Autonomy today alludes to attitudes, practices, and positions across the entire ideological spectrum, from the self-rule of sovereign individuals to real movements that adopt radical democracy as an emancipatory horizon beyond capitalism, the industrial mode of production, western modernity and patriarchy. Rather than autonomy, there are autonomies, both in reality and as political projects, as mobilizing myths and as horizons – as what is not yet. Consequently, I exclude from this essay two schools of thinking and action that in my view are not real alternatives to the dominant regime:
- The individualist school, sometimes called ‘libertarian’, and its voluntary unions of egoists (Stirner), which usually operate within capitalist pseudoanarchism.
- The socialist school, Leninist and supposedly anti-capitalist, which reduces autonomy to a decentralized form of administering the vertical powers of the state within structures of domination justified as requirements for the transition to socialism. Autonomy as the self-activity of the multitude (Negri, Virno) belongs to this school, as all approaches dealing with masses, not people.
Let us turn to the heart of the matter and to alternatives that offer real possibilities. The word ‘autonomy’ is very old. In the seventeenth century, in Europe, the Greek term could either be used to allude to the liberty granted to Jews living according to their own laws, or to discuss the Kantian autonomy of the individual will. Several European schools of thinking and action adopted the word in the twentieth century to characterize their positions and aspirations. In the rest of the world, other notions, attitudes, and practices that today would be called autonomic have existed since time immemorial. To understand current debates, we can differentiate between ontonomy, the traditional, endogenous norms still in force everywhere; autonomy, referring to the processes by which a group or community adopts new norms; and heteronomy, when the rules are imposed by others. Autonomic movements attempt to widen as much as possible the spheres of ontonomy and autonomy. A new semantic constellation arising from emancipatory social and political movements shares, at least in part, the following elements: It goes beyond formal democracy. Both Greece, which coined the word ‘democracy’, and the United States, which gave it its modern form, were societies with slaves. During the last 200 years, softened forms of slavery were fostered or hidden in regimes that the great black intellectual W.E.B. Dubois correctly characterized as democratic despotism. Participatory democracy fails to eliminate the verticality of democratic societies, ruled by professional dictatorships in which professionals assume legislative, executive, and judiciary powers in each field and prevent the participation of common people in the functions of government. Disenchantment with democracy is today universal. The wake-up call of the Zapatistas, in 1994, put autonomy at the centre of the political debate. ‘Enough! All of them should go!’ said the Argentinians in 2001. ‘My dreams don’t fit into your ballot box’, affirmed the Indignados in Spain. Occupy Wall Street, in the US, enabled millions of people to finally acknowledge that their system is at the service of the 1 percent. There are still attempts to reform it, but many struggles try instead to widen, strengthen, and deepen the spaces in which the people can practise their own power. They are literally constructing democracy from the roots, in which common people can assume the power of the Leviathan, free to speak, to choose and to act (Lummis 1996). Attempts of this kind are innumerable and all over the world. On January 1, 2017, for instance, the National Indigenous Congress of Mexico, with the support of the Zapatistas, launched a proposal to create a Council of Government based on both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous autonomies. Instead of trying to seize the state apparatus, conceived and operating for control and domination, they are attempting to dismantle it and create institutions where the practice of commanding by obeying can thrive.
Beyond economic society. Autonomic movements, widely visible in Latin America, are not only challenging neoliberal globalization, but are also acting explicitly against capitalism without becoming socialist. Some are not only attempting to end their dependence on the market or the State, but are also breaking with the ‘premise of scarcity’ that defines economic society: the logical assumption that human wants are great, not to say infinite, while his means are limited. Such assumption creates an economic problem par excellence: resource allocation through the market or the plan. These movements, by contrast, adopt the ‘principle of sufficiency’, thus avoiding the separation of means from ends in both economic and political. Their struggles adopt the shape of the outcome they want to bring about.
Beyond western modernity. An increasing number of people painfully disassociate themselves from the truths and values that define western modernity and in which they came to believe. Most of these people cannot yet find a new system of reference. Confronted with such a loss of values and orientation some may become fundamentalists. Others, however, may acknowledge the relativity of their previous truths, immerse themselves in different forms of radical pluralism, and practise new forms of knowing and experiencing the world, participating in the insurrection of subjugated knowledge. Inspired by Raimon Pannikar, they substitute nouns creating dependence – education, health, food, home, and so on – for verbs that bring back their personal agency, their autonomy: learning, healing, eating, dwelling. They acknowledge the individual as a modern construction from which they disassociate themselves, in favour of a conception of persons as knots in nets of relationships, which constitute the many real we’s defining a new society.
Beyond patriarchy. Several feminist schools participate in autonomic movements that go beyond conventional visions of post-patriarchal societies. A clear example is the Zapatista society, where politics and ethics, and not the economy, are at the centre of social life, and caring for life, women and Mother Earth has the highest priority. In these societies, autonomous practices characterize all areas of daily life, ruled through democratic processes that organize communally the art of hope and dignity.
Autonomy in Praxis
Zapatista autonomy is today an essential reference for understanding struggles for self-determination and the construction of alternative worlds. Since their uprising in 1994, the Zapatistas placed autonomy at the center of debates on social transformation, showing that it is possible to build ways of life and systems of governance outside the frameworks of the state and the market. Their experience teaches us that autonomy is not an abstract concept but an everyday practice that combines the critical recovery of traditions (ontonomy) with the creation of new norms (autonomy), always resisting external impositions (heteronomy). One of the most valuable lessons lies in their approach to basic needs. Instead of accepting definitions imposed by the state or the market, the Zapatistas reconfigure concepts such as education, health, food, and housing, transforming them into active processes: learning, healing, eating, dwelling. Zapatista education is autonomous, community-based, and decentralized, designed to respond to their own realities. Health is not just about curing diseases but about promoting healthy ways of life, combining traditional knowledge with contemporary innovations. Eating is much more than consuming; it involves producing their own food, strengthening self-sufficiency, and challenging food dependency. And dwelling is not simply about owning a house, but about building a living relationship with Mother Earth and the community, collectively defining their environment.
On the political level, the Zapatistas restored the original meaning of democracy, breaking away from state-based representation that reproduces elite power. Instead, they created their own forms of self-government, based on collective agreements and the principle of leading by obeying. At the heart of this autonomous democracy lies the practice of listening: an ongoing process of respectful dialogue that recognizes diversity, including the radical otherness of those who are different. This political fabric is built from below, weaving together individuals, communities, municipalities, and regions into networks of collective decision-making and action. Zapatista autonomy is a living practice that combines history and creation, memory and future, always resisting any form of external control. Their experience shows that autonomy is not isolation but a radical way of building relationships, recognizing the interdependence between human beings, communities, and nature. In times of global crisis, the lessons of the Zapatistas illuminate paths for imagining and constructing other dignified ways of life.
Sources & References
- Esteva, G (2020). Autonomy. In Pluriverse A Post Development Dictionary. https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/_media/publications:en:pluriverse_a_post-development_dictionary.pdf
- Esteva, G. (2020). Protegiendo la autonomía de la democracia. Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana, 25(91): 253-264. https://www.redalyc.org/journal/279/27965041008/27965041008.pdf
- Esteva, G. (2021). Hacia una Nueva Era. Colección Al Faro Zapatista. https://alfarozapatista.jkopkutik.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Hacia-una-nueva-era.pdf
- Lummis, Douglas (1996), Radical Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Further Resources
Books and articles
- Albertani, Claudio, Guiomar Rovira and Massimo Modonesi (Coord.) (2009), La autonomía possible: Reinvención de la política y emancipación. México: Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México.
- Dinerstein, Ana Cecilia (2015), The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope. Hampshire, England: Palgrave MacMillan.
- Linebaugh, Peter (2006), The Magna Carta Manifesto. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Pannikar, Raimon (1999), El espíritu de la política. Barcelona: Península.
- EZLN (2006). Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona. https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl-es/
Websites
- Enlace Zapatista: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx.
Videos
- People Without Faces (documentary about Zapatistas, Russia-Mexico, 2016): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqlZOa7DMiU