This SEP entry by John Christman on “Autonomy in Moral and Political Philosophy” provoked the following reflections from yours truly:
Toward the integration of facets of Liberalism with Marxism: freedom (as self-determination), human community (‘fraternity’ and solidarity), and self-realization for the “eudaimonistic individual” and “sovereign artificer” of the (European) Enlightenment
Too often the concepts of moral and political autonomy (I am more interested in the former as a necessary condition of the latter) are crudely mischaracterized or misunderstood (at least outside philosophical circles), viewed as asserting or implying something like extreme individualism, political libertarianism, or even solipsism and social atomism (or some combination thereof). And moral autonomy has an ineluctable psychological foundation and dimension that is not always appreciated or fully spelled out. As fundamental values in the tradition of Liberalism (which have roots in classical Greek philosophy), one might plausibly argue that Marx presupposes or assumes the achievement of moral and political autonomy with regard to our capacity for self-realization. In fact, insofar as freedom (as self-determination), human community (‘fraternity’), and self-realization1 are axiomatic moral values and principles for Marx, it would appear that he must perforce rely on a strong conception of moral autonomy, with regard to its possibility, our potential for its attainment, indeed, its imperative necessity, which accounts for our well-considered desires expressed in social and political terms. Moreover, and perhaps easier to discern or less controversially, the value and ideal of moral and political autonomy can be said to ground the at once analytic and normative concepts of alienation and exploitation in Marx’s writings. In both cases, as R.G. Peffer has pointed out,2 the notion of moral autonomy in Marx has some ontological or metaphysical weight if we take it to entail the fundamental notion of human dignity (and its correlate, the good of self-respect). Marx’s evaluative judgments and language reveal what Hilary Putnam has called “fact/value entanglement,” and thus bind the description to the normative without effacing the distinction.
Marx’s commitment to a well-honed conception of moral and political autonomy is explained by Peffer summarizing and commenting on a passage from The German Ideology:
“The goal of humanity-in-society is (or should be) self-activity, i.e., activity not controlled by outside (‘alien’) forces but directed by one’s own self [self-determination as a necessary condition for self-realization]. Realizing self-activity means that individuals are no longer ‘subservient to a single instrument of production’ nor ‘subject to the division of labour’ nor in thrall of any of many ‘natural limitations,’ i.e., limitations that are consciously planned and willed by individuals but that can be eliminated once they succumb to conscious planning and willing. These phrases manifest Marx’s commitment to a standard or principle of freedom as self-determination. His commitment to the value of human community is manifested in his claim that the formerly divided and isolated individuals [those subject to exploitation and alienation given the nature of production and the division of labor] will, under communism, be ‘united individuals’ who freely and cooperatively control social production, whose instruments are ‘made subject to each individual, and property to all.’ Finally, his commitment to the value of self-realization comes out in the phrases concerning the ‘development of a totality of capacities’ and ‘the development of individuals into complete individuals.’” In The German Ideology and elsewhere in the Marxist corpus, we learn that
“[g]enuine personal freedom permits the individual to have available the (social) means of cultivating his or her gifts to their full potential. But the means of self-development are not available to individuals except in genuine community because … (1) outside of the establishment of establishment of a real community in advanced industrial societies (i.e., outside communism), the vast majority of people will not have access to the leisure time and the material and cultural resources requisite for genuine self-development [which of course implies that some people do in fact possess such leisure time and the requisite resources]; and (2) outside of a genuine community it is impossible for individuals to realize one of their most fundamental human potentialities—a potentiality sought by all persons unless they are warped by pernicious social conditions—namely, full community, i.e., full universal, communal, social, or ‘species’ consciousness. ‘In the real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association.’”
In Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue (University of California Press, 1991), the late David L. Norton’s notion of “eudaimonism” provides us with an outline of how moral autonomy emerges from and is nurtured within certain kinds of community, allowing for the individual to transcend that community insofar as the person has learned to think for herself, to be a self-determining human animal, to have developed the “capacity to be one’s own person, to live one’s life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one’s own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces, to be in this way independent.” But independence in this sense does not mean or imply the absence of interdependence or demean the significance of intersubjectivity, for it remains intrinsically “associative as an interdependence based in a division of labor with respect to realization of values:”
“ […. ] [E]udaimonism is a variety of moral individualism, unlike some forms of individualism it does not conceive of individuals as ‘atomic,’ that is, as inherently asocial entities [I think such forms are fairly rare, at least in philosophy, political and otherwise, so this is a bit of a straw man. But a pernicious sort of ‘individualism’ as an ideology in capitalist societies tends towards a narcissistic or irresponsible kind of individualism in which one’s’ self-interests’ tend toward selfishness or obsessive preoccupation with one’s own wants and desires, failing to take into account the effects or consequences of same on others...]. [….] [E]udaimonism recognizes persons as inherently social beings from the beginning of their lives to the end but contends that the appropriate form of association undergoes transformation. As dependent beings, persons in the beginning of their lives are social products, receiving not merely material necessities but their very identity from the adult community. The principle of association is the essential uniformity of associates, usually expressed in terms of basic needs. Subsequent moral development leads to self-identification and autonomous, self-directed living, but is associative as an interdependence based in a division of labor with respect to realization of values. The principle of this form of association is the complementarity of perfected differences. Accordingly, the meaning of ‘autonomy,’ if the term is to be applicable, must be consistent with interdependence. … [It thus] means, not total self-sufficiency, but determining for oneself what one’s contributions to others should be and what use to make of the values provided by the self-fulfilling lives of others. [In such cases,] [t]o follow the lead of another person in a matter he or she understands better than we is not a lapse from autonomy to heteronomy but a mark of wisdom.
[M]oral development leads to self-identification and autonomous, self-directed living, but is associative as an interdependence based in a division of labor with respect to the realization of values. The self-fulfilling life of each person requires more values than he or she personally realizes and is dependent upon other for these values. The principle of this form of association is the complementarity of perfected differences. Accordingly this meaning of “autonomy,” if the term is to be applicable, must be consistent with interdependence. [This] means, not total self-sufficiency, but determining for oneself what one’s contributions to others should be and what use to make of the values provided by the self-fulfilling lives of others. To follow the lead of another person in a matter he or she understands better than we is not a lapse from autonomy into heteronomy but a mark of wisdom. [….] [T]he self here is conceived of as a task, a piece of work, namely the work of self-actualization [or ‘self-realization’ in the Marxist sense]. And self-actualization is the progressive objectivizing of subjectivity, ex-pressing it into the world. This recognition exposes as a fallacy the modern use of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ as mutually exclusive categories. Every human impulse in subjective in its origin and objective in its intentional outcome, and because its outcome is within it implicitly from its inception, there is nothing in personhood that is ‘merely subjective,’ that is, subjective in the exclusive sense. Narcissism (with which individualism is sometimes charged) is a pathology that tries to amputate from subjectivity its objective issue. It is real enough, and was a propensity of some romantic [species of individualism[ ] that judged experience by the occasions it affords for the refinement of the individual’s sensibilities. But the supposition that individualism is narcissistic subjectivism represents (again) a failure to recognize divergent kinds of individualism. For eudaimonistic individualism, it is the responsibility of persons to actualize objective value in the world.”
In Reflective Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2003), one of our foremost democratic theorists, Robert E. Goodin, has provided us with a succinct historical and theoretical account of communities of one kind another, from thin (but not negligible) “communities of interest” (these can be extended into forms of ‘enlightened’ self-interest, as the political philosopher Stephen Holmes has documented) to communities of “generation,” “meaning,” “experience,” “regard,” and “subsumption” (The last is constitutionally prone to, when not exhibiting, group pathological symptoms: ‘The fanatically immersed self is to be properly regarded as the subject, and object, of psychotherapy.’): “Whereas the [European] Enlightenment fiction is that sovereign artificers [i.e., more or less morally and politically autonomous individuals] make communities, the communitarian emphasis is upon the various ways in which communities make individuals; literally, in the case of communities of generation; figuratively, in communities of meaning, experience, and regard.” [….] [T]he classic Enlightenment ‘community of interests’ can be extended beyond its most crassly calculating roots. Enlightened self-interest dictates far more mutual respect—even in the service of ultimately narrowly egoistic concerns—than one might intuitively suppose. Let us recall that the self of the Enlightenment’s sovereign artificer might be interested in all sorts of things (be they people or principles, causes or communities) that range well beyond narrowly egoism, standard construed. [….] Communitarian critics of the Enlightenment model [e.g., Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer] are looking for something beyond any of that, however. Their talk of communities of generation, or meaning, or experience, or even of regard, points to something that stands above and beyond any calculation of enlightened self-interest. Communitarians themselves would phrase this in terms of the social construction of identity, of the communal ‘sources of the self.’ … [T]he communitarian emphasis is upon the various ways in which communities make individuals: literally, in the case of communities of generation; figuratively, in communities of meaning, experience, and regard. In the end, though, all those propositions turn out to be almost puns or metaphors, asked to bear more weight than mere metaphors can reasonably be expected to sustain.” [….]
For both Goodin and Norton, community, in the beginning, middle and end, is about—in the words of the latter—the “sociality of true individuals.” While the sovereign artificer of the Enlightenment recognizes the role of “received community and tradition,” it is not privileged at the expense of true—morally and politically autonomous—individuals. It is such individuals who at some point in their lives—say, at the age of reason—become capable of choosing their community and tradition (which may, thus need not, entail leaving the tradition and community of one’s birth and socialization). For the eudaimonistic individual prescribed by Norton, what is paramount is that this choice is not willy-nilly in the sense that the individual is obliged to choose what is for that person the “right community and tradition” befitting self-determination and self-realization. Norton describes this endeavor as “part of the inherent moral obligation of self-discovery and self-actualization.” The “choice” in this case, is one made in awareness of a plurality of alternatives by a person who, as we say, knows her own mind:
“For eudaimonistic individualism, individual self-actualization is inherently social. This is so because it manifests objective worth in the world which, as objective, is incomplete without recognition, appreciation, and utilization by appropriate others. Accordingly, for every person there is ‘natural community’ comprising those others who recognize, appreciate, and can utilize his or her worth in their own self-actualizing enterprises. The obligation of the individual to relate to this community is identical with the moral obligation of self-actualization; her choice of herself is her choice of this community; and the choice(s) must be true commitment(s) if it (they) is to fulfill her inherent moral obligation. The effect of this is to ground both choices in self-knowledge and to support the teaching of common sense that commitment by persons who ‘know their own minds’ are trustworthy.”
Presumably, the normative conception of community in Marxism builds upon the notion of community that respects the Enlightenment’s “sovereign artificer,” which is fundamentally at odds with the communitarian model, whatever their cluster of shared features. As Goodin explains,
“The difference between the Enlightenment’s sovereign artificer and the communitarian’s encumbered self in this regard lies not in the capacity to express … ‘we-oriented’ sentiments but rather in the standpoint from which such sentiments are expressed. The sovereign artificer [like Norton’s eudaimonistic individual] stands partially apart from the ‘we’ in question, constituting an independent locus of value and judgment to be blended with others to form the ‘we’ in question [hence the role of democratic norms, processes, and procedures arising from considerations of participation, representation, and deliberation]. The encumbered self, in so far as it is constituted by the attachments that constitute the ‘we,’ is naturally subsumed within it. Thus, while both Enlightenment and communitarian models provide for information [and knowledge] transfer and value alignment among members of a group, there are important difference in what each envisages as going on in those processes of transmission and alignment. Where the Enlightenment sees sovereign artificers deliberating from a number of independent perspectives, the communitarian sees embedded selves in communion with one another. Where the Enlightenment sees the exercise of independent judgment, the communitarian sees revelation and the incantation of shared sentiments. [….] In the Enlightenment model, independent agents come together to talk. What they say to one another matters. It is capable of influencing them, of changing their minds. But it is none the less a case of independent agents interacting with one another, in some meaningful way. In the communitarian model, agents lose whatever independence they ever had when they come together to talk, they subsume themselves within a discursive community. In the process, what people do is not simply ‘influence’ one another but rather ‘remake’ one another. Communitarian conversations end not so much in agreement or convergence as in the remaking of interlocutors in such a way as to deprive them of any independent stance from which to disagree [without surrendering their communal identification or sundering their communal ties]. [….]
Contrary to the claims of communitarian critics, the sort of ‘sovereign artificer’ posited by liberal Enlightenment theory does not stand wholly outside human society [or myriad communities]. On the contrary, such agents would find themselves situated in perfectly recognizable communities of various sorts. However [morally and politically] sovereign they may be, truly enlightened artificers would immediately see that they are far from autarkic. They need the cooperation of others to work their will on, and in, the world. To secure that cooperation on a sustained basis and in maximally efficacious ways, they would have to adopt and adhere to social norms [and obligations] of roughly the sorts communitarian critics standardly claim as uniquely their own. That is the first sort of ‘community of enlightenment:’ a community of enlightened self-interest (and, mutatis mutandis, of ‘enlightened advocacy’ for those of their interests that extend beyond themselves). Sovereign artificers also inhabit a ‘community of enlightenment’ in the second sense that they enlighten themselves (they learn facts and fictions, meanings and significance, techniques and values) in and through their association with others. However sovereign they may be, real actors in the real world are inherently limited in their time and information and understanding. What they have, they have acquired only through their experiences; and those experiences are ones which are (hardly accidental, but not exactly intentionally, either) shared with others. Enlightenment in this sense, is gained through communities.”
Finally, one could say that Liberal values and democratic principles and practices serve as constraints on the “kinds of communities that sovereign artificers [and Marx] could sanction.” Democratically self-governing citizens as Enlightenment sovereign artificers or eudaimonistic individuals cannot abide by or countenance “communities of subsumption.”
Notes
- One of the better—if not the best—account of what this means in the Marxist tradition is provided by Jon Elster in his essay, “Self-realisation in work and politics: the Marxist conception of the good life,” in Jon Elster and Karl Ove Moene, eds. Alternatives to Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 1989): 127-158.
- See Peffer’s Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice (Princeton University Press, 1990).
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