A Green State of Mind

In order for democracy to be a positive force in a society, it must expand beyond a simple ritual of voting for representatives.

The nature of democracy is such that it can only be a force for good if it is practiced. And it must be practiced across the entire space that is set up by the social field in order for its goals to be fulfilled. For the sake of clarification, it can be said that if democracy is to have any goal it must be both autonomy and equality of power. Autonomy and equality of power are interrelated to the degree that self-law or self-determination requires a direct end to hierarchy that an equality of power would provide. A hierarchy is an inequality of power that is also a divergence of ownership and participation. Those who have control are those who are considered owners, while there is those who are controlled and who participate in the structure of power. The separation of those who own and those who participate precedes a more technical class formation in an economy. The left has a much longer record of critiquing class formation, but it should be understood that class formation is a specific mode of hierarchy that goes beyond economics. Objective class formation is the imposition of hierarchy upon humans and it develops into a ubiquitous acceptance as something natural. Subjective class formation, on the other hand, is the conscious act of group organizing with the goal of apparent resistance that brings the artificial nature of hierarchy to the foreground. The movement from objective class formation to subjective class formation is autonomy.

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The recent statements of Rand Paul reveal the inherent limits of defining freedom as liberty, and the failure of containing libertarianism within conservatism.

When Rand Paul won the Republican Kentucky primary to become the candidate for U.S. Senate, it was assumed that it was a major victory for the Tea Party movement. A few days later the candidate, the son of outspoken libertarian-minded Congressman Ron Paul, stated that if he were in Congress at the time he would probably alter the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Particularly, he found a problem with private businesses having to comply with this law. Paul added that private businesses that discriminated should be publicly condemned and not be patronized, but that these businesses had the right to not be “forced” by the government to allow everyone. The media coverage of these statements has greatly expanded to such a degree that it was seriously questioned whether Rand Paul was fit to be a candidate for any office. But the media coverage appears to portray the statements as more a case of racist attitude rather than the cognitive dissonance that can occur with a strict adherence to defining freedom as solely liberty.

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Autonomous solidarity is a form of association that can be truly an expression of justice as it balances freedom and equality.

A big question, that is not necessarily at the forefront of public debate, is whether autonomy or liberty is more important. Liberty can easily be defined as freedom from government tyranny, and obviously is quite valuable in its own respect regardless of political ideology. There can be a leftwing or rightwing movement for liberty. Autonomy, on the other hand, must be defined strictly from its origins in ancient Greek. Autonomy translates into “self-law” and is the act of people creating the institutions that govern their lives in such a way as to be able to decide on actions that directly affect themselves. This definition implies that direct democracy is the best method to achieve this goal, whereas the definition of liberty never proposes a way to accomplish itself. In fact, some have argued that democracy can be a detriment to liberty since it can become mob rule. A republic where representatives govern has been seen as an improvement on direct democracy. But a republic carries with it the baggage of an inherent elitism, and over time has been shown to be also imperfect. If a democracy and a republic were compared based on the negative connotations of mob rule and elitism respectively, then an interesting factor emerges. The will of a mob may infringe on liberty at times, but this will has the potential to change over time. In contrast, the goal of an elite is always to perpetuate itself and its hierarchy. If democracy can be corrected to insure that liberty is not sacrificed, it will result in more autonomy. Therefore, autonomy has a more long-term importance. This autonomy can exist on the individual level or collective level, but the element of a new type of association must be formed in between in order to balance individual freedom and collective equality. This is what is called autonomous solidarity.

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