Two theories of autonomy introduced and contrasted with a third, grosser form and applied to the problem of industrial society

We might contrast several theories of autonomy, so as to get a better look at what we might desire as a favorable model. Kazcynski has argued that the power process ought to culminate in autonomy. As he writes in section 37, a human being must achieve the power process and have a "reasonable rate of success in achieving one's goals" to avoid serious psychological problems. Again, it won't do to merely complete goals. Goals here must be performed in decentralized groups of a half dozen people or so without rigid authoritarian structure. One thinks of Amish building a farmhouse.

So, for K, autonomy is the point of life and its realization requires goals that are achievable and done on a small economic scale. Add to this a priveleged place for rural, agricultural, silvicultural, ecological forms of life.

Now, contrast this model of autonomy, with conceptions of moral autonomy such as articulated by Immanuel Kant. Here autonomy is acting on that maxim which you can at the same time will to be a universal law of nature. Autonomy is participating in a hypothetical kingdom of ends in which one's maxims are subject to the constraints of universalization. It would seem, at first, that the two conceptions of autonomy have little in common. Kant's is an abstract formalism that addresses what it is to be 'rational', viz., to be "autonomous" in the sense that your own reason is the self-authenticating source of valid moral claims. On the other hand, Kazcynski's is a view of autonomy in the sense of being independent from hierarchical control over one's labor power either directly (as in the power structures of corporations or universities) or in the sense of being free from interference with one's own direct relation to nature and natural systems such as through the indirect means of superstructure (highway systems, subdivisions, banking systems, military industrial, etc.).

Kantian autonomy may be realized both in pre-industrial and industrial spaces. One may even work for a corporation provided that its work is consistent with the categorical imperatives of practical reason. We even have a duty to self-preservation and the preservation of the species which implies an interest in forming a society for mutual advantage. But where the connection lies between Kazcynski and Kant is on the manner in which industrialization and the form of life that has emerged violate the effective use of one's own freedom. Those uses of human energy which directly exploit human labor without compensations adequate to a full human life or those policies and practices of industrial society which prevent the full use of one's reason and one's vital capacities are to be rendered inconsistent with the ideal of autonomy. Some forms of communism, totalitarianism, and even the hegemony of the modern capitalist state may ultimately be inconsistent with autonomy. Nevertheless, it is not in the "industrial" or the "technological" itself that the problem is located. It is rather in the practices and policies which those technologies and industries are put to that is problematic.

I shudder to think of the non-autonomous forms of life that pass for acceptable or even admirable in our society. The false and impovershed forms of life that countless human beings in an industrial society are condemned to is a dark thought. But, if Kazcynski and Kant are right we would expect larger groanings if the vital spiritual life was that diminished in industrial society. Do we hear such groanings?

No. And I think that Kazcynski has an answer. Where Marxists talk about "False Consciousness", Kazcynski talks about "surrogate activities"--those activities which we find ourselves freed up to enjoy now that all the lower order needs are fulfilled instantaneously (the food comes from the supermarket, the electricity is flicked on by the switch, etc.) Kazcynski talks of the Emperor Hiroshito as an example of an aristocrat who, having all his lower order needs fulfilled, could go on to become an amateur marine biologist. This is the model, then, of Industrial Society's vision of autonomy: having the freedom to attend to more esoteric, higher order "needs". There is a kind of Chomsky-like manufacturing of consent by the inertia of the culture that is emerged in the space of the last half century. With all of its decadence it has deprived human beings of the actualization of their real needs and replaced them with various false mirrors in which to become entangled with ourselves.

But I would say that there is perhaps a more fundamental human drive than either Kant or Kazcynski adequately account for, and that is personal security. It is not political or moral freedom (and the autonomy they represent) that drives most people, rather it is the lower order needs that must be met first. Simple survival and reproduction is the fundamental rule that the bulk of humanity operates under. Whether this rule is fulfilled autonomously or not, justly or not, under conditions of exploitation or not, under sustainable conditions or not plays a not insignificant but nevertheless very small part of their practical deliberations.

How does Joe six-pack drown out the sorrows and horrors of his meaningless life? Answer: Conspicuous forms of consumption. Dionysus and the American Woman. While these forms of life may not appear to be autonomous from the perspective of a Kant or a Kazcinski, remember that for all their defects it is still ME who is pushing the control buttons on the tv, ME who is driving the SUV, ME who is devouring a Big Mac. I suppose Robespierre might have claimed that it is ME who is putting in his head into the guillotine. But that's where it rests.