (Marx & Engels, 2008. p.30).
A number of objections are often raised against abolishing private
property. One is that the Common will not be attended to, everyone will
use it and abuse it as they wish, and it will end up being destroyed.
This is the so-called tragedy of the common. However, as Elinor Ostrom
has shown, the fallacy in Garrett Hardin's argument is that he does not
consider that the common can be managed. For him, only private and
public property can thus be used effectively and maintained. For Ostrom,
the ''common-pool resources'' can and must be managed collectively
through systems of democratic participation as she has shown in her
field research: ''self-governed common property arrangement in which the
rules have been devised and modified by the participants themselves and
also are monitored and enforced by them.'' (Negri, Hardt, 2017. p. 99).
While Ostrom maintains the possibility of the Common only in smaller
communities with strict boundaries, Hardt and Negri seek to go beyond
this to a full democracy. In Assembly, they demonstrate the possibility
of an expansive Common. Arguments we cannot discuss here because of our
study limits63; suffice to say that for them the Common for them is not
only the fruits of the soil and all nature's bounty that is referred to
in classical European texts as the inheritance of humanity as a whole.
The Common also ''is dynamic, involving both the product of labor and
the means of future production. This common is not only the earth we
share but also the languages we create, the social practices we
establish, the modes of sociality that define our relationships, and so
forth. This form of the common does not lend itself to a logic of
scarcity as does the first.64'' (Negri, Hardt, 2009. p.139). Hardt and
Negri show that even though this Common that ''that blurs the division
between nature and culture'' is not subject to scarcity, it is still
expropriated. And this defines for them the ''new forms of exploitation
of the biopolitical labor.'' (Negri, Hardt, 2009. p.139)
''Tous coururent au-devant de leurs fers croyant assurer leur liberté.''
Rousseau, 2005.
The withering away of the state
As the frozen residual result of long conflicts, containments and
interruptions, the state is merely, as Marx and Engels noted, a
''committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie''
(Marx and Engels, 2008. p.9) The main enemy remains Capital,
particularly in its current neoliberal form with profit, deregulation,
financialization, militarization and imperialism. The state role remains
to defend Capital, to obfuscate the true holders of power, to serialize
resistance through the vote, to pacify through redistribution, and to
terrorize65 those whose dare to oppose its objectives.
Drunk on state power in USSR, considered a huge victory after the
massacres of the 19th century, the party melted with the state. The USSR
has been an experience in the corruption of the communist idea by
statism. It is an experience that has shown it is impossible to
accomplish a revolutionary program with state apparatus, but rather that
the revolutionary transformation of society is a work of the movement,
of the multitude, as we emphasized in the previous part, freedom as
praxis. Marx thought has come to be in a agreement with the anarchists
on this point, namely the withering away of the State once the
revolution is won66. So in commenting on the Paris Commune, he writes:
''if you look up the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will
find that I declare that the next attempt of the French Revolution will
be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine
from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is the precondition
for every real people’s revolution on the Continent. And this is what
our heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting'' (Marx and Engels,
1989. p.131). Therefore, a change in position is reflected from their
earlier insistence on taking power of the state and having a transition
phase of a proletarian dictatorship. Such change can be seen in the
preface to the German edition of the Communist Manifesto, the last one
signed by Marx and Engels in 1872. In it, they write that the program of
the Communist Manifesto “has in some details become out-of-date,”
because the events of the Paris Commune proved that “the working class
cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it
for its own purposes.”(Negri, 2004. p.286)
We should remember that nation-states are a modern and an artificial
creation, built through conquests and violence. In place of the present
states, there use to be various peoples, tribes, groups, naions or
communities that share a common language and had lived for long
together. Like the Basque in France/Spain or the Kurds in Turkey/Syria.
All these peoples were being wiped out to force a centralized and united
state on all.
Now political theorists refer to the wide diversity of believes,
identities, languages, religions, cultures, and ethnicities within
modern states to defend a neutral state and different multicultural
socio-political arrangements. Politicians prefer integration of
minorities to the dominant culture. But both the theorists and the
politicians never question that the problem may be the state and not the
diverse conceptions of the good within it. In doing so, they ignore the
lion in the room; they never question the state as an anti-human
institution by which I mean it shapes people to fit its purpose, forcing
them into conformity and making those who do not want to live together
to be a people. And in its attempt to do so uses all means available
from the charismatic leader, to propaganda and lies, to making new
enemies to the ethnic cleansing and extermination of those who do not
fall within the scope defined by that state.
Whatever arrangements theorists propose, they have little chance to work
if the population of a state have not chosen to live together, but are
forced to by the artificial border and laws making where they live a
unitary state: ''que l'unité présente soit, somme toute, l'effet du
projet séculaire de la classe actuellement dominante et que celle-ci ait
tenté de produire partout, de la Bidassoa à la frontière belge, le même
type d'homme abstrait, défini par les mêmes droits formels - on est en
démocratie! - et les mêmes obligations réelles sans tenir compte de ses
besoins concrets, personne aujourd'hui n'en a cure: c'est ainsi, voilĂ
tout, on n'y touchera point.'' (Sartre, 1976. p.10)
Thus opposition to the state is motivated more for what it does with its
power over people; being a concentration of hierarchy, violence,
authority rather than for any dogma of a necessity to get rid away with
the state. To illustrate this point one may take the Palestine case.
Here, supporting the Palestinians to have a state is not a support of
hierarchy, authority and violence of a state. But simply a support of
another idea of the state, in this case, civil rights. For, if having
civil rights –and one may be able to make a good argument for this in
the case of Palestinians- requires them having a state then one should
support a state. It may be an unfortunate but necessary step –in this
particular case-- in the direction of emancipation from all forms of
authority including the state's. So the Palestinians, once they have it,
this argument goes, would attempt to make it work against itself.
Another reason, in this case, for why a state maybe justified is the
popular desire for one. For no democrat political theorist, particularly
of libertarian tendencies, could claim to know what is best for a people
and to speak for them. The popular desire maybe mistaken, but it is
rooted in a historical context, in a story, and it has to take its time
course. That is, if an anarchist society is best for all, any particular
people have to discover that on their own. The political theorist may
hope his work contribute to the conditions for which such research and
discovery maybe possible. But she can determine neither the path nor the
outcome a particular path of people may take on their own journey for
emancipation.
The problem of organization:
One of the main objection to social anarchism is that once the state is
gone there will be no law and order. The powerful (physically or
otherwise, or in alliance) will be able to oppress the weak. We will
have theft, violent crimes and perhaps sabotage to the very principles
of a libertarian community. There are 2 parts here from anarchists'
point of view; the law and the order. Anarchists do not deal adequately
with the question of law except to say the following. One, that law
enforcement does not play a major role in peoples' day to day
interactions, but only intervenes in case of problems. This is true, but
then some critics would say that it is precisely because the law, and
the consequences of breaking it, is in the background of people's mind
that law enforcement is not necessary most of the time. (Wilson, 2014.
Ch.2) I agree, but that the law presence in the background is dissuasive
in the present society, but not that it does not follow that its absence
in a radically different society will cause the disappearance of the
inhibitory effect of the fear of punishment. Because in a society where
basic needs are met, where inequalities of circumstance, opportunity and
outcome are not so great, where scarcity is not dominant, people are not
as likely to steal and commit violent crimes. Human nature as it is
conceived now by those who think that the law is indispensable cannot be
the same in a totally different situation as we have argued earlier in
our critique of neoliberalism. Two, that pathological cases will remain,
but they need to be treated and helped, reeducated and reintegrated
rather than punished and excluded from society. As for the question of
order, anarchism could offer several theories of organization. One such
theory developed by Colin Ward is based on the social ideas of
anarchism. Namely autonomous groups, spontaneous order, worker's control
and the federative principle. For the latter, he gives the example of
how the Swiss system where the federation is not dominated by one or a
few powerful cantons, and where the union cuts across ethnic and
linguistic boundaries. By spontaneous order, Ward refers to Kropotkin
idea in Mutual Aid, whereby people will develop by trial and error and
experiments a more durable order that matches more closely with their
needs than any imposed order from the outside. This theory is based on
observations from social biology, human ad hoc organizations, in
revolutionary situations, and after catastrophes. In general, anarchists
aim for a free social order is based on associations that are voluntary,
functional, small and temporary. (Perry & Krimerman, 1966. p386-396).
''So now everything must be reinvented: the purpose of work as well as
the modalities of social life, rights as well as freedoms.'' Guattari
and Negri, 1990.
From the idea of the Common to concrete collective freedom:
What is interesting in Hardt and Negri argument for the Common is that
it is multilayered. It is not simply a moral argument for equality or
ending the exploitation that private property causes. It is also an
argument for productivity. So they are using also the arguments for a
pragmatist liberal. For they are saying that the transformation of labor
from material to immaterial has made production a social process.
Therefore, individual private property fetters the productive capacities
of society: ''when labor is socialized and the whole society becomes a
terrain of valorization, when the intelligence, corporeal activity,
cultural creativity, and inventive powers of all are engaged
cooperatively and together produce and reproduce society, then the
common becomes the key to productivity.'' (Negri, Hardt, 2017. p.97)
Earlier we have quoted Sartre about how once scarcity is internalized
the reciprocity is destroyed such that the other represents famine and a
death menace, even when there is no need or competition, when the
conditions of are not precarious. The idea of the Common is precious in
our view precisely as a possible solution to this problem of
internalized scarcity. The Common would then represent a way of trust,
reassurance; an escape from the fear of famine or destitution for the
poor; and lose or theft for the rich. Such fear is an important factor
of conflict, of seeing the other, especially the large majority of the
poor as a menace.
Having dealt with it briefly while discussing neoliberalism, the main
question remains what is the non authoritarian alternative to the state?
Is such an alternative possible? What kind of structures and
institutions enhance individual freedom and sustain in space-time group
solidarity and political movement praxis?
For this question, we need to find a community where means and ends
fuse. Where the ideals of what a good life may be are reflected in its
structures and in the institutions. And where these in turn protect
these ideals. In his essay Philosophie et Politique, Badiou contrast his
idea of community with the communautarian idea of communities which are,
for him, with their fragmented identities (as in French, Jewish, Arab
communities) the exact opposite of the ideal of community. Similarly
Capital, technocracy, the free market and the management of the affairs
of the state make the ideal of community impossible in today's real
world. (Badiou, 1992)
The Common is an affirmative alternative model of social order. It is a
positive proposition that could be adapted to the different geopolitical
and cultural realities of contemporary societies. Communism relates to
the Common. What Badiou calls the Communist hypothesis comes down to67:
1. An idea of equality. A rejection of the dominant idea that there
exist an inherent inequality constitutive of human nature.
2. Politics as a popular action of emancipation outside or against the
constraints of state representation and centralized power.
3. Seeking polymorphic human work as a basis for undoing all class
divisions and social hierarchies.
Notice these 3 principles approximate equality, freedom and fraternity.
The emphasis on the community as a fundamental locus of freedom here may
seem paradoxical or even an oxymoron. However, this is because only in a
free society can we individually free. We could all recall or imagine
experiences where we were in danger precisely because our individual
freedom stood in opposition to or in tension with another freedom. For
instance, a middle class person walking at night in a poor neighborhood,
where its inhabitants' freedoms (what they can actually do in the
world), unlike his, are severely restricted. That richer person can
avoid going there, avoid contact altogether; try to forget that these
people even exist. Or share the neighborhood with precautions and
protections against the others. Living in such a way, however, makes
life hellish; 'l'enfer c'est les autres' (Sartre, 2017), unlike in a
situation where everyone else around is freer. Furthermore, this
dimension of freedom is possible assuming the individual has a
fundamental, even absolute, right to escape her birth community if they
wanted, and join another that of like minded people. In addition, it
values community not like the communautarians on the basis of keeping or
protecting inherited and traditional customs not on the basis of a
shared identity of religion/ethnicity/culture but on the basis of the of
the creation of the new through the coming together of diversity. A free
community is not closed on itself to protect and keep its
particularities, rather it principles are openness and exploration, the
seeking novelty and experimenting alternatives.
We can see why only through life in a free community can an individual
be free. Because in a free community, the habits and values and
structures that freely chosen, that are made and imagined by its members
come to define who they are. Who I am is what I have freely chosen,
created and lived by rather than what has been assigned, forced upon me
from outside which has no value whatsoever in identification. In fact,
the greatest crime, the most common and least acknowledged is precisely
the identification of an individual with what they have not chosen, be
it their birth religion, class, values, sexual orientation or
nationality.
In the Common, libertarians converge with communists. There is no
surprise since communism is neither a state nor party, but 'a movement
to abolish the current state of things'. (Marx, Engels, 1970) If,
following Gordon, we take the 3 markers of anarchism as [non]domination,
prefiguration, and diversity/open endedness, (Gordon, 2008) we find a
convergence with Badiou's 4 principles of communism:
Il est possible d'organiser la vie collective sur d'autres principes que
le profit et la propriété privée. Il est possible d'organiser la
production en se passant des principes de spécialisation, division du
travail entre tâches d'exécution et de commande, entre travail manuel et
intellecutel. Il est possible d'organiser la vie collective sur une base
autre que les identités fermés. Et enfin il est possible de se passer de
l'état vers une société d'association libre. (Badiou, 2016a)Badiou does
not develop how this is possible. He does not get into the details of
propositions for alternatives.
Freedom in the Common is not an agenda, a political program, a theory or
even the outline of one. But it contains elements through which we can
historically evaluate whether our actions, social mode of organization,
institutions and policies are hospitable to freedom.
Conclusion:
Two serious objections -among many- may be raised to the conception of
freedom which I have proposed and defended. I will try to address them
here. First, one may ask whether by making this concept of freedom
encompassing of all the political, is there not a risk for a return to
totalitarian politics?
We think not. Because by political we do not mean the management of the
affairs of the state through representatives (as l'ENA and its graduates
in France believe). We rather mean the multitude in their movement,
ascent, horizontal decisions, and creation or invention of the new to
the end of a general transformation of global society. Thus it is not
the state, but the group or the movement that is the heart of politics1.
It is what makes the free agents action effective. Concerned subjects
joining others on a voluntary basis in a non hierarchical, bottom up or
widening circles forms of organization. Deliberating, seeking a solution
to a problem or pursuing a common good, taking decisions through a a
consensual process, and sharing the burdens of implementing them without
a division between executive and manual work. This is politics as a
laboratory of social, economic, educational and environmental
experimentation for the creation of the new and the appropriation of the
destiny of the collectivity. Defined this way, freedom is inherently
political68 since politics involves choices of how to live together.
Choices and decisions that lead us to inquire about who we are and what
we want to be. So politics is not about leaders, charisma, authority,
popularity, polls, parties, finances, mutual attacks, ads and election
campaigns. It is about the destiny of a collectivity of human beings.
There is nothing above and beyond it than the improvement of the
everyday life and realizing the unfulfilled potential of humankind.
Neither is it about professional politicians or technocrats, but the
multitude of universal singularities that makes history. It is not about
the elections of representatives that neither represent nor even respond
to the vast majority then quiescence for years while these
representatives (of the elites they are) payback the corporations and
the powerful who supported and financed their campaigns through
legislation that concentrate wealth and power even more. We should leave
behind the political economy that poses the alternatives as either
privatizing or nationalizing, and look forward to the creation of the
Common. It is not whether the market or the state should have the upper
hand or some synthesis of the two, but individual and group initiatives,
voluntary organization, civil society. Only such politics can be truly
democratic69.
A second objection is whether humans today really want to get involved
that much in self-determination and self-government?
It is true that a prior question to freedom as praxis, to emancipatory
politics, and freedom in the Common is whether people -not in their own
personal private lives, but as a collective, as a society- want this
kind of freedom. Do people want to make the decisions pertaining to
their collective life, to govern themselves? Or do people prefer to
escape the burdens of responsibility that comes with this freedom and
hand over the political and strategic decisions to leaders, to
representatives, to a an executive?70
This is a question about human nature; and the answer to it depends more
on where you want to put your hopes than on any empirical proof. I would
like to believe that most people want to be free in the sense of
contributing to governing their own affairs, organizing their own
community rather than being dominated by a ruler or a class. But I
cannot prove it. There is some evidence for it and some against it. I
attribute the latter more to the system in which people find themselves,
grow up with and to their education rather than to any inherent
tendencies for servitude as I have tried to show also through an
excursion into the thought of Kant, Humboldt, and Rousseau.
When I have started this project, I was looking for a ontology. A
conception of human nature on which to ground a normative political
theory. I have come to lean to the position that the human condition
precludes a nature, if by it we mean something unchanging. Attempting to
ground a libertarian community or a free society on a conception of
human nature is attractive though impossible. Because human nature is
nothing more than what we are right now; its very definition is
dependent on the structures of social life. It could always change
through a transformation of the structures of society; making human
nature itself not a constant or a basis on which to imagine what a
better society71 looks like. In addition, our knowledge of such nature
is so incomplete to be of much help. Because to know what is human
nature, we must be able to find some properly human attributes that are
permanent or eternal and universal. But as soon as we try to find
something with these traits, we either fall into the lowest common
denominator, something so ephemeral or we mistake something trivial or
transient, temporal in space or time for something eternal or universal.
This is disappointing for the theorist who wishes to know though
exhilarating to the agent, because it means that there is nothing
determined once and for all; everything human is on the line in history.
Even our most intimate thoughts, feelings, attitudes, perceptions,
experiences and connections are subject to change through social and
cultural transformation.
On the other hand, we are not a blank slate or a malleable clay that is
empty or so malleable to be remolded at whim. We are resistant to
radical transformation, recalcitrance to revolution. Thus, a political
project, however great, should neither require nor expect any fast or
sudden transformation of what we are right now. At best, what we could
hope for is some changes at the margins, that through their cumulative
character in space-time and their synergy, may lead to revolutionary
change. Second, a project of emancipation can tinker with our
recalcitrance to change, thus increasing the likelihood of radical
change without eliciting an antagonistic reaction to such change. Third,
uncovering the social arrangements that pretend to be neutral. Since no
social regimes can be neutral to the conceptions of the good, despite
what many political theorists claim. Every mode of social organization
favors some norms and some kind of experience while discouraging others,
even when this is left untold or hidden. And this non neutrality of
regimes does affect what we are right now, and thus makes it easier or
harder (depending on the regime) for a transformation to operate in a
particular direction.
I used to find Guess's realism (Guess, 2008), a view that politics in
not applied ethics, convincing. This position has so much been
radicalized. It seems there is almost no morality that does not take
wings within the social, political, economic, and historical situation.
A morality of history is 'agonistique' (Sartre, 2015) and all traces of
casuistic are being thoroughly eliminated. This is neither historicism Ă
la Rorty, nor postmodernism. I could not be more opposed to both. Rather
I mean that morality is born, develops, and lives on through the
attitudes, thoughts feelings, positions, and engagements I take on what
is happening in our world; be it the Saudi massacres and starvation in
Yemen, the Israeli Apartheid, the struggles of environmentalists,
anti-racists, feminists, refugees...etc. In other words, morality has no
existence outside of how we relate to these concrete situations of
discrimination, war, deprivation, oppression, exploitation, starvation
and all forms of hierarchy and domination that concrete persons in this
world have to face everyday. If, as many good people say, I merely try
to be good, to treat those around me with the utmost kindness without
such commitment, then I am contributing to the continuation of
oppression. Because the system will not be brought down this way: in
order to respect others, I must disrespect the structures through which
I enter into contact and relations with them72. To treat every human as
an end, I have to tear down the structures because treating everyone as
an end in themselves is impossible in this world. So I have to fight the
structures to make any moral relation possible. Here's how Sartre
expresses this moral difficulty: ''il nous appartient donc de convertir
la cité des fins en société concrète et ouverte […]. Si la cité des fins
demeure une abstraction languissante, c'est qu'elle n'est pas réalisable
sans une modification objective de la situation historique. Kant l'avait
fort bien vu, je crois : mais il comptait tantĂ´t sur une transformation
purement subjective du sujet moral et tantôt il désespérait de
rencontrer jamais une bonne volonté sur cette terre. En fait la
contemplation de la beauté peut bien susciter en nous l'intention
purement formelle de traiter les hommes comme des fins, mais cette
intention se révélerait vaine à la pratique puisque les structures
fondamentales de notre société sont encore oppressives. Tel est le
paradoxe actuel de la morale : si je m'absorbe Ă traiter comme fins
absolues quelques personnes choisies, ma femme, mon fils, mes amis, le
nécessiteux que je rencontrerai sur ma route, si je m'acharne à remplir
tous mes devoirs envers eux, j'y consumerai ma vie, je serai amènĂ© Ă
passer sous silence les injustices de l’époque, lutte des classes,
colonialisme, antisémitisme, etc., et finalement, à profiter de
l'oppression pour faire le bien. Comme d'ailleurs celle-ci se retrouvera
dans les rapports de personne Ă personne et, plus subtilement, dans mes
intentions mêmes, le bien que je tente de faire sera vicié à la base, il
se tournera en mal radical. Mais, réciproquement, si je me jette dans
l'entreprise révolutionnaire, je risque de n'avoir plus de loisirs pour
les relations personnelles, pis encore d’être amené par la logique de
l'action Ă traiter la plupart des hommes et mes camarades mĂŞmes comme
des moyens. Mais si nous dĂ©butons par l'exigence morale qu'enveloppe Ă
son insu le sentiment esthetique, nous prenons le bon départ : il faut
historialiser la bonne volonté [...] c'est-a-dire provoquer, s'il se
peut, par l'agencement formel de notre oeuvre [l'] intention de traiter
en tout cas l'homme comme fin absolue, et diriger [l']intention sur
[les] voisins, c'est-à -dire sur les opprimés de notre monde. Mais nous
n'aurons rien fait si nous ne [..] montrons en outre, [..] qu'il est
précisément impossible de traiter les hommes concrets comme des fins
dans la société contemporaine. Ainsi [...]ce qu'[on] veut en effet c'est
abolir l'exploitation de l'homme par l'homme et que la cité des fins
qu'[on] a posée d'un coup dans l'intuition esthétique n'est qu'un idéal
dont nous ne nous rapprocherons qu'au terme d'une longue Ă©volution
historique. En d'autres termes nous devons transformer [notre] bonne
volonté formelle en une volonté concrète et matérielle de changer ce
monde-ci par des moyens déterminés, pour contribuer à l’avènement futur
de la société concrète des fins. Car en ce temps-ci une bonne volonté
n'est pas possible ou plutĂ´t elle n'est et ne peut ĂŞtre que le dessein
de rendre la bonne volonté possible.'' (Sartre, 1948. p.296-7)
Theorizing seeks patterns and principles, goals and a vision that links
the focal, particular, local struggles worldwide. Many activists on the
ground are keenly aware of that. One of the best recent examples is the
indigenous water protectors in the US, struggling to protect their
environment and the Common, against the corporate-state. They have very
much identified their struggle with and expressed deep solidarity with
the Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of a de facto
Apartheid State. Furthermore, the Water protectors of Standing Rock
defended their territory not on the basis of private property, but on
the basis of the idea of Common.
The ideas I have defended are about a vision of the world that is
neither necessary nor impossible.
In political theory, we have the freedom of not being in a survival
situation; of not being in the storm of political and social
emergencies. We can plunge into them as activists and militants, but
then step back to reflect on our experiences and larger patterns. A
reflection with the aim of pushing our ideas to the limit of the abyss,
with a hope that the result will not to destroy them completely, but to
produce something greater and higher and truer.
We have seen how freedom as ethical commitment is grounded in an
intersubjective consciousness. And how this commitment leads to the
formation of groups and movements, and the Multitude that pursue
emancipatory and revolutionary politics. In the emanation of the
multitude from the current neoliberal situation, we have seen how this
revolutionary subjectivity leads to the creation of a new situation, the
Common where the Multitude may escape counter-finality, and freedom may
not get ossified into the practico-inert.
I never would have thought that my own intense solitary longing for
freedom would open me up to a whole new world. This longing has
developed in me extremely strong feelings of pain, anger and revolt
witnessing the sufferings of others from exploitation and all forms of
domination. I have come to understand and interpret this pain, revolt
and sympathy as my own original longing for freedom that has come to be
affirmed within me as the mutilated freedom of others. How to even
contemplate realizing freedom for all when one could hardly do it for
oneself? Is there a way to live with this impotence of witnessing
mutilated freedom all around and being unable to do much about it?
''Whenever the transformative experiences of faith, hope, and love take
a strictly secular form, their common ground becomes this expanded sense
of opportunity in association. Nobody rescues himself; the path to those
experiences necessarily passes through situations of aggravated risk in
the life of the passions, and success in this pursuit requires that
others not attack you at your moment of increased defenselessness; that
is to say, it requires acts of grace by other people. If these acts are
lacking or deficient, another grace would be needed to make up for their
absence.' (Unger, 1984. p. 99). Even though powerless regarding
mutilated freedom all around us, we are still free to perform these act
of grace. Perhaps in each act, and beyond, each contact, each
engagement, every relationship, I could try to make the other feel as
free as they want to be -if only we come to understand with them what
they mean by freedom.
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Appendix
Authors:
The choice of the authors was solely guided by the questions pursued.
The particular traits or characteristics of the authors matter, but they
were identified later on, rather than being the reason for their choice.
Praxis or revolutionary activity is one such trait. If the goal is to
change the world then we need to understan how it works. And we cannot
understand much without acting in the world; being on the ground with
those most affected by forms of concentrated power. On the other hand,
writing to defend an abstract ideal of freedom is contributing to
oppression.
Theory and practice inseparable. Philosophy and public intervention
pursued in parallel.
With the exception of Sartre's Critique, the philosophical works have
been deliberately avoided, in favor of political and social theory.
Sartre has always looked for trouble; getting involved in many
revolutions (e.g. Cuba), and for many years in the Algerian and
Vietnamese struggles against the French and American imperialists
avoiding jail only through his stature. Negri was not that lucky, he was
arrested, falsely charged and spent over 13 years in prison and many
others in exile (Paris). The theoretical works of the authors chosen
reflect their understanding (of freedom, democracy, politics and
society) from the participation of struggles on the ground. What they
have learned from emancipatory politics over the years has changed their
work. And their ideas were tested in the movements and struggles in
which they were actively involved.
In addition, Sartre and Negri share a metaphysical thirst for the
absolute while knowing they will not achieve it. These
thinkers-militants show a left surviving in a desolate landscape. A
great problem of the left is organization. The theories they work, and
the ideas I try to focus on here try to show that organization need not
be detrimental to personal freedom.
The theorist must touch the wound, the suffering, the emergencies. He
must be there. But that is not enough. He must communicate the message
of those who cannot, in their own voice, and makes it resonate in the
world outside. Better, the intellectual, should only give the word to
the people as Sartre insisted. This communication should ideally be in
the form of exemplary action the theorist embodies in the world. For
instance in the case of Negri with the Italian workers and for Sartre
with societies torn to shreds by Capital imperial wars and struggling
for justice and independence. Hardt and Badiou as well have also been
thinkers-militants throughout their lives. For instance, Badiou through
his Organisation Politique, and Hardt recently contributing to a rescue
boat in the Mediterranean. Hardt and Negri bring postmodernism to this
work. Today, it cannot be ignored. However, being unfamiliar with it and
unable to include it in this brief work, including them offer a
postmodern dimension seen from their perspective of radical
transformation.
With the exception of Hardt, these thinkers-militants are systemic
philosophers with a whole system developed that is not discussed her;
but only their politics. They are hybrid. That is, they cannot be
labeled and they reject labels with the exception of Badiou with
communism. They have never belonged to one ideology, but changed over
time, and have come from cross pollination. Finally, these authors look
at the world from an interdisciplinary perspective rather than from a
single political or economic one to avoid having a partial view in
dealing with global issues and fundamental human questions.
1. Mutilation is the necessity of choosing one course of life over all
possible others that are available to a human being at birth. In taking
a particular path in order to become someone in particular, we renounce
all the other selves that we could become. Yet there is never enough
evidence for such a grave choice of one version of the self over all
others. But it must be made. Since if we do not make it then it will be
made for us. The only question therefore is whether we make it
implicitly and in confusion or explicitly and consciously. Even in the
latter, the better case, it is experienced as a kind of mutilation.
(Unger, 2014. p.397-405). While this thesis does not discuss work/labor,
it is hoped that in a future free society, where the strict division of
labor is gone, the polymorphic worker would then be less mutilated.
Meanwhile, sympathy, that is, imagining the movements of the cut of
limbs through others' lives (so different from mine -not only in work,
but also class, culture, traditions...etc. and yet lives I could have
had in other circumstances) is one way to deal with my inescapable
mutilation.
2. Mummification is the formation of a ''shell of routine and
compromise'' through both our ''habitual surrender to the routines of
social circumstance as well as the hardened version of our self: the
character''. The mummy is therefore made through the accumulation of the
routines of our social roles and the unexamined ''habits of mind and
behaviors''. Within this mummy ''we die many small deaths'' (Unger,
2014. p.194 & p.405-409) when our aim should be to die only once.
Putting the self in situations of intense vulnerability is one way to
prevent mummification. Mummies are not only unfree, but feel no need to
be free; they pursue neither emancipation nor revolution. It is thus the
task of left militants-thinkers to prevent the mummification processes
in society.
3. You are the only decider about what matters most to you. This point
is central to understand the early Sartre conception of freedom
(individual). No philosophy or religion or person can give you an
answer. And whatever answer you take from these sources (or elsewhere)
is the one you have sought and picked (among many sources and many
possible answers), subject to your understanding and to your
interpretation. See Sartre, 1946.
4. By this, Sartre means everything that was freely chosen by the
subject that then comes back to limit her own freedom (Sartre, 2005.
p.671) as well as ''l’activité des autres en tant qu’elle est soutenue
et déviée par l’inertie inorganique.'' (Sartre, 1985. p.547)
5.Though it probably is possible within the collective life of humanity,
that is, in historical time. But this impossibility of reconciliation of
both projects in a human life makes self-reconstruction the wrong point
of departure.
6.For instance, the personal dimension as a commitment. And the social
or political dimension of freedom as emancipatory or revolutionary
politics.
7. An example showing the strength and weakness of analytical reasoning
is Cassegrin's thesis on anarchism (2015). He proceeds by contrasting
anarchism to all other ideologies in order to seek a single distinctive
feature of anarchism. He eliminates one by one the aspects that we find
in anarchism and other ideologies like a conception of human nature, of
social justice...etc. The result is defining anarchism wholly through
the single negative aspect of anti-authority. While we agree that
anti-authority is fundamental to anarchism, it cannot on its own define
anarchism. What defines an ideology is never a single concept or value,
but rather a dynamic interaction of several concepts together. It would
have been good if the social and political fields were as simple,
distinct and clear as analytical reasoning shows them. But human affairs
are unfortunately anything but clear, distinct and simple. Our
theoretical work must reflect this complexity.
8. In contrast to the dynamism of the dialectical method, in which the
change or transformation of one part immediately influences all the
related parts.
9. Recognition of reason as a universal is, however, essential -but only
in theory as a background moral aspiration. In practice, you should
suppose its role is and will be too marginal relative to the more
fallible and all too human impulses, desires and passions...etc. When
you are riding a bike in Paris, you assume reason as a universal human
attribute, and you hope for (more) reason, but anticipate everything
unreasonable; so you act as if reason is (almost) non existent.
Otherwise, big trouble! And so should our attitude be in practical
politics, and in thinking about it. This is because human reason is
often subdued by their instinctive animality. Personally, the moral
approach we take towards this is dialectical: to recognize the universal
in a human being, that is her transcendental being, we must recognize
her through her animality. To see her as a universal reason is to see an
abstraction; to dehumanize her. On the other hand, seeing her just as an
organism responding to needs, instincts and desires is belittling her to
subhumanity.
10. For the difference between indeterminacy as sometimes an unavoidable
part of our concepts and ambiguity which is possible to overcome, see
Freeden, 2005. For a general critique of the analytical method, see
Freeden, 1998.
11. ''La liberté est un développement dialectique complet et nous avons
vu comment elle s'aliène ou s'enlise ou se laisse voler par les pièges
de l’Autre.'' (Sartre, 1985. p.564). The Critique of Dilectical Reason
instantiates this dialectic of freedom. But it was during an interview
that Sartre put this dialectic in the simplest of terms; speaking of his
own freedom as commitment: ''La liberté se transformant en engagement et
l’engagement se transformant en pratico-inerte : c’est ce que j’ai
voulu, c’est ce que je n’ai pas voulu, c’est ce que je dois vouloir :
tout cela revient au mĂŞme. Sans doute finit-on par devenir un bloc de
ciment un peu avant de mourir. Mais je ne pense pas qu’il y ait d’autre
solution : si vraiment on s’engage dans une entreprise, on devient de
plus en plus celui qui est défini par ce qu’il a fait, on est pris par
de plus en plus de côtés différents par des générations qui changent. Il
y a une certaine personnalité Sartre qui existe pour les autres, qui
varie, qui change et qui cependant me conditionne parce que je dois
l’assumer. Car je dois aussi bien assumer ce que je suis pour des amis
du Mali ou de Cuba que ce que je suis pour le Nouveau Roman par exemple.
Je dois toujours tout prendre. Du moment que la liberté, c’est
l’engagement, la finalité de l’engagement, c’est la disparition de la
liberté. Seulement, entre-temps, se sera accomplie une vie.'' (Sartre,
2005. p.671)
12. This concept comes much later in Sartre's Morality; notably in the
Rome lecture of 1964 (Sartre, 2015) to which we will return.
13. But for these to disappear (and to recognize the suffering from
their existence), we must first recognize them.
14. The supreme form of recognition is in love, where the radical and
unconditional acceptance of the other as she is makes it possible for
her to explore, to take risks, to change and even undergo transformative
experiences in the adventures of self-discovery and self-construction;
being grounded in the world through love. The loved (and the lover in
what can only be a reciprocity), within this safe zone of
unconditionality, becomes freer to be what she can or desires to become.
What we hope for is a society where diluted forms of love are developed
and widely diffused.
15.He meant that no philosophy or religion could answer what is the
moral thing to do in a given situation. Hence, invention is the key to
morality. We will discuss later the example Sartre gives of one of his
students asking for advice.
16.''il y eut une nature immuable de l'homme. L'homme Ă©tait l'homme
comme le cercle Ă©tait le cercle : une fois pour toutes; l'individu,
qu'il fût transporté sur le trône ou plongé dans la misère, demeurait
foncièrement identique à lui-même parce qu'il était conçu sur le modèle
de l'atome d'oxygène, qui peut se combiner avec l'hydrogène pour faire
de l'eau, avec l'azote pour faire de l'air, sans que sa structure
interne en soit changée. Ces principes ont présidé à la Déclaration des
Droits de l'Homme. Dans la société que conçoit l'esprit d'analyse,
l'individu, particule solide et indécomposable, véhicule de la nature
humaine, réside comme un petit pois dans une boîte de petits pois : il
est tout rond, fermé sur soi, incommunicable. Tous les hommes sont égaux
: il faut entendre qu'ils participent tous Ă©galement Ă l'essence
d'homme. Tous les hommes sont frères : la fraternité est un lien passif
entre molécules distinctes, qui tient la place d'une solidarité d'action
ou de classe que l'esprit d'analyse ne peut mĂŞme pas concevoir. C'est
une relation tout extérieure et purement sentimentale qui masque la
simple juxtaposition des individus dans la société analytique. Tous les
hommes sont libres : libres d'ĂŞtre hommes, cela va sans dire. Ce qui
signifie que l'action du politique doit être toute négative : il n'a pas
Ă faire la nature humaine; il suffit qu'il Ă©carte les obstacles qui
pourraient l'empêcher de s'épanouir. Ainsi, désireuse de ruiner le droit
divin, le droit de la naissance et du sang, le droit d'aînesse, tous ces
droits qui se fondaient sur l'idée qu'il y a des différences de nature
entre les hommes, la bourgeoisie a confondu sa cause avec celle de
l'analyse et construit Ă son usage le mythe de l'universel.'' (Sartre,
1948. p.17-18)
17. For a detailed account of this conflict between them, see Aronson,
2004.
18. Badiou's politics is also focused in subjectivity and is just as
revolutionary as Sartre's and Negri's with some crucial differences that
relates to his complex philosophical system. Badiou distinguishes facts
which describe the world as it is and events which are something of the
miraculous in that they interrupt and transform, but are so rare. For
him the profit seeking individual becomes a subject only once she has
recognized an event, and has fidelity to it. In other words,
subjectivity is a consequence, not a creator, of an event. For a review
of Badiou's politics, see Hewlett, 2006, 2007.
19. I include thinkers as Russell, Dewey, and Humboldt in this study
partly to show the great diversity of liberalisms and that many liberals
have been anti-capitalist. Also, because these liberals' conceptions of
freedom are relevant to ours. Thus liberalism and its idea of freedom
cannot be used, as neoliberals do, to justify neoliberalism -- unless
corrupted beyond recognition. For instance, Adam Smith had an ethical
approach to economics which favored state intervention only when it was
to the advantage of workers. For a review of this reading of Smith, see
Werhane, 2006.
20. I use libertarian in its original 19th century meaning; an
anti-statist socialist. Coined by the anarcho-communist poet Joseph
DĂ©jacque in his journal La Libertaire, Journal du mouvement social, the
term has become equivalent to anarchist in the 19th century, and has
thus indicated total opposition to private property. Libertarian is used
nowadays to indicate the exact opposite; a right-wing proprietarian. See
McKay, 2014. p.138. In this thesis, I will use libertarian as an
umbrella term for all the anti-authoritarian left-wing, be they
anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, social anarchists, libertarian
socialists...etc.
21 Negri and Hardt, 2017. p.xx
22. See Ch.1 in Roberto Unger and Cornel West, 1998. They are in
agreement with Alain Badiou for whom « le triomphe du capitalisme
mondialisé » also means « le déracinement total de l’idée même d’un
autre chemin possible. » (Badiou, 2016b. P.22)
23. We deal with this in the section on freedom in the Common.
24. A situation most often chosen by others, not the self.
25. The proletariat being at the time the only subjectivity for
emancipatory politics. This was to change soon with anti-colonial
struggles.
26. A morality Sartre developed in the early and mid sixties and
delivered through two lectures in Rome (See, Sartre, 2015) and Cornell
(he canceled his visit to the US to protest Kennedy's escalating bombing
of Vietnamese)
(See Sartre, 2005)
27. It is more appropriate calling it a regime than an administration
since only one man commands and decides. And pleasing him -in whatever
way- is the key for access and hold on positions of power.
28.This is the case for example when the reasons (moral, economic,
pragmatic..etc) leading to the position are shared, but only a
misunderstanding, distraction or a different interpretation of the
question has lead to the disagreement.
29.Corrupted from their original meaning as in liberalism early
conception of freedom to which we will turn later.
30. Freedom as non-domination has seen a revival in the political
theories of anarchism and republicanism (Pettit and Skinner). Since the
latter admits private property and the state while the former rejects
both, this work is far more aligned with the former theoretical
framework. For a review of freedom as non-domination in anarchism and
republicanism, and the contrast between them, see Kinna and Prichard,
2019.
31. Also known as the Washington Consensus, the neoliberal doctrine is
neither new nor liberal --in that its features are far from liberal
tradition from the enlightenment to Dewey and Russell. (Chomsky, 1998.
p.13)
32. As Kristin Ross notes the 3 targets to destroy for May 1968 in
France were capitalism, American imperialism and Gaullism. (p.8) Adding
that the ''ruse of capital uses the aspirations and logic of militants
against themselves, producing the exact result unwanted by the actors''.
(Ross, 2002. p.189)
33.The conclusion of early liberals, however, remains totally valid
today in the case of dictatorships, absolute monarchies, and similar
regimes.
34. After all such states allow dissent although -and this is also
crucial to understand power- only within a very limited range. So the
left and right are mostly similar; they agree on the rules of the game.
But the left being a less effective but less cruel right. Within this
extremely narrow spectrum, freedom is possible. Each party warms the
place for the other one to take over, giving the population the sweet
illusion that their vote actually matters, and keeping the system pretty
much unchanged. Arguably, differences within a party are wider than
between parties. (i.e. Blair is far closer to May and Cameron than he is
to Corbyn). Wolin notes how this controlled politics where the central
actor is corporate, the citizen dissent is tolerated as long as it
remains within the established limits, with no real power leverage.
(Wolin, 2008. p.196)
35. To which the state has become subservient.
36. On this, see for instance, Wendy Brown's Undoing the Demos:
Neoliberalism Stealth Revolution, 2015.
37. He defines economic freedom as freedom to purchase whatever you
want, rather than freedom of having the basic necessities of life.
Contrast with Bakunin for whom the absence of economic freedom is a form
of slavery: ''the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and
dismaying succession of terms of serfdom – voluntary from the juridical
point of view but compulsory in the economic sense – broken up by
momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in
other words, it is real slavery.'' (Bakunin, 1953. p.188)
38. ''système de relations définies par la classe dominante en fonction
de la rareté et du profit''. (Sartre, 1972. p.34)
39.''The typical creative impulse is that of the artist; the typical
possessive impulse is that of property. The best life is that in which
creative impulses play the largest part and possessive impulses the
smallest. The best institutions are those which produce the greatest
possible creativeness and the least possessiveness compatible with
self-preservation[...] it is preoccupation with possessions, more than
anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. The State
and Property are the great embodiments of possessiveness; it is for this
reason that they are against life, and that they issue in war.''
(Russell, 2009. p.152)
40. And by reversing this serial impotence through collective action
(see part III, emancipatory politics), groups and movements concretize
freedom by reaching social and political goals impossible to each of
their member on their own, and by overcoming the isolation and impotence
of the atomized individual.
41. For Robin, neoliberalism is ''the most genuinely political theory of
capitalism the right has managed to produce.'' (Robin, 2017. p.133)
42. In 1975, Jimmy Carter helped launch the neoliberal turn in American
politics by campaigning on the claim ''I ran the Georgia government as
well as almost any corporate structure in this country is run.''
Nowadays a real estate mogul is running the country as he ran his
bankrupt businesses. Of course only a symptom. But this focus on the
symptom of an underlying festering disease only shows how undemocratic
is representative democracy: it has become a one man affair.
43. In so far as a representative democracy is a democracy, it should be
the exact opposite of this corporate model. The source of power flows
from below. Responsibility and accountability is from those elected
representative.
44. Again the aim of morality for late Sartre is a integral humanity
which precisely means that we should not have choices that include death
among them. On this point, we would mention Sartre's answer to the
orthodox communists like those in the PCF (Parti Communiste Français)
who reproached him for his saying that humans are free. Since, they
said, that if they are already free, why would we need a revolution to
emancipate them. Of course, Sartre answer is that the quality of the
available choices and their quantity are crucial to what concrete
freedom is: ''Tel est l'homme que nous concevois: homme total.
Totalement engagé et totalement libre. C'est pourtant cet homme libre
qu'il faut délivrer, en élargissant ses possibilités de choix. En
certaines situations, il n'y a place que pour une alternative dont l'un
des termes est la mort. Il faut faire en sorte que l'homme puisse, en
toute circonstance, choisir la vie.'' (Sartre, 1948. p.28) In addition,
Sartre would add that if freedom was not intrinsic to humans then why
liberate them? If freedom was not the defining core of humans, why would
they feel oppression? Why would they make a revolution? ''Nous concevons
sans difficulté qu'un homme, encore que sa situation le conditionne
totalement, puisse être un centre d'indétermination irréductible.''
(Sartre, 1948. p.26) Furthermore, there are many dimensions of freedom,
as we discuss in this thesis. (ontological, political, economic, social,
and so on).
45. Unamuno was cited by Unger in his 2017 conference Inclusive
Vanguardism.
46. That is the freedom in situation, in constraint, choosing to
undertake a social action which aims as freedom as an end.
47.By fundamental contradiction in an individual's circumstance, I mean
the contradiction between the universality of love, human rights, UN
charter, morality, and of scientific laws...etc. on one hand and the
arbitrary divisions and sectarianism of human into classes, ethnicities,
nationalities, religions...etc. on the other hand.
48. The politician argument, being ambiguous, helps him win a maximum of
votes because people can interpret it in different ways, compatible with
their goals, and vote for him accordingly.
49. The multiculturalist lives this contradiction more so because, in
fact, no such universal principles are even possible within the
(unquestioned) statist framework of political theory and practical
politics. Because governing a contemporary society (again within this
framework) requires a bureaucracy. Now, as personal experience and many
of the works cited here (and beyond) show, nothing is democratic or
egalitarian in an administration. A state bureaucracy is inherently
hierarchical and authoritarian. Furthermore, it is not accurate that
pluralism or tolerance is found in the West (though it is even worse
elsewhere –Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East). Because mostly
people tolerate others as long as they are just like them. Real
tolerance requires difference. Tolerant people would not be having the
discourse of integration but rather mutual recognition towards those who
are different from them, like Muslims in the West. Plurality through
recognition of the other is still extremely rare. Because to recognize
the other in this way, I must recognize in her something universal that
I share. Otherwise, my pluralism would not be a universal value but an
irreducible difference. No society was more pluralistic (in this latter
sense) than the Apartheid state in Palestine or the former apartheid
South Africa; for them, Arabs and blacks are difference, otherness..
50. What American politicians and mainstream media call detention
centers.
51. Is Sartre right that human life is so contestable a norm? Certainly
in wars and at the height of the cold war when intellectuals, worried
about the prospects of nuclear Armageddon, have gathered to sign the
Russell-Einstein Manifesto. But is it the supreme value in today's
'peace'? We think it still is not, because we do not consider our times
peaceful, if peace is not merely the absence of world embracing
conflicts, though there is that too for instance in the 1% war against
the 99%. The point is that even outside of war zones, and beyond intense
social and political upheavals in (materially) poorer countries, there
is extreme violence: ''L'ordre humain n'est qu'un désordre encore, il
est injuste, précaire, on y tue, on y meurt de faim'' (Sartre, 1964.
p.128) Even in the ordered, relatively peaceful societies, their very
fabric is torn apart by their inability to attend to the needs of the
many inside and outside them, and to reach out across -class, ethnic,
gender, religious, national and supranational- dividing lines. Their
'peace' has been and still is the result of the subjugation and
oppression of the worldwide 'énorme masse des démunis' through
colonialism and the 'nouvelles pratiques impériales' (Badiou, 2016b.
p.25-29) including the dispossessed within these western societies: 'les
ouvries de provenance étrangère, leurs enfants, les réfugiés, les
habitants des sombres cités, les musulmans fanatiques.' (Badiou, 2016b.
p.41) This is a major operation of the ruling elites in Western states
which has always been a winning electoral strategy since the National
Socialists have perfected it in Germany nine decades ago. It consists at
acknowledging the problems and worries of the middle class, the basis of
'democracy' in these states. But then instead of taking responsibility
that these problems result from their policies, they create an enemy
onto which to shift the fear of destitution of the middle class. That
enemy must be so weak and undefended and so it is found in the most
vulnerable strata of the population, and promise that, if elected, they
will do all they can (more violence, police, prisons, surveillance,
military, deportations, deals with dictators...etc.) to stop these
dangerous masses. Conservative thinks tanks, a collection of identity
obsessed public figures, and the 'free' corporate media follow with a
commentary that parrots these arguments reflexively in the name of
covering the elections or, when honest, because covering the spectacles
of clowns bring them profits (some CEO like NBC's have admitted that
Trump is bad for the country bad has been really good for them). This
operation repeated ad nausem has been called democracy. After all isn't
it free speech, free media, free debates, free and fair elections? In
fact what this 'democracy' amounts to is the creation of a ''guerre
civile rampante, dont nous observons de plus en plus les sinistres
effets'' (Badiou, 2016b. p.41), witness the white supremacists series of
mass murders, as just one example. This is why it is precisely the task
of intellectuals today -if their goal is freedom- to focus on uncovering
and exposing these particular forms of extreme violence: the hidden
violence of hate speech, the less obvious one, the less spectacular
(than open warfare with tanks and fighter jets) violence of manipulative
and deceitful political discourse, and the violence of homelessness, of
isolation, and debt, of exclusion, discrimination and marginalization.
It is not because it is hidden that it is any less cruel or destructive
to the lives of those who are affected by it. And they are millions.
Political theory is well placed in its interests, its scope and methods
to play a role here.
52. It designates the fusion of a 'free' market economy with a governing
oligarchy.
53. For Sartre, praxis is human action in a historical context. Praxis
is dialectical; it proceeds through clashes of contradictions which it
overcomes. It partially negates what is in order to make what is not
yet, the situation to change, the goal to reach and ultimately the
reproduction of life. ''La praxis comporte le moment du savoir pratique
qui révèle, dépasse, conserve et déjà modifie la réalité.'' (Sartre,
1972. p.14-15). In his morality of history, Sartre defines the normative
as praxis by which he means ''le faire se subordonnant le connaître et
l'avoir et découvrant son but comme l'unité de son travail et de sa
peine.'' (Sartre, 2015. p.51)
54. Kant citation comes from the editor's note 50 in Bakunin, 1967.
p.426.
55. The universal singularity attempts to overcome both individualist
and collective subjectivities. The former, as C.B. MacPherson (1985) has
shown is the basis of neoliberal dogma. And this is the pathological
freedom we find in the works of Hayek, Friedman, Buchanan...etc. The
latter is based on an inherited identity (such as class or ethnicity).
They both assign a fate to subjectivity, and are counter to the basic
idea (we defend here) that a defining attribute of freedom is that
humans are projects. That they can and should become what they choose.
That we are always in process of creating the self. (Existence precedes
essence...etc.)
56. Indeed, contrary to Hardt and Negri's revolutionary Multitude,
Badiou only sees 3 typical existing subjectivities that are all
reactionary: 'occidentale', 'désir d'occident' and 'nihiliste'. By
typical subjectivity, he means psychological forms of convictions and of
affect produced by the structures of the contemporary neoliberal world
order. The first is that of the 40% middle class that shares 14% of the
wealth (the world oligarchy of 10% concentrating 86% of the wealth while
50% of the world population owns nothing). It is torn by the
contradiction of arrogance and pretension of civilization on the one
hand and the brutal fear of ''se voir balancer, Ă partir des 14% qu'on
partage, du côté des 50% qui n'ont rien''. As the repository of the
'capitalo-parlementarisme' its identity is that of
'salarié-consommateur.' It must sell its labor for Capital, receive its
due crumbs, and spend it on the endless products of Capital. The second
and third subjectivities are those of people whose world has been
devastated by Capital exploitation, but are fascinated by the life of
that middle class (concentrated in the West). So they desire to get
there but when they cannot get, they try to copy the neoliberal society
of consumption where they live (2nd subjectivity). Or, some in their
frustration, attempt revenge by destroying that (model) which is so
desired and so inaccessible. This is the nihilism of 'celui dont la vie
est comptée pour rien' who knows that if he does not destroy that which
he so desires (through mass murder, including suicide bombing), he will
be unable to escape succumbing to it. For the ruling oligarchy, a large
part of people with these 2 subjectivities (Badiou estimates that part
at over 2 billion) are nonexistent in their calculus for taking over
lands, extracting resources, profits and deal-making with the local
puppet rulers (or the mafia they would put in place in case of the ruler
disobedience. See under Qadafi) in these countries. Since these 2
billions cannot buy any of the products of Capital (because they have no
access to its labor market), they should not even exist. (Badiou, 2016b.
p.39-44)
57. For instance, the machines, buildings or tools, being used for the
same purpose are not felt as obstacles, as frozen praxis, towards which
we react as is the case when serial individuals use inorganic matter for
opposite goals.
58. For instance, when a factory shuts down in a rich country only to
open in a developing country so that the plus value is larger. The
result is unemployment for the workers in the rich country, and
exploitation for those in the poor one.
59. Cited in Gordon, 2008. p.38.
60. Unless there are very serious reasons to do so, as when the
collective has initially gotten that decision wrong.
61. www.diem25.org
62. Which should rather be called representation.
63. though we will take just 3 more objections to abolishing private
property they discuss.
64. This second notion of the Common has some similarity to what Russell
refers to as mental and spiritual goods; and which define for him a
better life since these goods can be shared without affecting their
quantity, unlike material goods. (Russell, 2006. p.11)
65. While the terminology has reserved terrorism for the weaker side
that does violence to cause fear, states have, by far, done more
terrorism than non-state actors. See Blakeley, 2009. Note that most
'leaders' who justify repression in the name of fighting terrorism have
carried out more terrorism than those they claim to fight.
66. In an agreement with the anarchists.
67. Badiou, 2016a. p. 9-10
68. In a sense that goes far beyond political freedoms or rights.
69. Where democracy can be thought as a collective process of
exploration, experimentation, and organization with the aim of expanding
social freedom.
70. Either case, we have to also inquire if the mechanisms (of the
so-called representative democracy) are the best.
71. i.e. A society that is less harsh and alienating, more hospitable to
this human nature.
72 .This may seem unrealistic. But suppose you are in India, will you
treat individuals there according to their caste? I think that if you
aim at respecting the humanity of each, you must disrespect the
structure (i.e. the caste system). What I am saying only carries this
limited (because extreme example) much further, attempting to be
consistent all the way; in keeping with Sartre's two principles of the
left; radicalism and fraternity. (Sartre, 1991. p.49)