Andre Gorz: Ecology as utopistics.

AuthorBurke, Richard
PositionCritical essay

About 30 years ago, South End Press published Ecology as Politics by Andre Gorz, compiled from two earlier books released in 1975 and 1977. In this work Gorz, a French socialist whose friends included both Jean-Paul Sartre and Herbert Marcuse, came to terms with the capitalist division of labor and the nature of the technology used in production. He recognized the revolutionary changes that would be needed in these areas in order for the ideals of self-management he supported (in works of the 1960s such as Strategy for Labor) to succeed.

Gorz also began to recognize the importance of ecological issues for the socialist movement. In particular he became influenced by the work of Ivan Illich, a penetrating critic of industrialism who argued against the civic religion of production and limitless growth. Gorz addressed these themes in Ecology as Politics, as well as in books such as Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay in Post-Industrial Socialism and Paths to Paradise: On the Liberation from Work. His later books, such as Critique of Economic Reason and Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, written in a cooler, drier style are extended meditations on themes he explored in his previous books, while Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage Based Society returns to the more passionate style of his earlier works. Gorz died in 2007, at age 84, in a suicide pact with his wife Dorine. She had terminal cancer, and they both agreed that neither wanted to live without the other.

Gorz's work can be seen as an exercise in what Immanuel Wallerstein calls "utopistics." Utopistics is distinguished from Utopias, descriptions of an ideal and inevitable society, which Wallerstein fears can become breeders of disillusionment. Utopistics is the assessment of historical alternatives to depict a future which is reasonably better, and historically possible, but by no means assured. The point of utopistics is to galvanize political and social action.

Andre Gorz analyzed human activity into two categories: "autonomous" (self-directed) and "heteronomous" (other-directed). Autonomous activities are truly self-managed. These are freely chosen tasks, performed by individuals or in cooperation with a like-minded group. Heteronomous tasks are constrained by social demands. Such tasks are imposed by the nature of the tools used, their organization, the division of labor and its global dispersal. The history of capitalism has involved the increase of heteronomous tasks at the expense of...

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