Towards a Democratic Liberatory Ethics: A restatement[1]
TAKIS FOTOPOULOS
In
this article, I will try, first, to critically assess
the approaches to liberatory ethics particularly those
developed in early modernity, which aimed at deriving an
“objectively” grounded liberatory ethics, second, to
explore the reasons why today’s liberatory ethics should
avoid both the Scylla of
“objective” ethics as well as
the Charybdis of irrationalist ethics or unbounded moral
relativism and, finally, to show that a democratic
liberatory ethics, which could only be derived through a
process of democratic rationalism, should necessarily
express those moral values which are intrinsically
compatible to the democratic institutions themselves.
Introduction: What is liberatory ethics?
A good starting point in discussing liberatory ethics is
to attempt to define it. We may define liberatory ethics
as those approaches to ethics[2]
proposed by radical theorists of the
“antisystemic”
Left,[3]
which aim to assess —from a radical viewpoint explicitly
challenging the present form of socio-economic organisation based on
the market economy and representative
“democracy”— the
ethics of various societies in the past and present and
suggest the normative ethics
of a future liberatory society. As such,
liberatory ethics is a branch of moral philosophy, an
alternative ethics to
“orthodox”
moral philosophy, i.e.
those approaches to ethics proposed by theorists who,
explicitly or implicitly, take for granted the socio-economic system and the set of values
justifying it.
But, before we begin our investigation on the various
approaches to liberatory ethics it may be useful to see
the main divisions within this field. As it is well
known, the
central issue around which all of Western ethics has
revolved since classical Greek times is the one arising
out of the debate between ethical relativism and ethical
objectivism. The former was adopted by the Sophists, who based their philosophy on the principle that goodness and justice are relative to the customs
of each society, if not merely a disguise for the
interests of the stronger. On the other hand, the main
proponent of the latter was, Plato, who adopted a stand,
according to which it was possible to know an objective
form or idea of goodness.
A
similar division exists today, not just among
“orthodox”
moral philosophers, but also among supporters of liberatory ethics. Thus, the main division in liberatory
ethics is the one between what we may call
“objective liberatory ethics” and the various forms of liberatory
ethical relativism. The former is that type of
“objectively” grounded liberatory ethics, which proposes
a set of ethical values on the basis of an assumed
social evolution that is supposedly the outcome of a
historical process (Marxist ethics) or, alternatively,
of a process of natural evolution (Kropotkin, Bookchin
et al). The latter is the type of liberatory ethics that
has been developed in the aftermath of the serious
crisis of
“objective” ethics that was marked by the rise
of postmodernism.[4]
It should be made clear however that I do not classify
under liberatory ethics the ethics proposed by
communitarians like Etzioni[5],
as well as postmodern ethics, Habermas’
“communicative
ethics,” Rawls’ theory of justice, and environmental
ethics. The reason for this exclusion is that none of
these approaches might be characterised, on the basis of the definition
given above, as liberatory ethics, since all of them
take for granted the present socio-economic system. On
the other hand, the approach to ethics that is implied
by the approach developed here, does meet the criteria
set by the above definition of liberatory ethics, as it
explicitly challenges the present socio-economic
framework. Furthermore, this approach may be seen as an
alternative to the
“objective” type of liberatory ethics
that was developed in the past, or today (e. g. Bookchin[6]),
whilst at the same time it does not fall to the usual
traps of the present era: the unbounded moral relativism
of postmodern ethics and the various forms of
irrationalist ethics —either the latter is based on
traditional religions or on the various forms of rampant
spiritualism.
In the next section, I will assess the
“objective”
approaches to liberatory ethics, with particular
reference to the Marxist and the libertarian approaches.
Then, I will examine the present crisis of
“objective”
ethics with particular reference to the criticisms
raised against it by postmodernists and Castoriadis.
Finally, in the last part, I will attempt to outline a
democratic ethics based on the Inclusive Democracy
project (ID).
1.
“Objective” approaches to liberatory ethics
“Objective”
liberatory ethics emerged in the nineteenth
century as an alternative to the orthodox Enlightenment
ethics, which had become the dominant ethics in the West
after the decline of the religion-based ethics of the
precapitalist era. The common characteristic of the
approaches that we may classify under this heading is
that they are all based on the hypothesis of some kind
of social evolution that is either determined by the historical process (Marxists) or the
process of natural evolution (Kropotkin, Bookchin et
al). Although they all agree that the content of ethics,
i.e. ethical judgments, change through definite causes
in historical development, they also insist that the
only sound basis for analysing the evolution of ethics
can be found in scientific analyses of nature, man, and
his social relations. As both Marxists and anarchists
maintain, it is only in the historical or natural
process respectively, that the unity of ethical
judgments and
“objective/scientific”
analyses can be
found.
The Marxist approach to liberatory ethics:
one-dimensional ethical relativism
Marx,
Engels, and Lenin wrote little that could constitute a theory of liberatory ethics, particularly as
regards its normative aspects, i.e. the ethics of a
future society. Marxists in general concentrated on what
we may call
“positive ethics,” namely, the evolution of
society,
“develops both in continuity with first nature and as its
antithesis, until the two are sublated into
«free
nature,» or
«Nature» rendered self-conscious, in a
rational and ecological society.”[43]
However, the hypothesis about a rational process of
social evolution is not only undesirable, since it
creates unintentional links with heteronomy and it may
easily lead to inadvertent affinities with intrinsically
anti-democratic eco-philosophies, but untenable as well.[44]
To my mind, the dialectical idea of unfolding objective
potentialities, i.e., of real latent possibilities which
may (or may not) be actualised, is not applicable at all
in the case of social change. To talk about any
particular being that, in developing itself, actualises what at first was only a latent
possibility and that this way attains its own truth, we
have to assume that there is a specific possibility in
the first place and not a choice of different possibilities. Therefore, whereas it is true that
an acorn has the potentiality to become an oak tree and
a human embryo to become a fully mature and creative
adult, we cannot extend the analogy to human society and
assume that the potentiality of society to become free
“is equivalent”[45] to
these natural potentialities. The obvious difference
between the potentialities of acorns and human embryos
to become oak trees and adults respectively, and those
of society to become free, is that the former represent
single possibilities whereas the latter is just one
possibility out of two broad possibilities: for autonomy
or heteronomy.
Therefore, if we take into account that
“the very
history of the Greco-Western world can be viewed as the
history of the struggle between autonomy and heteronomy,”[46]
it is obvious that the heteronomous forms of society
which have dominated History cannot just be considered
as
“fortuitous events,” similar to those that may not
allow an acorn to become an oak tree. So, to assume that
the possibility for autonomy (i.e. a liberatory society)
is an unfolding and therefore rational
potentiality
(in the dialectical sense of the word) and conversely to assume away the possibility for
heteronomy as just a
capacity for irrationality[47],
may easily be seen as a deliberate objectivization of
one possibility at the expense of the other, in order to
conceal our choice for the autonomy tradition under the
cover of dialectical
“objectivity”.
Bookchin
is,
of course, right in insisting that in developing a
democratic ethics we should adopt a non-hierarchical
interpretation of nature.[48]
However, it should not be forgotten that this is just
one possible form of interpretation of Nature that we
consciously have chosen because it is compatible with our choice for autonomy in
the first place. This is obviously very different from
assuming that a non-hierarchical interpretation of
Nature is an
“objective”
one and that, as a consequence,
a democratic
society will be the product of a cumulative development,
a rational process of realisation of the potentiality
for freedom. To my
mind, social ecology’s attempt to develop an
“objective”
ethics not only undermines its democratic credentials
but it also gives an easy target to statists and irrationalists of various sorts, as it is indicated by
the fact that most attacks against social ecology focus
on its philosophy
[49] —apart
of course from the case of some ex-Bookchinites who,
revealing the undemocratic nature of their views, also
attack its political basis![50]
Still, given the crucial role that the ideology
of Progress in general and ethical progress in
particular plays in both the Marxist and the libertarian
approaches, it would be worthwhile to assess it in more
detail.
The myth of Progress
History
does not justify the idea of Progress towards a free
society, in the sense of a form of social organisation
which secures the highest degree of individual and
social autonomy at the political, the economic and the
social levels —what we call an Inclusive Democracy. Even
more so, as we shall see below, History does not justify
the hypothesis of an ethical progress. Therefore, unless
we underplay the significance of the imaginary element
in human History and we deny the fact that History is a
creation,[51]
(as Marxists do), we have to conclude that it is
impossible to establish any sort of social evolution
towards a particular form of society. In other words,
even if one accepts the hypothesis that
self-consciousness and self-reflection, in very broad
terms, are part of a dialectical unfolding in Nature and do not just
represent a rupture with the past, this does not imply
that there is a similar dialectical unfolding toward a
free society, i.e., an Inclusive Democracy. Such a view
is incompatible with historical evidence, which clearly
shows that the historical attempts for a free society
have always been the result of a rupture with the
instituted heteronomy (which has been dominant in the
past) rather than a sort of processual
“product”.
Thus, the fact that societies, almost
always and everywhere, have lived in a state of
instituted heteronomy (namely a state of non-questioning
of existing laws, traditions and beliefs that guarantee
the concentration of political and economic power in the
hands of elites), with no trace of an
“evolution”
towards democratic forms of organisation securing
individual and social autonomy, clearly vitiates any
hypothesis of a progress towards a free society. In
fact, if there is any continuity in history, it is a
continuity in heteronomy interrupted by usually sudden
and temporary leaps into “autonomous”
forms of organisation. Thus, an autonomous form of political organisation (direct democracy) has always been
the rare exception and even rarer have been the cases of autonomous forms of economic and social
organisation (economic democracy and
“democracy in the
social realm”). It is only therefore with respect to
social change in a broad sense, which includes the
accumulation of scientific and technological knowledge,
as well as improvements with respect to gender
relations, human rights, etc., that we may perhaps speak
of some sort of progress. But, these changes in no way justify
the hypothesis of a directionality towards a free
society.
As far as scientific and technological change is
concerned, few would argue today, particularly after the
experience of the last century, that there is some sort
of correlation between progress in these fields and the
degree of autonomy achieved in society at the political
and economic levels. Furthermore, several writers have
noted the increasing vulnerability of the human species
because of the world-wide reliance on the same
technology and the fact that increasing technological
complexity is accompanied by an increasing lack of
flexibility and adaptive capacity.[52]
Also, as regards the alleged improvements in gender,
race, ethnic relations, human rights in general, they
hardly justify the hypothesis of progress towards a free
society, in the sense of an autonomous society. The
improvements in social relations and structures have not
been matched by a corresponding progress in political
and economic relations and structures towards political
and economic democracy. Although the widening and
deepening of women’s rights, minorities’
rights, etc.,
may have improved the social position of the members of
the respective communities, from the democratic
viewpoint, this process has simply led to the expansion
of the ruling political and economic elites to include
representatives of these communities. Furthermore, these
improvements do not imply any significant changes with
respect to democracy in the workplace, the education
place etc. Even as regards the human rights record, one
may raise serious doubts about the progress achieved. Torture, for
instance, after tapering off with the Enlightenment in
Europe in the seventeenth century to the extent that it
had almost disappeared, came back with a vengeance in
the last century, to the extent that the twentieth
century has been called by some
“the torturer’s
century,”[53]
and, according to the evidence so far on the twenty
first century (Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine,
Egypt etc) it seems that the new century will surpass even this
record!
At the cultural level, as Polanyi[54]
has persuasively shown, the establishment of the market
economy implied sweeping aside traditional cultures and
values. This process was accelerated in the twentieth
century with the spreading of the market economy and its
offspring the growth economy all over the world and the
inevitable elimination of all cultures not based on the
system of the market economy. Furthermore, economic
globalisation has led to a parallel cultural
globalisation,[55] which not only rules out any progress towards more
complexity, but, in effect, is making culture simpler,
with cities becoming more and more alike, people all
over the world listening to the same music, watching the
same soap operas on TV, buying (or aspiring to buy) the
same brands of consumer goods, etc.
Similarly, as regards ethical Progress, i.e., the
evolution towards moral
“improvement”
(in terms of
mutuality, solidarity, etc.), it is indicative that even
social democrats like Habermas and Bobio, who have an
obvious vested political interest in the idea of
Progress and social evolution, also admit that it is not
possible to assert the existence of ethical Progress,
despite the acknowledged rapid technological progress of
the last hundred years or so. Thus, Habermas, countering
the pessimism of the Frankfurt School about Progress,
argues that the error in the Marxist and other
optimistic theories of social evolution lies in the
presumption that Progress on the system’s level (which attends to the
material reproduction of society) would automatically
entail an improvement on the level of moral-practical
conscience.[56]
So, one may argue that the unmistakable trend, at least in the past two to three
centuries, has been for growing selfishness and growing
competition, rather than for enhanced mutuality and solidarity. Likewise, it is at
least doubtful whether there has been an ethical
progress in terms of environmental values.[57]
Furthermore, one may argue that the fact that some
enlightened parts of the world population have moved
from religious ethics and the premodern myths about God
to the
“objective”
ethics of early modernity, and that
today there is a similar movement away from
“objective”
ethics to various forms of ethical relativism, does not
imply some kind of ethical progress. In fact, even
today, at the threshold of a new millennium, the vast
majority of the world population (including the clear
majority in many Western countries —and predominantly in
the USA where most of the population still believes in
God, miracles etc!) have not even made the first step in
this supposedly ascending path, i.e. the move from
religious morality to some form of morality based on “objective”
ethics. Far from it, in the past
quarter of a century, for reasons that I examined
elsewhere[58]
a rapid rise in every form of irrationalism (which
includes not simply the move back to religion but also
to other forms of irrationalism, spiritualism etc.)
became obvious.
Therefore, the issue that arises is whether changes in
the historical forms of social organisation reveal some
kind of progress towards a free society, which would
represent the graded actualisation of unfolding human
potentialities for freedom (as Dialectical Naturalism
maintains), or whether, instead, they do not reveal any
form of
“directionality”
or progress, since the form
society takes each time merely represents social
creations, which are conditioned (but not fully
determined) by time and space constraints, as well as by
institutional and cultural factors. The former view sees
History as a process of Progress, the unfolding of reason, and assumes
that there is an
evolution going on towards autonomous, or democratic, forms of
political, economic and social organisation —a view
which, to my mind, is not supported by History. The
latter view sees the autonomous society as a rupture, a
break in the
historical continuity that the heteronomous society has historically
established.
Of course, “autonomy/heteronomy” is not an ironclad distinction. Autonomous and
heteronomous forms of social organisation historically interact with each other, and
elements of both may coexist within the boundaries of the same
society. Still, despite the development
within
each tradition and the possible interaction, no
development
between
them may be established. For instance, one may support the case that
although constitutional monarchy did express a more
sophisticated form of heteronomy than absolute monarchy
and, by the same token, parliamentary
“democracy”
does
represent the most sophisticated form of oligarchy in
History, still, the differences between the political
regimes involved refer to the size and the composition
of the ruling elites, not to the fundamental distinction
itself between ruling elites and the rest of the
population —a distinction that excludes the vast majority
of the population from any effective political decision
taking. Similarly, within the alternative
autonomy-democratic tradition, the Parisian Sections of
the early 1790s[59],
where women had an equal share in the distribution of
political power, did express a more complete form of
democracy compared to the Athenian assemblies. Also, the
Spanish collectives in the civil war[60],
which contained a significant element of economic
democracy, did express a more complete form of autonomy
than both the Athenian and the Parisian assemblies.
Thus, although it is true that the break with the
heteronomy tradition takes place in a specific time and
place and that therefore History, tradition, and culture
certainly condition the form that society takes, still, institutional and historical factors never determine when and where this break will
take place, or even the specific form the autonomous
organisation of society will take. An autonomous form of
social organisation has always been a
creation expressing a break with past development. The rare
historical cases of relatively free forms of social
organisation came about as a result of the fact that at
certain historical moments, for reasons that only partly
refer to the concrete historical circumstances, the
social paradigm expressing the autonomy project had
become hegemonic and led to a rupture of the dominant
social paradigm[61]
of heteronomy. That such ruptures do not fit in any unfolding dialectical pattern of History, and
cannot even be considered as
“reactions”
to heteronomous forms of
organisation, becomes obvious by the fact that
repeatedly in History similar, if not identical,
institutional and historical circumstances led to very
different forms of social organisation. As a rule, they
led to heteronomous forms of social organisation and
only very exceptionally to attempts for autonomy.
The classical Athenian democracy is a characteristic
example. There is no doubt that the movement from tribal
blood ties to civic ties represents a form of
development. The question is whether this development is
a development within the heteronomous tradition or,
alternatively, one between the two traditions. I would
argue that although elements of autonomous organisation may be found in tribal
societies (e.g., tribal assemblies), still, the movement from tribes to cities represents a development predominantly
within the
heteronomous form of social organisation and only in one
exceptional case (Athenian democracy) towards a new form of autonomous organisation. This fact, in turn, illustrates the significance
of the creative element in History, rather than of any
kind of an evolutionary pattern in political
organisation. As Castoriadis puts
it:
Democracy and philosophy are not the outcome of natural
or spontaneous tendencies of society and history. They
are themselves creations and they entail a radical break
with the previously instituted state of affairs. Both
are aspects of the project of autonomy (…) the Greeks
(discovered) in the sixth and fifth centuries that
institutions and representations belong to
nomos and not
to physis,
that they are human creations and not “God-given” or
“nature-given.”[62]
A view of History based on an evolutionary pattern could
not explain why a similar movement from tribes to cities in many parts of
the world, even in classical Greece itself, has led, on the one hand, to the classical Athenian democracy
and, on the other, to a
variety of oligarchic, if not despotic, forms of
political organisation. Of course, few would deny that
specific
“objective’ factors (geography, climate etc)
may have played a significant, but never a
deterministic, role on each historical occasion. What is
disputable is whether there has been a long-term pattern
of social evolution that led to classical Athenian
democracy, an experiment that was not repeated elsewhere
at the time and which re-emerged
hundreds of years later.
Parliamentary
“democracy”
is another example. As I have
tried to show elsewhere,[63]
representative “democracy,”
which emerged in the West —an invention of the US Constitution’s Founding Fathers—
is not a form of political democracy in the classical
meaning of the world. Furthermore, parliamentary
democracy can in no way be seen as a stage in the
development of democracy. This is obvious not only from
the fact that direct democracy historically preceded
parliamentary
“democracy”
but also because, as the
experience of the past two centuries or so has shown,
parliamentary democracy, if it evolves into something,
it evolves into a further concentration of political power in the
hands of professional politicians’
elites, at national or
supranational levels. Social development, in terms of
political organisation, is not
“cumulative”, i.e. one leading from various forms of
“democracy”
(constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, etc.) —which reflect quantitative
differences— towards direct democracy that is clearly a
qualitative change.
By the same token, the market economy is neither a
relative (even a poor one) to economic democracy, nor
does it constitute a kind of stage in the development of
economic democracy. Instead, as I tried to show
elsewhere,[64]
today’s market economy represents a definite step
backwards in comparison to the socially controlled
economies of the medieval free cities. Furthermore, if
the market economy evolves into something it evolves
towards further concentration of economic power and
there is no prospect whatsoever that a market economy will ever lead, through
cumulative quantitative changes, to the qualitative
change of economic democracy.
Finally, the various attempts for
“democracy in the
social realm’, particularly workplace democracy
(workers’
councils, Soviets), and for democracy in
educational institutions have always been associated
with historical
“moments”
of insurrection and as soon as
“order”
has been
restored, either by the institutionalisation of a
“revolutionary”
new regime of heteronomy (e.g., Soviet
Union) or the continuation of the old one, the
democratic forms have been replaced by forms of
pseudo-democracy at the workplace, the University, etc.
So, it is not possible to derive any sort of
evolutionary process towards a free society, what we
call an Inclusive Democracy. The historical attempts to
establish autonomous forms of political, social and
economic democracy, although, of course, did not appear
ab novo, still, they cannot be fitted in any grand evolutionary process. This
is clearly indicated by the fact that such attempts took
place in specific times and places and as a break with
past development, rather than in several societies at
the same stage of development and as a continuation of
it. Therefore, although the ideals of freedom may have
expanded over time, the last 30 years or so
notwithstanding, this expansion has not been matched by
a corresponding evolution towards an autonomous society, in the
sense of greater participation of citizens in decision
taking. In fact, the undermining of communities, which was intensified by the emergence of the market
economy 200 years ago and has been accelerated by the
development of the present internationalised market
economy, as well as the growing privacy and self-interest of
individuals encouraged by the consumer society, are
clear indications of a trend towards more heteronomous
forms of society rather than
the other way round. Likewise, if we accept the
view that I tried to develop on globalisation[65],
i.e. that the present internationalised market economy
marks the
latest phase of modernity, as well as a new, higher,
stage in the marketisation process, then all the signs
are that we have entered a new period where the
“two-thirds’ (if not the
“40
percent”[66])
societies of the North will be based on sophisticated
forms of heteronomy, whereas the miserable societies of
the South will rely on various forms of brutal
authoritarianism, disguised under the formal
parliamentary democracy format. The permanent
“war” of
the transnational elite against terrorism,[67]
aims exactly at suppressing any anti-systemic movement
towards a liberatory society and few doubt that the
elites will be effective in achieving this aim, with the
decisive help of a mainly reformist Left.
One may therefore raise serious objections with respect
to both the Marxist and libertarian approaches for their
adoption of the idea of dialectical Progress in History,
and, implicitly or explicitly, in ethics . Thus, it
should not be forgotten that the adoption of the idea of
Progress implies also the endorsement of such conclusions as the Marxist one about the
“progressive”
role of
colonialism[68],
or the corresponding anarchist one that the state is a
“socially necessary evil”.[69]
However, if we adopt the view that there is no unilinear or dialectical process of Progress and
a corresponding evolutionary process towards forms of
social organisation grounded on autonomy and we assume,
instead, that the historical attempts for freedom and
democracy represent a break with the past, then, forms
of social organisation like colonialism and the state
can be seen as just
“social evils”, with nothing
“necessary”
about them, either as regards their emergence in the past, or the form that social change has taken since, or
will take in the future.
But if the hypothesis of progress in social change and of a rational historical process is untenable,
then the question arises whether it is still possible to
develop an
“objective”
ethics which assesses forms of social
organisation as
“good”
or
“bad”
on the basis of the
degree according to which they represent the
actualisation of the latent potentialities for freedom.
The obvious answer, which is implied by the above
analysis, is that any attempt to develop an
“objective”
ethics on
the assumption of a process of social evolution (based
on an
“objective”; reading of History or natural
evolution) is little more than an effort to mask a conscious
choice among
the autonomy and the heteronomy tradition, the
democratic and the non-democratic society.
Still, the fact that a democratic society represents a
conscious choice does not mean that this is just an arbitrary choice. This is clearly implied by the very fact that the
autonomy project turns up in history again and again,
particularly in periods of crisis of the heteronomous
society. Furthermore, the fact that heteronomous society
has been the dominant form of social organisation in the
past is not indicative of its intrinsic superiority over
an autonomous society. Heteronomous societies have
always been created and maintained through violence
(military, economic) and/or indirect forms of control
(religion, ideology, mass media) by privileged elites,
which aimed at the institutionalisation of inequality in
the distribution of power.
Finally, the
grounding of a free society on a conscious choice rather than on some
“objective”
social or natural
“laws”
does not deprive us
of an ethical criterion to assess the various forms of
social organisation and generally of social behaviour.
In fact, the degree to which a form of social
organisation secures an equal distribution of political,
economic and social power is a powerful criterion to
assess it. But this is a criterion chosen by us and not
implied by some sort of evolutionary process. In other
words, it is a criterion which is consistent with the
view that I will develop in the last section, that the project for a democratic society and its
ethics can neither be grounded on scientism and
objectivism nor on Utopianism and irrationalism.
The crisis of
“objective”
ethics
As I attempted to show elsewhere[70], scientism and objectivism in general entered a serious
crisis in the present phase of neoliberal modernity (or
as postmodernists call it the era of postmodernity). This
had inevitable consequences on ethics since the ethics
of the early phases of modernity, both the orthodox and
the liberatory ones, was based on objectivism in general
and scientism in particular. Postmodernists were among the first who attempted to theorise the crisis of
“objective”
ethics, both orthodox and liberatory. At the
same time, Marxist and libertarian writers, under the
influence of the postmodern critique, began developing
various hybrids of
“poststructural Marxism”
and
“post
structural anarchism”
respectively, which not only
adopted the postmodern critique of scientism and
objectivism but also embraced the postmodern rejection
of
“universalism,”
consequently abandoning any idea of a liberatory project aiming to replace the market economy
and representative
“democracy”
with a new liberatory society. Similarly, the
ecological movement, under the same postmodernist
influences and also some irrational spiritual ones,
developed a kind of
“environmental ethics”
that was
deeply influenced by irrational spiritualistic
tendencies. Thus, most of environmental ethics has been
characterised by irrational pantheistic, or
similar spiritual, approaches to Nature.[71]
However, as I hinted above, postmodernists were not the
only ones to criticise
“objective”
(orthodox and liberatory) ethics. The other major source of criticism
comes from within the autonomous-democratic tradition. I
will examine next these major critiques.
2. The postmodern critique of
“objective” ethics
Although there are various currents within the
postmodernist camp, (which I have considered in detail
elsewhere[72]),
I will attempt here to summarise the main elements of
what has come to be associated with the notion of the
postmodern approach to morality —a morality that has
often been celebrated as the
“demise of the ethical,” the
substitution of aesthetics for ethics and the consequent
“ultimate emancipation”.
The main
contradiction of modern society is seen by many
postmodernists to be the one between individual
autonomy, (which they see as the free will, which was
recognised by the Enlightenment to rational individuals,
and had been denied by religious morality[73])
and social heteronomy, i.e. the heteronomy of what they
call
“rational management,”[74]
by which they mean the
“injection” into human conduct,
through legislation etc, of a set of rules so conceived
that the individuals, while exercising their free will
and making their choices, would be likely to choose what
is right and proper (according of course to the elites’ criteria) over what is wrong and evil.[75]
However, as Zygmunt Bauman stresses, the defining
feature of modernity, as seen by postmodernists, was not
the contradiction itself but the fact that this aporia (i.e. a contradiction that cannot be
overcome , one that results in a conflict that cannot be
resolved) was played down by modernists as
“a conflict
not-yet-resolved-but-in-principle-resolvable; as a
temporary nuisance, a residual imperfection on the road
to perfection, a relic of unreason on the way to the
rule of reason”.[76]
Thus, to resolve
this contradiction, both orthodox and antisystemic moral
philosophers of the early phases of modernity searched
for absolutes, universals and foundations in theory.
However, whereas orthodox ethics found their way into
legislation, with Western legislators attempting to
impose universal moral codes, liberatory ethics
suggested alternative forms of social organisation
within which the conflict was supposed to be overcome.
It is therefore clear that the modern solution was based
on the assumption that it is possible to create a
non-ambivalent, non-contradictory ethical code,
so that universal reason could replace universal
religious belief in guiding individual and collective
morality. On the other hand, postmodernists are not
interested at all in eliminating the contradiction
between individual autonomy and social heteronomy. For
them, every kind of liberatory project is rejectable
because it is by necessity universalist. Instead, postmodernists focus their attention in criticising the
modernist project, casting doubt on its main premises.
Thus, first, they reject any idea of moral certainty
based on some sort of
“objective”
ethics. In their view,
humans are morally ambivalent, as there is neither a
good human nature nor a bad one. Therefore, no logically
coherent ethical code can
“fit”
the essentially
ambivalent condition of morality:[77]
we know now what
we did not know then, when we embarked on this journey
of exploration: that a non-aporetic, non-ambivalent
morality, an ethics that is universal and objectively
founded, is a practical impossibility; perhaps also an oxymoron,
a contradiction in terms (…) What follows
is that moral conduct cannot be guaranteed; not by
better designed contexts for human action, nor by better
formed motives of human action. We need to learn how to
live without such guarantees and with the
awareness that guarantees will never be offered —that a
perfect society, as well as a perfect human being, is
not a viable prospect, while attempts to prove the
contrary result in more cruelty than humanity,
and certainly less morality.
Next,
postmodernists assume that morality is much more
autonomous from society than modernists would concede.
Bauman, for instance, asserts that
“before society, its
law-makers and its philosophers come down to spelling
out its ethical principles, there are beings who have
been moral without the constraint (or is it luxury?) of codified goodness”.[78]
However, even if
one assumes a relative autonomy of morality (and culture
in general) with respect to the form of social
organisation, the question still remains whether the
morality of socialized human beings (I do not mean the
morality which is based exclusively on kinship and
reciprocity that has also been observed in the animal
world) can be reasonably assumed as not being heavily
conditioned by society, its values, culture and dominant
social paradigm. If therefore we assume a strong
association between individual morality and social
morality, given that most people are socialised
individuals, the
“Robinson Crusoe” type of argument
adopted by postmodernists is invalid. This does not mean
of course that all members of society adapt their
moral behaviour to society’s moral codes but it
certainly means that most of its members do
conform to such codes —unless of course a serious social
crisis, which also involves a morality crisis, is in
progress.
Postmodernists then
proceed to criticise even the very foundation of the
modernist project: rationalism itself. Bauman[79]
for instance celebrates the fact that :
the mistrust of
human spontaneity, of drives, impulses and inclinations
resistant to prediction and rational justification, has
been all but replaced by the mistrust of unemotional,
calculating reason. Dignity has been returned to
emotions; legitimacy to the
“inexplicable,” nay
irrational, sympathies and loyalties which cannot
“explain themselves” in terms of their usefulness and
purpose (…) We learn again to respect ambiguity, to feel
regard for human emotions, to appreciate actions without
purpose and calculable rewards. We accept that not all
actions, and particularly not all among the most
important of actions, need to justify and explain
themselves to be worthy of our esteem (…) what we are
learning, and learning the hard way, is that it is the
personal morality that makes ethical negotiation and
consensus possible, not the other way round
It seems therefore
clear that postmodernists, by not making a clear
distinction between the private and the public realms on
the matter, not only contradict the autonomous nature of
the pluralism they preach, but also confuse rationality in the private realm with rationality in the
public realm. Thus, if society legitimises the
“inexplicable nay
irrational”
and at the same
time does not rule out any collective decision-taking
based on such premises, it is in fact legitimising
heteronomy, given that the irrational
“explanations” of
the inexplicable have always been based on some form of
externally given
“truth”. In other words, a society in
which collective decision-taking and consensus is based
on personal morality, which, in turn, may well be
founded on irrational premises (i.e. the premises that
are usually prescribed by religious or spiritualist
“truths” and moral codes), may well be an heteronomous
society and therefore the pluralism characterising such
a society is also of a heteronomous nature. No wonder
that the first sperms of democratic societies, like the
Athenian democracy, were clearly distinguishing between
the public and the private realms and while they
ostracised irrationalism from the public realm, where
all deliberations had to be carried out in terms of
rational argument, they even celebrated acts that
had only
“passions” and spontaneous inclinations for
their cause in the private realm.
Thus, although one
may agree that non-rational, or even irrational,
behaviour could not (and, in a sense, perhaps should
not) be ostracised from the private realm, It is clear
that in an autonomous democratic society democratic
rationalism is the only way to derive the moral
code that should guide social morality. But, it is
obvious that this is not the stance adopted by those
postmodernists who declare that:
reason cannot help
the moral self without depriving the self of what makes
the self moral: that unfounded, non-rational,
un-arguable, no-excuses-given and non-calculable urge to
stretch towards the other, to caress, to be for, to live
for, happen what may. Reason is about making correct
decisions, while moral responsibility precedes all
thinking about decisions as it does not, and cannot care
about any logic which would allow the approval of an
action as correct.[80]
Yet, as I mentioned
above, it is the postmodernist rejection of universalism
in general and moral universalism in particular, which
characterises their problematique and makes it
particularly objectionable from a liberatory viewpoint.
For them, morality is not universalisable. Still,
this does not imply some sort of simplistic moral
relativism, in the sense that morality is merely
relative to time and place. In fact, what is rejected is
the substitution of heteronomous, enforced-from-outside,
ethical rules for the autonomous responsibility of the
moral self, i.e. the replacement of local distortions
in the name of one all-human ethics.[81]
Postmodernists, not only see
modern societies as making the false assumption that
they can be the ultimate authors and the sole
trustworthy guardians of morality, but also accuse them
for practising
“moral parochialism” under the mask of
promoting universal ethics, which is nothing else than a
power-assisted ethical code. In fact, for
postmodernists, it is the supposedly universal moral
codes that are plagued with a parochial
relativism —something that could lead to the overcoming
of variety through the extension of the scope and the
reach of a given institutional power, political or
cultural, i.e. to a yet more thorough substitution of
ethics for morality, heteronomy for autonomy.
The ideology of
Progress, as postmodernists rightly point out, was the
ideology that modern states used in order to justify
this
“moral parochialism,” or some would call cultural
imperialism. Thus, any significant variations of
the moral codes in the rest of the world versus the
“advanced” countries were attributed to backwardness and
it was thought that it was simply a matter of time
before the moral values of the latter (who also happened
to be the victors that have always been writing History)
were universalised. Otherness (all man-made otherness,
including the ethical one) was temporalized in a
way characteristic of the idea of progress.[82]
In fact, the postmodernist rejection of the modernist
ideology of progress in general and moral progress in
particular is one of the salient features of postmodern
analysis with which few would disagree today. Bauman,
for instance, refers to two devastating examples from
recent History to dismiss the myth of progress. In
America, he observes, the shame of Vietnam boosted
high-tech warfare, much more than it did moral
self-scrutiny, so that with electronic surveillance and
smart missiles, people can now be killed before they
have a chance to respond. Similarly, in Palestine,
“the
memories of the Holocaust firm the hand of the Israeli
occupiers of the Arab lands: mass deportations, roundings-up, hostage-taking and concentration camps are
well-remembered as cost-effective”.[83]
The inescapable conclusion he derives is that:[84]
No victory over
inhumanity seems to have made the world safer for
humanity. Moral triumphs, apparently, do not accumulate;
in spite of the narratives of progress, movement is not
linear —yesterday’s gains are not reinvested, nor are
the bonuses once awarded irreversible. Ever anew, with
each shift in the balance of power, the spectre of
inhumanity returns from its exile. Moral shocks, however
devastating they might have seemed at the time,
gradually lose their grip until they are forgotten. All
their long history notwithstanding, moral choices seem
always to start from square one. No wonder there are
powerful reasons to doubt the reality of moral progress,
and in particular the moral progress of the kind which
modernity claims to promote.
However,
postmodernists do not simply criticise the ideology of
progress but proceed to criticise the universalist
projects of modernity and the very idea of the citizen
and the polis. Thus, modernity is accused for
attempting to
“substitute the
citizen (the person
with only such attributes as have been assigned by the
laws of the single and uncontested authority acting on
behalf of the unified and sovereign state) for the
motley collection of parishioners, kinsmen and other
locals”.[85]
At the same time, it is argued that
“the postulate of
universality… opposes the very Aristotelian principle of
the polity as the ultimate fount and the guardian of
humanity”.[86]
Still, what is not
made clear is that it is only the statist form of
democracy, i.e. representative
“democracy” together with
the system of the market economy, which are indeed
creating a clear divide between democracy and society,
economy and society, community and society, citizens and
individuals. Thus, a liberatory project like the ID
project —which is based on the postulate that social
autonomy is inseparable from individual autonomy— is
nothing else than a demand for the reintegration of
democracy and society, of economy and society, of
community and society, of citizens and individuals. But
such a reintegration is impossible outside a
universalist liberatory project. Particularly so if one
takes into account the fact that representative
“democracy” and the market economy represent the
materialisation of universalist projects, which today
also have become universalised. It is clear that it is
only through an alternative universalist project that the present institutions, which generate the above
divides, could be abolished rather than through
the particularised projects proposed by postmodernists.
This is because such an endeavour requires the
development of a universalist antisystemic
consciousness, which could never be created by the
political alliances between the fractionalised social
movements that postmodernists support (feminists,
Greens, identity movements etc). Needless to add that
the argument that
“any
polis separates, sets
apart,
«particularizes» its
members from members of
other communities, as much as it unites them and makes
alike inside its own boundaries,”[87]
is obviously invalid within the problematic of a confederal
ID.[88]
Yet, the question
remains: is there a universal morality? Or is it just an
illusion since there are several conceptions of
universal morality and therefore which one of them
prevails at any moment of time is relative to the
strength of the powers that claim and hold the right to
articulate it, as postmodernists argue[89]?
Few would doubt, of course, that there are more than one
moralities and surely the recognition of ethical
relativism, as I attempted to show above, is not a
postmodernist invention. In other words, there is little
controversy nowadays on the fact that each society,
defined in specific time and place, has its own moral
code, which is not simply determined by the mode of
production that is dominant in its social formation. The
content of the moral code is crucially conditioned by
the interdependence between the society’s socio-economic
institutions in relation to its culture and the dominant
social paradigm. However, to the extent that a
particular type of society is universalised (for
instance, feudal European Christian society, or
consumerist-individualistic USA) the dominant moral code
of this type of society is inevitably universalised as well.
In this
problematique, the postmodern claim that present
society is not characterised by a universal morality is
false. This is because the universalisation of
representative
“democracy” and the market economy has
inevitably been followed by a corresponding universalisation of the culture and the dominant social
paradigm which are compatible with these institutions.
In fact, the process of
“globalisation,” which has
characterised neoliberal modernity, has been
instrumental in this universalisation process. In this
context, the moral pluralism that postmodernists
celebrate —taking for granted the present socio-economic
system— is in fact a pseudo-pluralism, given that all
societies which have adopted a market economy and
representative
“democracy” show fundamental similarities
as regards their core values: individualism, consumer
culture, heteronomous morality as such
(irrespective on whether it is based on religion or some other kind of spiritualism etc). In other words,
cultural differences between societies express much more
differences in peripheral values and mainly the
differences in heteronomous morality,
(i.e. the external moral codes imposed by
religious and irrational beliefs in general, which
particularly flourish in the present neoliberal era of
modernity) rather than differences in core values.[90]
Therefore, an
autonomous liberatory society should be expected to
create its own moral code, with hard core values
which will inevitably be consistent with its fundamental
institutions (as I will try to show in the last section)
and peripheral values that may vary from society to
society. In case such a society is universalised then a
new universal morality will be created, which will
neither be power-assisted nor would involve an
“imposed
heteronomy by the power holders,” as it used to be the
case in all heteronomous societies in the past. To my
mind, it is only a world-wide genuinely democratic
society, based on universal core values expressing
the uncompromising demand for individual and social
autonomy and a variety of peripheral values celebrating
difference, which could promise peaceful and liberatory coexistence. Of course, neither reason nor any
institutional framework could guarantee
individual and social autonomy and the morality which is
compatible with it. Nobody could doubt however that in
such a society the postmodernist claim, according to
which in modern society
“in order to act morally the
person must first be disowned of autonomy,”[91]
will be thrown to the dustbin of History.
3. The
Castoriadian critique of the separation of ethics from
politics
Castoriadis has
been accused by, among others, Agnes Heller[92]
as not interested in ethics. In fact, however, his
critique of
“objective” ethics, both orthodox and liberatory, is much more fundamental than the
postmodernist critique, notwithstanding the fact that
most of the postmodernist criticisms I mentioned above
(critique of the ideology of progress, critique of
objectivism and of certainties in the analysis of social
phenomena or moral behaviour etc) had been explored by
Castoriadis before the rise of postmodernism as a
significant movement. For Castoriadis, the problem is
not simply the rise of
“objective” ethics which he
considers as just an aspect of what he calls the
“unitary ontology” that has always plagued
political philosophy. For him, the problem is
heteronomy:[93]
The operative
postulate that there is a total and “rational” (and
therefore “meaningful”) order in the world, along with
the necessary implication that there is an order of
human affairs linked to the order of the world —what one
could call unitary ontology— has plagued political
philosophy from Plato through modern liberalism and
Marxism. The postulate conceals the fundamental fact
that human history is creation —without which there would
be no genuine question of judging and choosing, either
“objectively” or “subjectively.” By the same token, it
conceals or eliminates the question of
responsibility. Unitary ontology, in whatever disguise,
is essentially linked to heteronomy.
The crucial issue
for Castoriadis is the separation between ethics and
politics, between the inner man and the public man,
which lies at the basis of Western civilisation.[94]
Of course, what he rejects is not the separation between
the private and the public spheres (in fact he proposes
the maximum degree of autonomy of the private from the
public) but the opposition between them that
heteronomous societies create. As he rightly stresses,
“in
the
«true» Greek world (i.e., until the end of the
fifth century B.C.), no opposition existed in principle
between the
«private» and
«public» spheres (though they
were clearly distinguished), nor did any opposition
exist between ethics and politics”.[95]
Thus, if we follow Castoriadis in distinguishing between
the three main realms as regards the relations of
individuals among themselves and their institutions
—i.e. the private sphere (oikos), the
public/private sphere (agora) and the
public/public sphere, which in the case of a democratic
society takes the form of a demotic assembly (ekklesia)— then,
it was in ancient Greek society that the independence of
the private sphere is posited, a free
public/private is created, and the public/public sphere
becomes truly public —the main characteristic of
democracy. On the other hand, in today’s
“liberal
oligarchies,” as Castoriadis points out, the
public/public sphere is in fact, in its greatest part,
private. It certainly is not so legally speaking, but on
the factual level
“the essential features of public
affairs are still the private affair of various groups
and clans that share effective power, decisions are made
behind closed doors, the little that is brought onto the
public stage is masked, prefabricated, and belated to
the point of irrelevancy”.[96]
All this, when the first condition for the existence of
an autonomous society is that the public/public sphere
become effectively public, an ekklesia, and not an
object of private appropriation by particular groups.
The split between
ethics and politics, the private and public begins,
according to Castoriadis, with Plato, although, even
then, only on the factual level but not also on the
theoretical level where Plato still tried to reconcile
the political principle and the ethical principle. It
was with the Cynics, the Epicureans, and especially the
Stoics —early Christianity in particular lies in a
direct line of descent from Stoicism— that the
withdrawal into the private sphere became dominant. It
was through the spreading of Christianity all over the
West and beyond in the first millennium that the
Judeo-Christian codification of a
“moral law,” —i.e. an
extreme form of heteronomous ethics in which the moral
codes are given to us exogenously, from outside, without
us being able to raise any questions about it[97],
became hegemonic. In this context, today’s dominance of
the
“private” along with its individualistic ideology,
as well as the recent
“return of ethics” (postmodern
ethics playing a crucial role in this process), simply
reflect the deep crisis of politics and the crisis of
values in general .
The solution to
this problem in the Castoriadian problematic is obvious.
We must overcome the separation between politics and
ethics, i.e. we must overcome the ethics of heteronomy.
But, individual autonomy, as he stresses,[98]
arises only under
heavily instituted conditions. We therefore need
institutions that favour autonomy, institutions that
grant to each person an effective autonomy qua member of
the collectivity and that allow that person to develop
her individual autonomy. That can occur only through the
instauration of a regime that is genuinely (and not just
verbally) democratic. In such a regime, I effectively
participate in the instauration of the laws under which
I live.
Therefore, to
overcome the ethics of heteronomy, we must first
overcome the politics of heteronomy, i.e. we need an
ethics of autonomy, which can only become articulated
along with a politics of autonomy. In other words, an
ethics of autonomy is impossible without the
introduction of such
“instituted conditions” that favour
autonomy to replace the present
“liberal oligarchies”.
In this problematique, one could easily understand the Castoriadian conclusion that
“politics stands over and
above ethics”.[99]
Still, the meaning
of
“instituted conditions” has changed significantly
between the early and the late work of Castoriadis. I considered elsewhere[100]
the break between the early and late work of Castoriadis
when he moved from an analysis aiming at the deepening
of the content of socialism (through workers’
self-management) and the parallel critique of what he
considered the
“traditional” or non-revolutionary
elements in Marxist thought (historical
“laws” in
societal development and so on)[101]
into an analysis which was transcending not just Marxism
but, in a sense, the socialist project itself,[102]
with the aim to interpret philosophy and democracy on
the basis of the central concept of individual and
social autonomy. This break was not, inevitably,
confined to the political content of Castoradis’ project
but was also extended to its philosophical
grounding, with his adoption of a modified Freudianism
(and a corresponding pseudo-“objective” rationalism —as
it was shown recently). Thus, the late Castoriadis
adopted the groundless (and, as I tried to show
elsewhere[103]
incompatible with the project οf autonomy) concept of
the
“psyche” —delighting, in the process, even the ears
of enlightened churchmen who now declare themselves his
admirers!— as well as the axiomatic grounding of the
autonomy project on supposedly
“objective” truths on the
relation between radical imaginary, social imaginary and
institutions. This move, which involved shifting the
emphasis of his theoretical work away from revolutionary
political theory to abstract theorizing, was inevitably
accompanied by the academisation of
“late” Castoriadis
and his abandonment of all political work in the last
twenty five years of his life or so.
To my mind, this significant shift in the Castoriadian
problematique, which involved a move from his notion of
socialist workers’ self-management to that of an
autonomous democratic society, had important implications as to the meaning of
“instituted
conditions”
I mentioned above, which were never worked
out by late Castoriadis. Thus, he never attempted to articulate a strategy
leading to the overcoming of political and ethical
heteronomy, or even to outline a genuine democracy
consistent with his autonomy project —particularly
needed today when the collapse of socialist statism
raised the crucial issue of the feasibility of any
alternative form (to the market economy and
representative
“democracy”) of social organisation[104].
Instead, although he adopted a new conception for a
future society, he did not disown his earlier
formulations for a socialist model of workers’
management,[105]
despite the obvious contradictions created by the
significant differences between the citizens’ democratic
self-management implied by his autonomy project and the workers’ (self) management implied by his
earlier socialist project.
Thus, as I attempted to show elsewhere,[106]
people in a democracy should take the major decisions to
run it not just as producers (which is the idea behind
workers’ management) but as citizens, which is a much
broader category than that of a producer. In fact,
Castoriadis himself seemed to be concerned by this when
he stressed that in services it may not always be
possible to create workers’ councils based on working
unity and a shared life but instead it may be necessary
to rely on associations or co-ops based on occupation[107].
But, if we take into account that in today’s societies
(unlike the fifties when Castoriadis was formulating his
proposal) the vast majority of the active population is
employed in services the argument for workers’
management becomes almost irrelevant. Furthermore, irrespective of what Castoriadis
thought, It is clear that it is the citizens
participating in the demotic/confederal
assemblies who can better express the general interest and take decisions on the economic, but
also political, ecological and broader social problems.
On the other hand, the worker councils of particular
enterprises (even if we extend the definition of worker
to include ex-workers, future workers, disabled workers,
farmers etc, as some people tautologically do) are
necessarily expressing particular interests. Especially
so, if the collectivised enterprises on which these
councils are based are engaged in competition among
themselves to achieve their targets —a competition which
may easily lead them to an effort
“to cut corners” as
regards social or ecological requirements[108].
In fact, one may argue that the reluctance of the late
Castoriadis to consider the political implications of
his autonomy project is not unrelated to the content of
his late work about the institution of society in
general and heteronomous society in particular. Thus,
Castoriadis identifies the institution of society with
the institution of a magma of social imaginary
significations (“the institution of society is the
institution of social imaginary significations”[109])
which significations, as he stresses, “in all known
societies have been in the main and in their essence
“religious”.[110]
Furthermore, he makes clear that by
“religious”
significations he does not mean only those based on an
irrational religious belief system but also those
“quasi- or pseudo-religious”
social imaginary
significations persisting in
today’s capitalist societies, according to which
“the origin of the world and the origin of society, the
operation of the one and of the other are
tied together
in and through
“rationality,” the “laws of nature,” and
“the laws of history’[111] But then, when he attempts to give an answer to the
crucial question
“why does society institute itself as heteronomous society?” his reply does not involve, at
least explicitly, any role for ruling classes or elites
and he simply talks about an undifferentiated (as
regards classes)
“society”:
We cannot “explain” the heteronomy of society, or why
religion has been, until now, a central component of the
institution of society. Nevertheless, we have
elucidated certain aspects of this capital fact; namely,
that, at its centre and in its essence, every heteronomous institution of society has been religious.
In other words: the enigma of heteronomous society and the enigma of
religion are in very large part, one and the same
enigma. No need to add, after saying this, that the
idea that religion might belong to “ideology,” to
“superstructure, or that it would be an “inverted
reflection” of the “real world” is beneath ridicule. The
“real world” is defined and organized each time by means
of a magma of social imaginary significations, that is,
significations relating to questions for which no “real”
or “rational” response ever could be furnished.
It is therefore
clear, that the religious or quasi-religious imaginary
social significations in the Castoriadian scheme owe
their existence and reproduction exclusively to the
radical imaginary as instituting, what Castoriadis calls
the
“instituting imaginary,” and its interaction
with what I called above the dominant social paradigm,
or what he describes as the specified social imaginary
in each instituted society. As Castoriadis puts it:
Society, as
always already instituted, is self-creation and
capacity for self-alteration. It is the work of the
radical imaginary as instituting, which brings itself
into being as instituted society and as a given, and
each time specified, social imaginary (…) society is the
work of the instituting imaginary.[112]
The individuals are made by the instituted
society, at the same time as they make and remake it.
However, the
crucial role of the ruling elites in conditioning the
content of the dominant social paradigm is never made
explicit. If one adds to this that the abandonment by
late Castoriadis of the Marxist class analysis —along
with the role he assigned in his earlier work to the
proletariat— has not led him to develop a new theory of
class divisions consistent with his autonomy project,[113]
then, one could understand his reluctance to draw the
political implications of his autonomy project. No
wonder that several libertarians, ex-social ecologists
and others interpret his theory of social imaginary
significations as assuming that society will
change just by a cultural revolution that will involve a
change in the radical imaginary. However, as I attempted
to show elsewhere[114],
society could never change just by changing our values
at the individual level. The change in values has a
social significance, as far as radical social
transformation is concerned, only if it is the outcome
of a collective struggle, as part of a comprehensive
political programme that explicitly questions the
institutional framework and the dominant social paradigm[115].
Therefore, social transformation towards an Inclusive
Democracy would never come about by
“example and
education” alone, or even by a cultural revolution
alone. The required change in values and culture can
only be the outcome of a process of continuous
interaction between changes in institutions and changes
in values, as part of a programmatic political movement
within the framework of a political project expressing a
universalist goal for systemic change and the strategy
to achieve such a goal.
In the same context,
it is not difficult to understand also Castoriadis’
reluctance even to attempt to consider the sort of
ethical values that he thinks are consistent with an
autonomous society, as when, seemingly raising his hands, he declares that,
“we will
always still have to make our lives under the tragic
conditions that characterize those lives, for we do not
always know where good and evil lie, either on the
individual level or on the collective level”.[116]
Not surprisingly, his
“agnostic”
approach on the matter
raised Bookchin’s strong criticism that
“in the absence
of rational objective standards of behaviour,
imagination may be as demonic as it may be liberatory
when such standards exist; hence the need for informed spontaneity
—and an
informed
imagination”.[117]
To my mind, the problem with the Castoriadian stand is
that it can easily lead to a postmodern type of moral
relativism, i.e. to a
“moral arbitrariness,”
as Bookchin
calls it, covered by democratic procedures. Although
therefore, as I stressed above, we should reject any
“objective”
ethics, it is at the same
time equally imperative to explore the sort of moral
values that are consistent with the institutional
framework of a genuinely democratic society and propose
some guidelines for the development of a
democratic ethics.
4. Towards a democratic ethics
It is therefore clear on the basis of the above analysis
that we cannot prescribe the moral code for a genuine
democratic society, which is obviously a matter for the
citizens’ assemblies of the future to decide. Still, we
can (in fact we should) show the ethics that, in
our view (which, of course, is just one view) is compatible and the ethics that it is not
compatible with the institutions of a democratic society —the
object of this section.
Incompatible ethics
First, it should be obvious from the analysis above that
religious ethics, or any ethics based on any kind of
irrational belief system, is utterly incompatible with a
democratic society, since it is incompatible with the
democratic principle of organisation itself.
A morality based on irrationalism of various
types is a negation of intellectual autonomy. This is
because the foundation of individual and collective
autonomy can only be democratic rationalism and
therefore any morality not drawn through democratic
rationalism is heteronomous. Thus, if we define an
irrational belief system as a system whose core beliefs
are not derived by rational methods (i.e. reason and an
appeal to
“facts”) but by intuition, instinct, feeling,
mystical experience, revelation, etc then it is obvious
that all religious beliefs, which have always been
characterised by the existence of a set of irrational
core truths (God, immortal soul, karma and so on), are
ruled out as the basis of a democratic ethics. This is
because the core truths that characterize all religious
systems have always been a closed system. In fact,
religious ethics is a basic characteristic of heteronomy.
The same applies to all other belief systems that are
based on the teachings of various gurus and are
therefore incompatible with autonomy defined, from the
Greek word autos+nomos, as giving oneself one’s laws.
Furthermore, one may
add, the ethics derived by irrational methods and
particularly religious ethics are rejectable not only
because of the way in which they have been derived but
also because, contrary to the common belief, a religious
framework, far from providing us with a set of moral
principles, it systematically corrupts morals. Thus, as
R.A. Sharpe reminds us,
“some virtues cease to be
virtues when given a religious context[118]
(…) to
avoid crime because you fear ultimate punishment is not
the same as avoiding crime because it is wrong”.[119]
Second, similarly incompatible to democratic ethics is
any idealist conception of perennial and universal
values, as it is now obvious that values differ in space
and time among various communities and societies. In
other words, it is universalised institutions that could
create universal moral values and not the opposite, as
idealists argue. Likewise, any materialist conception of
universal values (“objective”
ethics), which are
supposedly derived from some sort of (social or natural)
evolutionary process, are also incompatible to
democratic ethics, for the reasons I considered above.
Therefore, the concept of holism has to be repudiated in
defining a new democratic ethics, either this holism
takes the form of a mystical holism like biocentrism[120]
—which turns the clock of history back to premodern
mystical conceptions of nature— or of an eco-centric
holism like Kropotkin’s
“evolutionary holism”
or Bookchin’s dialectical naturalism. Similar
considerations apply to any attempt to derive an ethics
from chaos theory and the sciences dealing with the laws
of self-organisation and complexity, as I attempted to
show elsewhere.[121]
If, as Castoriadis aptly reminds us, it is impossible to
deduce a politics from philosophy,[122]
it is obviously ludicrous even to attempt to deduce a
politics, or an ethics for that matter, from science!
Third,
the fact that the project for a democratic society is
not objectively grounded does not mean that
“anything
goes” and that it is therefore impossible to derive a
definable body of principles to assess social and
political changes, or a set of ethical values to assess
human behaviour on the basis of the fundamental
criterion of compatibility with the institutions of the
democratic society. Therefore, the postmodern adoption
of a complete relativism with respect to ethical values
should be rejected for the same reasons that the
complete relativism with respect to the choice of
traditions should also be rejected. Here we should make
the important distinction between
political and
democratic
relativism on the one hand and
philosophical
relativism on the other. It is obvious that democratic
relativism[123]
(i.e., that all traditions, theories, ideas, etc., are
debated and decided upon by all citizens), is an
essential element of democracy. The same applies to
political relativism (i.e., that all traditions have
equal rights). Still, a strong case can be made against
philosophical
relativism,
according to
which all traditions have equal truth value, in
the sense of all being accepted as equally true or
false.
Compatible ethics
As the above list of incompatible to a democratic
society ethics shows,
there is no
“objective”
or society-independent
way of deriving the moral rules guiding human behaviour.
This brings us directly to the importance of social
organisation with respect to interpreting the basis of
morality and, also, the process of making specific moral
values hegemonic. I will not discuss here the former,
which will lead us to some sort of theory about how the
interaction of natural instincts and tendencies on the
one hand and social organisation on the other
that —through the socialisation process— conditions
ethics, as well as the way we see it . I will attempt
however to discuss briefly the role that the
institutional framework of each society plays in
conditioning the process of making specific values
hegemonic at the expense of other values that are
marginalized or discarded.
First, we should notice that the distinction we
discussed above between heteronomous and autonomous
societies is crucial. Thus, premodern heteronomous
societies invented various religious myths, and,
similarly, modern heteronomous societies elaborated several reason-based universalist
principles, in order to justify certain values and discard other
values. At the same time, the institutional framework of
each society had always made certain (through the
socialisation process) that only those particular values
that were compatible with the main institutions would
constitute the core of the dominant social paradigm. Not
accidentally, the same institutions —which in a heteronomous
society are controlled by the privileged social groups,
classes or castes— secure also the unequal distribution
of power among society’s members.
I
would therefore argue that although it is true that, as
Castoriadis stressed, every society is self-instituting,
I would fundamentally disagree (for the reasons I
explained elsewhere[124])
to the process of self-institution described by him.
According to this view, as I mentioned above,
institutions are reduced to the radical imaginary —a view which is false both
epistemologically and ontologically (although there is
no impenetrable barrier separating epistemology from
ontology).
It is epistemologically faulty, because this stand
attempts to interpret the social dynamics through an
essentially closed theoretical system, psychoanalytical
theory, something that I consider incompatible with the
project of autonomy, as well as the ID project. Thus,
the Castoriadian use of social imaginary significations,
instead of the broader concept of
“dominant social paradigm”[125]
that I adopted, does not allow him to make clear the
role of the elites in the socialisation process,
(through the conditioning role they play in the
formation of the dominant social paradigm) —a fact which
frequently leads the late Castoriadis (in contrast to
the early Castoriadis of
Socialisme ou Barbarie) to talk about a class undifferentiated
“society” and “its” imaginary— something that led him to
unacceptable for an antisystemic analyst political
conclusions on USSR, (as the only superpower capable of
an aggressive policy), or on the criminal war against
Iraq launched by the transnational elite (as a kind of
clash of imaginaries!) ,etc. On the other hand, the ID
project interprets the same social dynamics on the basis
of the role of the
“dominant social paradigm”
in the
socialisation process —something that brings back the
crucial class divisions into the analysis of social
dynamics.
Furthermore, the
attempt to reduce institutions to the radical and social
imaginary is ontologically faulty, because the Castoriadian thesis,
which reduces the institutions to the imaginary of a
class-undifferentiated society, in effect, exists only
in the ideology of today’s elites!
In other words, in an heteronomous society characterised
by the unequal distribution of power, only those values
which are compatible with the institutional framework,
i.e. those that they do not challenge in any way the
unequal distribution of power, would become core values
of the dominant social paradigm. The socialisation
process of such societies, which is decisively
conditioned by the elites controlling the main
institutions, plays a crucial role in this context. Vice
versa, in an autonomous society characterised by the
equal distribution of power among its members, only
those values that are compatible with its institutional
framework, (i.e. those that will not challenge in any way the equal
distribution of power) would become core values of its
dominant social paradigm. Again, the socialisation
process in such a society, particularly a democratic Paideia,
would play a crucial role in this process.
As I mentioned above, the grounding of a free society on
a conscious choice does not deprive us of ethical
standards to assess the various forms of social
organization and individual behaviour. Thus, the degree
to which a form of social organization secures an equal
distribution of political, economic and social power is
a powerful criterion to assess such social organisation.
Similarly, in a future democratic society, the degree to
which a modality of individual acting is compatible with
the democratic form of social organization can be
rationally assessed on the basis of a set of moral
values, derived through a process of democratic
rationalism, which express this compatibility. No need
therefore to fall into the trap of a postmodern type of
moral relativism, as supporters of
“objective”
ethics
argue would be the inevitable outcome of abandoning
their own
“absolute” standards. Similarly, although it is true that
moral and ethical systems have functioned as control
mechanisms, created and enforced by the ruling elites
for the more convenient management of the population,
the way out is not, as Georges Sorel suggests “to detach
morality from the tyranny of reason and to anchor it
once more in compassion and empathy”[126].
Moral and ethical systems can cease to function as
control mechanisms not when they are made detached from
“the tyranny of reason” but when they emerge as part of
democratic rationalism, i.e. when people are left alone
to decide their moral codes instead of leaving their
elites to do it for them.
So, the issue here is: what are those values that
express the compatibility of human behaviour to the democratic institutions? I
can only outline here what might be the content of
democratic ethics in the sense of the moral values expressing this compatibility
and it is up to supporters of democratic politics and,
at the end, up to the citizens’ assemblies of a
democratic society to enrich this discourse. Assuming
therefore that a democratic society will be based on a
confederal Inclusive Democracy[127]
which is founded on two fundamental principles of
organisation, i.e.
a) the principle of autonomy and
b) the principle of community
one may derive a set of moral values that express this
compatibility. At the outset, however, we have to define autonomy and community.
Autonomy is not meant here in the usual Kantian sense
(adopted by postmodernists and others), as an end in
itself, consisting in acting according to a law
discovered in an immutable Reason and given once and for
all. Instead, we use the etymological meaning given above, according
to which individual autonomy means the creation of our
laws (i.e. the institutions and our values), provided
however that we are fully aware of the fact that
we ourselves are the only source of our laws and that
therefore we do not simply parrot as “our own laws”
certain supposedly God-given commandments conveyed to us
through Moses, Christ, Mohamet and the like or similarly
certain
“laws of History” or “laws of Nature” which
supposedly determine social evolution. Similarly, we may
define social autonomy, as society not only positing its own
laws but also recognising itself as the source of its
norms.
As regards the meaning of community, I defined elsewhere[128]
the concept of community (or demos), as the basis
of a confederal Inclusive Democracy, in terms of three fundamental elements:
-
the ecumenicity
element, defined by David Clark[129]
as a sense of solidarity that enables people to feel
themselves part of and not hostile towards wider
society —which could well mean a confederation of demoi, or an international democratic community of
confederal inclusive democracies;
-
the autonomy element,
defined by the same author as a sense of
significance that enables people to feel they have a
role to play in the social scene, a role that is
determined by rules that members of the community
choose themselves and feel free to modify; and
-
the democracy element which I will define as a sense of equal sharing of
power
Historical evidence supports the view that past
communities were characterised by several of the above
elements, which define corresponding values that could
provide a guide for the moral values that should, in our view, be the
dominant values in a democratic society. Thus, as
Michael Taylor[130]
has shown (drawing on the experience of stateless
primitive societies, peasant communities and
“intentional”
utopian communities), a community requires
rough economic equality, as well as relations between
its members that involve reciprocity (mutual aid,
co-operation, sharing) and that are direct (i.e.,
not mediated by representatives, leaders, etc.) and
many-sided.[131]
On the basis of the above fundamental principles of
organisation of a confederal Inclusive Democracy and the
meaning we gave to autonomy and community, a whole
series of moral values could be derived which may
provide us with an outline of the moral values that are
compatible to a democratic society.
Thus, out of the fundamental principle of autonomy one
may derive a set of moral values involving equality and
democracy, respect for the personality of every citizen
(irrespective of gender, race, ethnic identity etc) and
of course respect for human life itself which, as
Castoriadis puts it,
“ought to be posited as an absolute
because the injunction of autonomy is categorical, and
there is no autonomy without life”.[132]
Also, out of the same fundamental principle of autonomy,
we may derive values involving the protection of the
quality of life of each individual citizen —something
that would imply a relationship of harmony with nature
and the need to re-integrate society with nature.
Similarly, out of the fundamental principle of community we may derive a set of values involving not only
equality but also solidarity and mutual aid,
altruism/self-sacrifice (beyond concern for kin and reciprocity), caring and sharing. As Michael
Taylor has shown, one of the core characteristics of a
community is reciprocity, which covers
“a range of
arrangements and relations and exchanges, including
mutual aid, some forms of cooperation and some forms of
sharing”.[133]
However, as the above discussion hopefully makes clear,
it is out of the combination of the two principles
mentioned —which form the organisational basis of a confederal Inclusive Democracy— that we may derive the
moral principles mentioned, which have always been part
of liberatory ethics. If on the other hand we rely
exclusively on the autonomy principle, as the autonomy
project does, then the traditional liberatory values of
solidarity, mutual aid, altruism, caring and sharing
would be difficult, if not impossible, to be derived
from this principle alone. Vice versa, if we rely
exclusively on the community principle, as many
libertarians do, then we may easily end up with
“the Bordigist and primitivist arguments for a tight, unified
community, for the end of opposing social groups, for
the unification of humanity, and in their scepticism
about democracy”.[134]
It is therefore only this synthesis of autonomy and
community which, to my mind, could avoid both the Scylla
of
“objectifying”
ethics and/or negating politics and
ethical concerns in favour of the coercive harmony of
the organic community and the Charybdis of unbounded
moral relativism.―
[1]
An earlier version of this article was published
in Democracy & Nature, Vol. 8, No. 3 (November 2002). Here is
published a significantly updated version of it.
[2]
Although ethics and morality are often used
interchangeably the term ethics is used here to
refer
not to morality itself but to the field of study
that has morality as its subject matter, i.e. in
a
similar sense as
moral philosophy.
[3]
By
“antisystemic” Left I mean this part of the
Left which explicitly challenges the legitimacy
of the present socio-economic system and aims at
the replacement of the existing political and
economic institutions (representative
“democracy’ and the system of the market economy
respectively), as well as the corresponding
values that are compatible with them, with new liberatory institutions and values. This is in
contrast to the
“reformist” Left which simply
aims at reforming the existing institutions
(“deepening democracy,” better regulating the
market economy etc) and the corresponding
values.
[4]
See T. Fotopoulos.
“The
Myth of postmodernity,”
Democracy
& Nature, Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 2001), pp.
27-76.
http://www.democracynature.org/vol7/takis_postmodernism.htm
[5]
As I attempted to show in Towards An
Inclusive Democracy (London: Cassell, 1997),
pp. 227-30 communitarianism is, in effect, a
middle-class movement against the social symptoms of the capitalist neo-liberal
globalisation
(pp. 227-230).
No wonder that
the socio-economic framework is ruled out of the
communitarian problematique and Etzioni, the
guru of Communitarianism, gave an unequivocal
answer when asked about socio-economic rights
and the communitarian economic agenda. “The
short answer is,” he says, “there is none.” see
Amitai Etzioni, “Common Values,” New
Statesman & Society (12 May 1995).
[6]
See M. Bookchin,
The
Philosophy of Social Ecology (Black Rose,
1995) and critique in
Towards An Inclusive
Democracy,
op. cit.,
pp.
328-40.
[7]
V. Lenin,
“Address at Congress of Russian Young
Communist League” (1920),
The Young
Generation, pp. 36-41. quoted in Reader
in Marxist Philosophy, ed by H. Selsam & H.
Martel (New York: International Publishers,
1963), pp. 272-73.
[8] See Chamsy Ojeili,
“Post-modernism, the Return
to Ethics, and the Crisis of Socialist Values,”
Democracy & Nature, vol. 8, no. 3, (November 2002)
[9]
See Takis Fotopoulos,
“The Myth of Postmodernity,” op.
cit., pp. 27-76.
[10]
See F. Engels, Anti-Duhring (Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1969), part I.
[11]
Ibid., p. 114.
[12]
Ibid., pp. 124-29.
[13]
Ibid., p. 129.
[14]
F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature (1882)
(quoted in Reader in Marxist Philosophy, op. cit.,
p. 212).
[15]
Engels, Anti-Duhring, op. cit., p. 137.
[16]
Thus,
Engels defined freedom as “the control over
ourselves and over external nature” (ibid);
also, according to Kolakowski, for Marxists,
“freedom is the degree of power that an
individual or a community is able to exercise
over the conditions of their own life.” Leszek Kolakowski,
Main Currents of Marxism,
Vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981),
p. 387.
[17]
Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive
Democracy, op. cit., pp. 196-99.
[18]
K. Marx, Capital, Vol. III (1894)/1966
(Moscow: Progress Publishers/London: Lawrence &
Wishart, 1966), p. 820.
[19]
A. Berkman, ABC of Anarchism, (London:
Freedom Press, 1964), p. 29
[20]
see e.g. G.P. Maximoff, The Political
Philosophy of Bakunin (New York: Free
Press, 1953), pp 155-56; see, also, see, also, Murray Bookchin,
Remaking Society
(Montreal: Black Rose, 1989) pp. 95-100 for a
clear differentiation between justice and
freedom
[21]
Karl Hess, “Rights and Reality” in Renewing
the Earth: The Promise of Social Ecology,
John Clark, ed. (London: Greenprint, 1990), pp.
130-33.
[22]
See Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive
Democracy, op. cit., pp. 231-33
[23]
ibid., for a discussion of possible safeguards
in an Inclusive Democracy
[24]
M. Bookchin, Remaking Society, (Montreal:
Black Rose, 1989) p. 119
[25]
ibid. p. 120
[26]
See Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive
Democracy, op. cit., pp. 177-180
[27]
P. Kropotkin, Ethics, (Dorchester: Prism
Press, 1924), p. 5
[28]
ibid. p. 11
[29]
See Brian Morris,
“Kropotkin’s
ethical naturalism,”
Democracy & Nature,
Vol. 8, No. 3 (November
2002).
[30]
P. Kropotkin, Ethics, p. 14
[31]
ibid. p. 17
[32]
ibid. p. 286
[33]
ibid. pp. 30-31
[34]
ibid. pp. 263-64
[35]
See B. Morris,
“Kropotkin’s Metaphysics of
Nature,”
Anarchist Studies, vol 9 no 2,
Oct. 2001, pp. 165-180.
[36]
See, for instance, Albert Bergesen
“Deep Ecology
and Moral Community” in
Rethinking
Materialism, Robert Wuthnow ed. (New York:
Erdmanns, 1995).
[37] From
“Rethinking Ethics, Nature and Society”
(1985). Quoted in The Murray Bookchin
Reader, ed. by Janet Biehl, (London: Cassell,
1997), p. 202
[38]
M. Bookchin,
“A Philosophical Naturalism,”
Society & Nature, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1992), p. 74.
[39]
See Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive
Democracy, op. cit., pp. 328-340.
[40]
See,
e.g., Stuart A. Kaufmann,
The Origins of Order: Self organisation and
Selection in Evolution (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993).
[41]
Murray Bookchin,
Remaking
Society (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1989),
p. 25.
[42]
M. Bookchin,
The
Philosophy of Social Ecology, (Montreal:
Black Rose, 1995) p. xii.
[43]
Ibid, p. xi.
[44]
See Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive
Democracy, op. cit., pp. 329-330.
[45]
“What is potential in an acorn that yields an
oak tree or in a human embryo that yields a
mature, creative adult is equivalent to what is
potential in nature that yields society and what
is potential in society that yields freedom,
selfhood, and consciousness”, Murray Bookchin,
The
Modern Crisis (Montreal: Black Rose Press,
1987), p .13.
[46]
C. Castoriadis,
Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),
p. 88.
[47]
M. Bookchin,
The
Philosophy of Social Ecology, op. cit., pp. 157-70.
[48]
M. Bookchin,
The
Ecology of Freedom, (Montreal: Black Rose,
1991) p. 274.
[49]
See, for instance, the criticisms raised against
dialectical naturalism by eco-socialists like
David Pepper,
Eco-Socialism: From Deep Ecology to Social
Justice (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 165;
and Andrew Light,
“Rereading Bookchin
and
Marcuse as Environmental Materialists,”
Capitalism, Nature, Socialism,
No. 3 (March
1993), and,
“Which Side Are You On?
A Rejoinder to Murray Bookchin,”
Capitalism, Nature, Socialism,
No. 14 (June 1993).
See, also, the criticisms raised by deep
ecologists like Robyn Eckersley,
“Divining Evolution: The
Ecological Ethics of Murray Bookchin,”
Environmental Ethics, Vol. 11, No 2
(Summer
1989).
[50]
See T. Fotopoulos,
“John Clark and Democracy”
(refused by the editors of Social Anarchism)
http://www.democracynature.org/dn/branarchism/fotopoulosonclark.htm; see also, the exchange with
John Clark in Democracy & Nature, Vol. 5,
No. 3 (Nov 1999), pp. 523-561.
[51]
C. Castoriadis,
Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, p. 34.
[52]
See
,for instance, John M. Gowdy,
“Progress and
Environmental Sustainability,”
Environmental Ethics,
Vol. 16, No. 1
(Spring 1994).
[53]
Amnesty International, A Glimpse of Hell,
(London: Amnesty International UK, 1996)
[54]
Karl Polanyi,
The Great
Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press,1957),
chs. 14-15.
[55]
See T. Fotopoulos,
“Globalisation, the reformist
Left and the anti-globalisation movement,”
Democracy & Nature, Vol. 7, No. 2 (July 2001),
pp. 233-280.
[56]
Costas Kavoulakos,
“The Relationship of Realism
and Utopianism in the Theories of Democracy of Jurgen Habermas and Cornelius Castoriadis,”
Society
and Nature, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1994), p. 74.
See
also, N. Bobio,
“Science, Power and Freedom,”
Eleftherotypia (18 Sept. 1995).
[57]
See
J. Gowdy,
“Progress and Environmental
Sustainability,”
op. cit.
[58]
See Takis Fotopoulos,
“The rise of new
irrationalism and its incompatibility with
Inclusive Democracy,”
Democracy & Nature, Vol. 4, No. 2/3 (1998), pp. 1-49.
[59]
Murray Bookchin,
From
Urbanization to Cities, (London: Cassell,
1995) pp, 111-16. See, also, his The Third
Revolution (London: Cassell, 1998), Vol. 2.
[60]
See
Sam Dolgoff, ed.,
The
Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-management
in the Spanish Revolution 1936-39 (New York:
Free Life Editions, 1974).
[61]
The dominant social paradigm is defined as
the system
of beliefs, ideas and the corresponding values,
which are dominant (or tend to become dominant)
in a particular society at a particular moment
of its history, as most consistent with the
existing political, economic and social
institutions
[62]
Cornelius Castoriadis,
Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy,
op.
cit.,
pp. 36-38.
[63]
Takis Fotopoulos, The Multidimensional Crisis
and Inclusive Democracy (The
International Journal of Inclusive Democracy,
2005), ch. 1.
http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/ss/ch1.htm
[64]
Ibid., chs 1-2.
[65]
See T. Fotopoulos,
“Globalisation, the reformist
Left and the anti-globalisation movement,”
Democracy & Nature, Vol. 7, No. 2 (July 2001),
pp. 233-280.
[66]
Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive
Democracy, op. cit., p. 38.
[67]
See T. Fotopoulos,’ The Global “War” of the
Transnational Elite’, Democracy & Nature,
Vol. 8, No. 2,
pp. 201-240.
[68]
See,
e.g., Shlomo Avineri, ed.,
Karl Marx
on Colonialism & Modernization (New York:
Anchor Books, 1969), p. 13; and Anthony Brewer,
Marxist
Theories of Imperialism (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 18.
[69]
See G.P. Maximoff, ed.,
The Political Philosophy of Bakunin) p. 145. See, also,
M. Bookchin,
The
Philosophy of Social Ecology, p. xvi.
[70]
See T. Fotopoulos,
“The Myth of postmodernity,”
op. cit.
[71]
As Jonathan Porritt, a supporter of such
spiritualism and Prince Charles’ adviser (as
well as an ex-president of Friends of the
Earth!), put it:
“From
its inception in the early 1970s, the modern
environment movement has always had an
influential spiritual dimension to it, which has
been deeply suspect in the eyes of most
scientists” (The Guardian, May 20, 2000).
This is also confirmed by the explicitly
spiritualist dimension of the “ecovillage movement” (see my
exchange with Ted Trainer, Democracy & Nature,
vol 8 no 1 (March 2002) pp. 143-158
[72]
See T. Fotopoulos,
“The Myth of postmodernity,”
op. cit.
[73]
“Free will, if it existed at all, could mean
only
—as
St Augustine insisted and the Church repeatedly
hammered home— freedom to choose wrong over right
—that is, to
breach
God’s commandments: to depart from the way of
the world as God ordained it; and anything that
visibly deflected from custom was seen as such a
breach. Being in the right, on the other hand,
was not a matter of choice: it meant, on the
contrary, avoiding choice
—following
the customary way of life”. Zygmunt Bauman,
Postmodern Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell,
1993), p. 4.
[74]
Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, op.
cit., p. 7
[75]
Ibid., p. 6.
[76]
Ibid., p. 8.
[77]
Ibid., pp. 10-11.
[78]
Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, op.
cit., p. 61.
[79]
Ibid., pp. 33-34.
[80]
Ibid., p. 247.
[81]
Ibid., pp. 12-14.
[82]
Ibid., p. 38.
[83]
Ibid., pp. 227-228.
[84]
Ibid., pp. 228-29.
[85]
Ibid., p. 39.
[86]
Ibid., p. 40.
[87]
Ibid.
[88]
See Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive
Democracy, op. cit., ch. 6 :
“A Confederal Inclusive
Democracy”.
[89]
Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, op.
cit., p. 42.
[90]
See Takis Fotopoulos,
“The Rise of New
irrationalism and its Incompatibility with
Inclusive Democracy,”
Democracy & Nature,
Vol. 4, Nos. 2/3 (1998), pp. 1-49.
[91]
Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, op.
cit, p. 248.
[92]
See The Castoriadis Reader, ed. by David
Ames Curtis (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 398.
[93]
C. Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics,
Autonomy, op. cit., pp. 104-105.
[94]
C. Castoriadis, World in Fragments, ed. by
David Ames Curtis (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1997), p. 121.
[95]
Ibid. p. 117.
[96]
The Castoriadis Reader,
op. cit.,
pp. 406-407.
[97] As Castoriadis aptly put it:
“One must neither
commit nor desire adultery because God has
forbidden it. Why has God forbidden adultery?
The question itself is forbidden,” C. Castoriadis,
World in Fragments, p. 120.
[98]
Ibid., p. 122.
[99]
Ibid., p. 111.
[100]
See T. Fotopoulos,
“Castoriadis and the
democratic tradition,”
Democracy & Nature,
Vol. 4, No. 1 (10), pp. 157-63 (see also Encyclopedia Britannica on line) and my exchange with David Ames Curtis in
Democracy & Nature, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 1999),
pp. 163-188.
[101] See C. Castoriadis,
Political and Social
Writings, Vols 1-3 (University of Minnesota
Press).
[102]
Although Castoriadis himself in a 1979 essay was
giving the impression that his abandonment of
the term
“socialist society” in favour of
“autonomous society” was just a change in
terminology (see Vol. 3 of his Political and
Social Writings, p. 317), I believe that his
late work, in which he integrated classical
Greek philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis
into the project of autonomy, made it clear that
something much more than a change in terminology was involved.
[103]
See T. Fotopoulos, “Recent Theoretical
Developments on the Inclusive Democracy
Project”, in
Global Capitalism and the Demise of the Left:
Renewing Radicalism through Inclusive Democracy ,
ed. by Steven Best, (International Journal of Inclusive Democracy,
2009)
[104]
And yet, he was (rightly) emphatic on the need
to outline the form of a future society:
“Just
as we must avoid the fetishism of
«statutes» we
should also condemn any sort of
«anarchist» or
«spontaneist»
fetishism that, in the belief that the working
class consciousness ultimately will determine
everything, takes little or no interest in the
forms such consciousness should take if it wants
to be effective in changing society…the
definition of socialist society that we are
attempting therefore requires of us some
description of how we visualize its institutions
and of the way they will function,” in
Political
and Social Writings, (Minneapolis: Minnesota
Press, 1988), Vol. 2, pp. 90-154. He also made a
similar statement in his major work:
“Praxis cannot do away with the need to clarify
the future it wants to bring about.” C. Castoriadis,
The Imaginary Institution of
Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), p.
110.
[105]
C. Castoriadis,
“On the content of socialism II”
(1957) in
Political
and Social Writings.
[106]
See my exchange with David Ames Curtis in
Democracy & Nature, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 1999),
pp. 163-188.
[107]
C. Castoriadis, The
Castoriadis Reader, op. cit., pp. 88-9.
[108]
The above contradictions are internal
contradictions between early and late
Castoriadian work. Apart from them however there
is the even more crucial problem I considered in
my exchange with Curtis that the real market cum
money economy suggested by Castoriadis leads to
serious problems and inequalities (despite his
assumption about equal wages) because it cannot
avoid the problems that any real market creates,
irrespective of whether it is capitalist or not.
As I attempted to show in Towards An
Inclusive Democracy, the real issue is how
we can achieve a synthesis of democratic
planning and freedom of choice, without
resorting to a real market, (as Castoriadis
does), which would inevitably lead to all the
problems linked with a market allocation of
resources
[109]
C. Castoriadis, World in Fragments, op.
cit., p.
313.
[110]
Ibid., p. 324.
[111]
Ibid., pp.317-318.
[112]
C. Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics,
Autonomy, op. cit., pp. 144-145.
[113]
See for an attempt to develop an analysis of
class divisions today from the Inclusive
Democracy project’s viewpoint T. Fotopoulos,
“Class
Divisions Today-the Inclusive Democracy Approach,” Democracy & Nature,
Vol. 6, No. 2
(July 2000), pp. 211-251.
[114]
See T. Fotopoulos,
“The limitations of
Life-style strategies: The Ecovillage
«Movement»
is NOT the way towards a new democratic
society,”
Democracy & Nature, Vol. 6, No. 2 (July
2000), pp. 287-308.
[115]
See T. Fotopoulos,
“Transitional
Strategies and the Inclusive Democracy Project,”
Democracy
& Nature, Vol. 8, No. 1 (March 2002), pp. 17-62.
[116]
C. Castoriadis, World in Fragments, op.
cit., p. 122.
[117]
M. Bookchin,
The
Philosophy of Social Ecology, op. cit.,
p. 178.
[118]
R. A. Sharpe,
The Moral Case Against Religious Belief
(London: SCM Press Ltd, 1997), p. 97.
[119]
Ibid., p. 100
[120]
According to biocentrism, humans, as part of
nature, should
“obey” the
“laws of nature” and
conform with the world, which is conceived as an
“organism” or as a
“cosmic unity”.
[121]
See T. Fotopoulos,
“Systems theory and
complexity: a potential tool for radical
analysis or the emerging social paradigm for the
internationalised market economy?,”
Democracy
& Nature, Vol. 6, No. 3 (November 2000), pp.
421-446.
[122]
C. Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics,
Autonomy, op. cit., p. 125.
[123]
P. Feyerabend,
Farewell
to Reason
(London: Verso, 1987), p. 59.
[124]
See Takis Fotopoulos, “Recent Theoretical
Developments on the ID project,” op. cit.
[125]
The dominant social paradigm is defined as the
system of beliefs, ideas and the corresponding
values, which are dominant in a particular
society at a particular moment of its history,
as consistent with the existing institutional
framework; see T. Fotopoulos, “Mass media,
Culture and Democracy,” Democracy & Nature,
Vol.
5, No. 1 (March 1999).
http://www.democracynature.org/vol5/fotopoulos_media.htm
[126]
See Thomas Martin,
“Violent
Myths’ The Post-Western Irrationalism of Georges
Sorel,”
Democracy & Nature, Vol. 4, Nos. 2/3
(Issue 11/12) double issue (1998), pp.
50-69.
[127]
See Takis Fotopoulos,
Towards An Inclusive
Democracy,
op. cit.,
ch. 6.
[128]
Takis Fotopoulos,
Towards An Inclusive
Democracy, op. cit., pp. 225-227.
[129]
David Clark, “The Concept of Community
Education” in Community Education, Garth
Allen et al., eds. (Milton Keynes: Open
University Press, 1987), pp. 58-
[130]
Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy, and
Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), pp. 26-32.
[131]
Michael Taylor also shows conclusively why the
liberal arguments of the
“anarcho-capitalist
school” (R. Nozick and others), which claim that
no equality would survive for long without state
interference, are logically and historically
invalid and that, in fact, community is a
necessary condition for the maintenance of an
approximate equality; ibid., pp. 95-104.
[132]
The Castoriadis Reader,
op. cit.,
p. 400.
[133]
Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy, and
Liberty, pp. 28-29.
[134]
See Chamsy Ojeili,
“Post-modernism, the Return
to Ethics, and the Crisis of Socialist Values,”
Democracy & Nature, Vol. 8, No. 3 (November
2002).