Autonomy Against Capitalism

[Sam Pawlett <rsp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Autonomy and Politics.

   In the ultimate chapter of this book The Morality of Freedom., Joseph
Raz argues that a liberal conception of government follows from the
notion of personal autonomy.
     The concept of autonomy is a broad one with there being no widely
agreed upon necessary or sufficient conditions for one's being
autonomous. Raz accepts the view that an autonomous person is one who
is, for the most part, the author of one's own life i.e. one who is in
full control of one's actions the causes of those actions and also the
consequences of those actions. An autonomous person will thus be one who
is freely able to decide which course(s) of action to take in life then
act accordingly on the basis of those decisions. A person's autonomy is
her independence, self-reliance, and self-contained ability to decide
and, to some degree, control her own destiny.

Raz's Argument.

     Raz argues that the state should ensure that every person has the
resources to live an autonomous life. That is, the state should ensure
that for every person the state should ensure that the necessary
conditions are satisfied for each person to determine the course one's
life will take. The state should not,however, decide what choice a
person should make, only that each person has a sufficient quantity and
quality of choices to make that person autonomous. Since autonomy is the
capacity to control and create one's own life, autonomy is constitutive
of the good life or summum bonum. This capacity contains both mental and
physical abilities and the range of options available to use and bring
those abilities to full fruition.

     Raz argues further that the state should promote morality. He
argues this on grounds of a perfectionist interpretation of the harm
principle. Raz introduces the harm principle to impose limits on the
possible uses of coercion to create the conditions for autonomy. The
state may create the conditions for autonomy only in so far as it
respects the harm principle i.e. coercion is only justifiable just in
case it is used to prevent harm ( but not when one is causing harm to
oneself i.e. abusing drugs).

Comments.
     Raz does not spell out exactly what the state or any other public
institution should do to promote or ensure the conditions for autonomy.
He assigns this to a " theory of political institutions". Fair enough,
but by leaving the implications of  his theory vague and not describing
the impact the implementation of  his theory would have on the lives of
individuals, Raz  weakens his theory. This is so because he leaves his
theory open to many implications. By not specifying the implications Raz
makes it difficult to object to his theory, since many implications can
follow from it. Many different political institutions and structure can
be made consistent with his theory.

     Raz argues that part of being  autonomous is the availability of
quality options. The implications of the theory depend on exactly what
range and what quality of options Raz has in mind. He does admit this is
a very difficult question.

  Autonomy is a matter of degree, a matter of the quantity and quality
of the options a person has. Thus the greatest amount of autonomy would
involve the greatest number and the best quality of options.

     If Raz wants to maximize the amount of autonomy each and every
person has, much stronger political implications follow than the liberal
conceptions of government he mentions in passing. Maximizing the amount
of autonomy each person has would involve the radical restructuring of
the society we live. It would mean the abolishment of wage-labor and
capitalism. The capitalist system itself is the greatest constraint on
personal autonomy. Capitalism generates and needs for its survival and
ability to reproduce itself as a system, propertyless proletarians and
peasants. These proletarians and peasants have life options that are
extremely limited such that they enjoy little and in many cases no
control over their own lives. They certainly do not have the control
over their lives that would answer to the idea of autonomy. This becomes
especially glaring when considering the plight of the mass of the
population living in the southern hemisphere of the world. Can it be
said that the Haitian peasant enjoys autonomy? Could such a person come
to enjoy autonomy under the present system?

     Now it may be the case that an individual wage laborer may come
through sheer luck or fortitude to rise in class to a position where she
has greater autonomy. However, this is true for individuals but false
when viewing the set or class as a whole. What is true for one member of
a set is cannot be true for all members of that set simultaneously (the
fallacy of composition). The capitalist system,being what it is,
requires by structural necessity to have persons in positions or classes
where they have little or no autonomy. As Bernard Mandeville, the
greatest expositor of bourgeois ideology put it;
" For how excessive soever the Plenty and Luxury of a Nation maybe, some
Body must do the work."

     Conservative libertarians e.g. Nozick in Anarchy,State and Utopia,
argue that a person enjoys autonomy if and only if that person possesses
the rights constitutive of self-ownership. Self-ownership can be
defined thus;
" every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has any right
to but himself.
   The labor of his body and the work of his hands we may say are
properly his" Locke,Second Treatise of Government.

   Any attempt to force non-contractual obligations upon a
person violates their right of self-ownership and is thus morally wrong.
However, as autonomy is a matter of degree, it surely cannot be the case
that any violation of self-ownership would render a person completely
devoid of autonomy. Similarly, complete self-ownership among each and
every person will certainly not maximize autonomy for each and every
person. Autonomy and self-ownership do no imply each other.

Appendix
" I have laid down as maxims never to be departed from, that the Poor
should be kept strictly to work, and it was prudence to relieve their
wants, but folly to cure them,  have named ignorance as a necessary
ingrediant in th Mixture of Society. From all which it is manifest that
I could never have imagined, that luxury was to be made general through
the every part of the kingdom. I have likewise required that property
should be well secured ... No foreign luxury can undo a Country. The
height of it is never seen but in nations that are vastly populous, and
there only in the upper part of it, and the greater that is the larger
still in proportion must be the lowest, the basis that supports all, the
multitude of Working Poor." Locke, Second Treatise.p67


 Bernard Mandeville. The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices,Publick
Benefits. pg. 149. Penguin 1970.
Robert Nozick. Anarchy,State and Utopia. pgs. 34,48-51.