Autonomies

There is a view sometimes found among anarchists, anti-authoritarians that racism, sexism, environmental destruction can be eradicated without undermining the essential aspects of capitalism: the development of markets requires the constant expansion of the number of buyers and a certain homogenization which is both a result and prerequisite to participate as a consumer. (Homogeneity within brand environments; what has been referred to as the narcissism of small differences). Without going into details, the problem with this view is that it tends to see the co-opted result as the real thing, when in fact to take racism as an example it persists because once racism is instituted in a particular society it embeds itself in constitutive aspects of the human psyche and which for this reason is difficult to eliminate even when its intensity and extent have been reduced due to a combination of historic struggles and co-optation. This positivistic perspective (which tries to eliminate psychological considerations, a kind of inversion of the psychologism which tends to see psychology as the basic way to explain social phenomena) ends up with a very impoverished understanding of human actions. The resurrection of the religious based discourse in order that it be understood and dealt within the globalized world situation requires that we move away from some of our own one dimensional thinking and blindspots.