Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Work of Sartre: Search for Freedom and the Challenge of History

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, December 21, 2012

The Work of Sartre: Search for Freedom and the Challenge of History

Click here to access article by Dominic Alexander from Counterfire (UK).

This is a review of a recently published book entitled The Work of Sartre: Search for Freedom and the Challenge of History by István Mészáros. Although the review and the book are written for those who are more conversant with the language of philosophy, I think that those who, like myself, are reasonably educated can understand what he is driving at.

Sartre, like most others, started with the pervasive indoctrination of this age--capitalist assumptions about human nature that are totally focused on the individual pursuing his/her own interests. In spite of his humanist orientation, he was never able to transcend this capitalist ideological axiom which has been best expressed by the infamous quote from Margaret Thatcher who declared that "there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families."

As always, it is where thinking starts from that is crucial; if you accept the premise, almost everything else a good philosopher has to say will necessarily follow. Sartre’s philosophical premise shows the same flaw as the generality of western thinking in the modern era; he starts from the point of view of the individual. In the consistency of this one intellectual move, the link between the intellectual sphere and the prevailing social order is revealed.

Sartre failed to overcome this assumption to fully grasp that humans are profoundly social creatures. His philosophy was defeated from the beginning by a view of humans torn out of the essential fabric of social connectedness. This is the ideology that has been foisted on us by a new class of people called capitalists who took control of societies over the past 300 years. To the extent that we continue to accept this ideology, we will inevitably be left at the mercy of individuals who gain power through cunning and violence.

It will only be in the bosom of self-organized, autonomous, and inter-related groups that will enable us to overcome the scourge of barbarism and allow for the full flowering of our human potential. It is also our only hope for survival on a planet that we are currently in the process of destroying with our individualist ways of thinking.