By Payoshi Roy
For all who are troubled by the crises of our times and weighed down by the impossibility of our imagined utopias, Utopia 4/13 is a must-watch. Here, Francoise Gollain brings forth Andre Gorz’s deep conviction, that the escape from the widening gyre[1] lies neither in the second coming[2] nor in the promise of a glorious revolution, but in a deeply personal and transformative journey of interrogating and reuniting with our liberated selves. Despite Gollain’s apprehension that the clarity and essence of Gorz’s thought would be lost in translation from French to English, her own moving friendship with Gorz and her critical reading of his life and work makes Utopia 4/13 a seminal moment in our search for concrete utopias.
Course Correction: Re-Orienting Utopias
In Utopia 1/13, Etienne Balibar argued that our chances of creating alternative worlds, or realising concrete utopias cannot stem from the abstract idea of ending the capitalist mode of production but will come from the minutiae of the use of resources, ways of life etc.[3] In the epilogue to Utopia 1/13, Bernard Harcourt refers to Theodor Adorno’s criticism of philosophy’s pretensions of rationality and posits that if the nineteenth century concept of totalising utopias seem impossible, we must accept the possibility of error and attempt to interject punctual engagements and concentrate on their distributional consequences.[4] For many of us who feel defeated by the inability to implement systemic change- be it the abolition of mass incarceration or income inequality- the idea of punctual engagements or Kendall Thomas’s suggestion of utopia as a praxis offers a glimmer of possibility. However, Gollain through Gorz’s words reminds us that the first and most important utopic ‘praxis’ or engagement needs to directed not at the systems of exploitation and oppression but inwards at our alienated selves.
Through Gorz’s radical critique of capitalism and wage labour one realises that the systems of discrimination, inequality, environmental damage etc. are not the source of our problems, but symptoms of a deeper more powerful malaise. Gorz identifies this as the alienation and depletion of meaning caused by the monopoly of a few over factors of production and consumption.[5] Moreover as Gollain in her lecture reminds us, as per Gorz, both capitalist industrialisation and Soviet socialism could lead to this insidious malaise.[6] Thus, merely transforming or even radically altering oppressive systems would yield little joy if we were unable to ‘dis-alienate’ and find meaning within ourselves.
The Process of Alienation and Death of Critical Thought
Gorz inspired by Jean Paul Satre believed that any social or cultural analysis must be directed at individuals and not systems.[7] As Gollain recognises, at the heart of Gorz’s journey lies his relationships with himself, and therefore at the heart of his work lies an individual’s relationship with themselves.[8] Central to Gorz’s utopic imagination is a truly emancipated and liberated individual who understands what she needs to feel fulfilled. Christopher Brooks argues that for Gorz the economic rationality of quantity strains the quality of life bare; a quality that can only be realised through an individual’s ability to give her own life meaning.[9] Crucially Gorz emphasizes that self-realisation and fulfilment are different from growth, income, economic progress and the accumulation of capital.[10]
In consonance with his Marxist leanings Gorz believes that work should be an expression of identity and self.[11] He argues that capitalism through the division of labour and wage labour has rendered work futile and life meaningless. In today’s capitalist economy, work is associated with survival and need and not the expression of self.[12] As one is trapped in the cycle of wage labour, the producer and consumer in each of us is separated.[13] Capitalism induces an individual to believe that increasing consumption is a need. In order to fulfil this need, one continues to labour. However, an increase in purchasing power only makes one more dependent on consumerism. First the supermarket, then 5th avenue, and gradually Trump Towers think for us, while our own ability to think is slowly chipped away. Similarly, institutions of capital be they prisons, factories, feudal relationships of employer and servant, or white-collar professions and spaces of intellectual labour that mask their intrinsic alienating characteristics through sophisticated paraphernalia and the language of dignity, like heterotopic spaces[14] act on us and mould our world view.
Further modern urban lifestyle is characterised by a profound loneliness and isolation. With increasing technological innovations and a constant creation of needs, capitalism is forcing people into narrower silos. Communal and collective experiences such as watching films or sports has been transformed into solitary activities through online hosting platforms that individuals view on their own laptops. Since most professions and jobs now “need” an individual laptop, individuals consume content independently instead of collecting around a common television. As capitalism amplifies the rhetoric of self-sufficiency and presents a dizzying array of services and goods from google maps, air pods, e-books, smart watches, online news portals, to food and grocery delivery apps, avenues for social interaction from asking for directions or book recommendations in a library, to discussing the news at cafes or in a grocery line are slowly rendered obsolete.[15] This criticism is not merely a nostalgic longing for an ‘old way’ of life. Interactions with different people and more importantly conversations with people whose world views are shaped by different forces are a critical way of challenging our thoughts. Conversation triggers thought, which despite the dominance of capitalist forces allows us to question or interrogate to some minimum capacity the needs and views capitalism provides us. Communal spaces have always served as rich breeding grounds for the building of solidarity and the development of thought. By making us self-reliant consumers, capitalism has ensured that there is no disruption in its control over our minds. It is in this insidious manner that capitalism kills the individual and fuels the “radical monopoly”.[16] We are forced to think in accordance with the norms established by the heterotopic spaces we serve.
Downstream Implications of Capitalist Thought Control and Alienation
Once the productivist institutions control individual thought and behaviour, problems of inequality, accumulation, dispossession, crime, othering, security etc. are but natural downstream implications of what one is told one needs.
For instance, as demonstrated by the vote for Brexit, the fear of limited resources and decreased wages leads to hostility towards immigrants.[17] The ‘need’ for growth and development has led to indiscriminate exploitation of land for development projects, dispossessing vulnerable communities of their homes and livelihoods.[18] The increase in wealth has led to the need for security which engenders its own vicious cycle of othering and violence, exemplified through gated communities. [19] As Gorz warned capitalist institutions are therefore able to channel human behaviour towards ends that are entirely foreign to individuals and serve only the systemic growth of capital.[20] The privatisation of prisons and the consumption of “security” is one of the most gross examples of the downstream consequences of capital seizing individual thought.[21]
Means of Change: Dis-Alienation and De Growth
In order to create change, Gorz argues it is critical that the individual is able to use her emotional and imaginative abilities.[22] If we are able to re-appropriate production and consumption and the forces of production and consumption serves us as opposed to the reverse, we will finally be able to release ourselves from alienation. It is only when our sentient minds are free of the trappings of institutional norms and as Tagore hoped without fear[23] that will we be determine our own subjective meaning and thereby think as autonomous beings. Gorz argues that this independent thought and its consequent rejection of capitalism’s needs, alone has the power to challenge and thereby change social norms and the downstream implications of capitalism. This process for Gorz is degrowth.
According to Gorz years of capitalist production had restricted acute poverty and misery to an exploited minor percentage of the population.[24] Unequal distribution of the gains of capital creation had ensured that the majority that served the market is deeply divided and cannot form a homogenous whole that could come together in solidarity and execute a sustainable revolution that truly changed power relations.[25] He was therefore, convinced that de growth was the only means of ensuring radical social change. [26]
It is no doubt true and a contradiction in terms, that our imagination of degrowth and interrogation of self will also be influenced by the capitalist forces that control our minds. This interrogation therefore requires a leap of imagination in order to transcend a possibly capitalist imagination of de growth. However, Gorz’s own experiences as a Jewish refugee in France and his reading of Merleau-Ponty led him to believe that individuals were not merely products of history but participants in it, and therefore capable of exercising choice and realising their own self emancipation. [27] The question that therefore confronts us in our search for concrete utopias is how can we enable this leap of imagination?
Concretising De Growth
Amrtya Sen, in his radical restructuring of economic development through the capability approach argues that economic development needs to be viewed not in terms of the existence of a basket of goods prioritised by the state or other market forces, but the freedom or capability of an individual to achieve their own priorities.[28] Thus Sen proposes an economic framework which if employed allows the exercise of individual choice and does not prioritise work or education as a means to being part of the productive workforce.
Amna Akbar argues that non-reformist reforms, a term Gorz coined himself, that are aimed not at systemic reform but individual empowerment is a means of realising Gorz’s conception of degrowth.[29] Non-reformist reforms such as the defund the police movement involve a deepening critique of the true nature of the institutions that confine us, accompanied by an expansion of the rights framework to empower individuals to challenge the foundations of these institutions in a gradual manner. An example of a successful non-reformist reform would be the Right to Information Act[30] passed in India on the back of a robust social movement that has enabled ordinary citizens to turn into whistle blowers and expose governments and corporations.[31] Other mechanisms such as universal basic income may also enable individuals to escape the trap of work as need and disengage from capitalist institutions, enabling an interrogation of self.
De Growth: A Collective Imagination and Political Transformation
It is crucial to recognise that Gorz did not conceive of degrowth as a purely individual pursuit. He was insistent that it be socially equitable and a process of shared imagination.[32] As Gollain narrates in her lecture, Gorz drawing from Satre’s fable of the uncoordinated Chinese peasants who in cutting trees to increase their own individual farms, stripped the hillside bare and caused floods warned against the unintended consequences of uncoordinated individual efforts.[33] Gorz therefore invites us to imagine what free, emancipated and voluntary cooperation could look like.
I would further argue that for de-growth to be successful in creating radical social change it must be a collective endeavour. Powerful groups who control production and the advertisement of consumerist needs have little incentive to engage in degrowth. While the beauty of degrowth as a concept is that as a philosophical discovery of oneself it may lead even powerful hegemonies to a state of dis-alienation, autonomy, and limited need, the chances of this discovery are remote. The power of degrowth therefore lies in the consumers and subjects of the capitalist forces at various levels of the food chain escaping the cycle of needs and wage labour. However, individual groups opting out of capitalism cannot create pervasive radical social change. As we discuss in Utopia 2/13 and 5/13 there are a growing number of cooperatives, communes, and mutualist networks across the globe that are attempting to create alternate utopias. These endeavours are inspirational and realise concrete utopias for their participants. However, Gorz understood that individual efforts cannot fundamentally change the human condition. A concerted and collective effort is required. Through a process of incremental changes and measures such as non-reformist reforms Gorz urges us to slowly but deliberatively arrive at a collective imagination of de growth. Unlike many of us who remain impatient and short-sighted, Gorz understood that degrowth was a tool that must be made to endure. For it is only through incremental change that we may over the arc of history hope to realise our concrete utopias.
Notes
[1] W.B Yeats, The Second Coming, The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, 1989.
[2] Ibid
[3] Etienne Balibar, Uncovering lines of escape, towards a concept of concrete utopia in the age of catastrophes, accessible at Étienne Balibar | Uncovering Lines of Escape: Towards a Concept of Concrete Utopia in the Age of Catastrophes – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu). See also Bernard Harcourt, Epilogue to Utopia 1/13, 1st October 2022, accessible at Bernard E. Harcourt | Epilogue to Utopia 1/13 – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu).
[4] Bernard Harcourt, Epilogue to Utopia 1/13, 1st October 2022, accessible at Bernard E. Harcourt | Epilogue to Utopia 1/13 – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu).
[5] Francoise Gollain, Utopia 4/13 “Degrowth”: History, Theory and Praxis, YouTube, available at 4/13 | “Degrowth”: History, Theory, and Praxis – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu).
[6] Ibid
[7] Christopher Brookes, Exile: An Intellectual Portrait of Andre Gorz, ProQuest, 2010, Pg 5.
[8] Francois Gollain, Andre my Teacher, Utopia 4/13, 3rd November 2022, available at Françoise Gollain | André, My Teacher – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu).
[9] Christopher Brookes, Exile: An Intellectual Portrait of Andre Gorz, ProQuest, 2010.
[10] Ibid, Francoise Gollain, Utopia 4/13 “Degrowth”: History, Theory and Praxis, YouTube, available at 4/13 | “Degrowth”: History, Theory, and Praxis – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu).
[11] Francois Gollain, Andre my Teacher, Utopia 4/13, 3rd November 2022, available at Françoise Gollain | André, My Teacher – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu).
[12] Francoise Gollain, Utopia 4/13 “Degrowth”: History, Theory and Praxis, YouTube, available at 4/13 | “Degrowth”: History, Theory, and Praxis – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu).
[13] Ibid.
[14] Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias, 1967/1984.
[15] While social media platforms have replaced communal spaces it is increasingly become clear that platforms are run on purely capitalist models and through their recommendation algorithms only deepen consumerist and capitalist proclivities.
[16] Clara Ruault, Remarks on Gorz and Degrowth, Utopia 4/13, 9th November 2022, available at Clara Ruault | Remarks on Gorz and Degrowth – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu)
[17] Goodwin, M.J., and Heath, O. 2016, The 2016 Referendum, Brexit and the Left Behind: An Aggregate-Level Analysis of the Result, The Political Quarterly 87(3): 323-32
[18] See generally Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Climate Change and Land, available at https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/
[19] Le Goix, Renaud, Gated communities as predators of public resources: The outcomes of fading boundaries between private management and public authorities in southern California, Private Cities: Global and Local Perspectives; For India see Jha, Ramnath, The rise of gated communities in Indian Cities, ORF online available at https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-rise-of-gated-communities-in-indian-cities/
[20] Clara Ruault, Remarks on Gorz and Degrowth, Utopia 4/13, 9th November 2022, available at Clara Ruault | Remarks on Gorz and Degrowth – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu)
[21] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, January 2010.
[22] Francois Gollain, Andre my Teacher, Utopia 4/13, 3rd November 2022, available at Françoise Gollain | André, My Teacher – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu).
[23] Rabindranath Tagore, Where the Mind is Without Fear, 1910.
[24] Mark Engler and Paul Engler, Andre Gorz and the Path Between Reform and Revolution, This is an Uprising, 7th October 2021, accessible at André Gorz and the Path Between Reform and Revolution | This Is an Uprising | Mark Engler & Paul Engler.
[25] Mark Engler and Paul Engler, Andre Gorz and the Path Between Reform and Revolution, This is an Uprising, 7th October 2021, accessible at André Gorz and the Path Between Reform and Revolution | This Is an Uprising | Mark Engler & Paul Engler.
[26] Francois Gollain, Andre my Teacher, Utopia 4/13, 3rd November 2022, available at Françoise Gollain | André, My Teacher – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu).
[27] Ibid
[28] Amartya Sen, “Capability and Well-being” in The Quality of Life, Nussbaum and Sen (ed), 1993, Oxford Clarendon Press, Pg 30–53.
[29] Amna Akbar, Demands for a Democratic Political Economy, 29th October 2020, Pg 12.
[30] Right to Information Act, 2005
[31] The Wire, Rafale Deal Case: RTI Overrides Official Secrets Act, Says Supreme Court, 15th March 2019, accessible at https://thewire.in/law/rafale-case-sc-centre-preliminary-objections.
[32] Francoise Gollain, Utopia 4/13 “Degrowth”: History, Theory and Praxis, YouTube, available at 4/13 | “Degrowth”: History, Theory, and Praxis – Utopia 13/13 (columbia.edu).
[33] Ibid