Individualism is marked by rational self interest; and in this sense it seems poised for capitalism. I've argued against this analogy by suggesting that individualism against everything, or autonomy, never arrives in capitalism because obviously the bosses depend so much on productivity, while autonomy merely depends on one's own productivity for oneself. Individual autonomy is hardly on all fours with anarcho-capitalism--if this term even makes sense.
Yet there is a deeper critique that must be considered; and that's the question of whether one can really be in control of anything, whether there really is an agent outside the body, floating, as it were, directing consciousness and awareness. Rather than suppose that one is above the body directing it, like a conductor directing the orchestra, many have suggested negotiation. And this point is easy to see. Consider some of the basic operations of the body. Of course I can will mine to reach for a glass of water; but for the overwhelming majority of what bodies do, we are hardly in control, and very much watch the performance, if we even notice it. In this relationship, which is better read as a hylomorphism, there is nothing in control; there just is negotiation, muddling through. Hylomorphism suggests that bodies cannot operate without souls; and souls without bodies; and we would do well to recall this Aristotelian view, which is prior to religious appropriation. The soul is the original principle of activation; the Breath from God, following Aquinas; and once set in the body, the first cause (since always receding behind myriad second causes) can hardly be determined, as originary, or even as interceding.
The body lays out into the future as a site of possibility; and while the body as formed is actual, its being as such (its identity, or its that which never alters) is never quite present because it lays out into potential presence, like an arrow yet in a non-linear way. The body is unique; and the character within the "unified" totality is also unique; yet this redundancy is reduced materially, not to presence, but to possibility, multiplicity, actual potentiality. The question is whether this leaky body "unity", perhaps unified like a puddle, has the capacity to will, to resist; whether its being hard, solitary, indivisible, is necessary.
On this point I don't think it is necessary to arrive at a conclusion. Being stubborn and full of will doesn't make one more likely to be a capitalist douche; yet it might make one insufficiently social, "insufficiently" open to solidarity. And, importantly, these two are not identical despite what identity politicians might say because clearly there is wiggle room on what sufficiency means. Metaphysically, being liquid, and so, without containment is illusory because we are within bodies; rock hard bodies that can be hurt. Yet, as always, being closed is less preferable than being open. The point above is that we are really metaphysically open, stretched out to potentiality; and that closing, or domestication, is carried out by masters that cut into bodies. Hence when we master ourselves, or maintain an ideology, and in the extreme: when we acquire property and store our very being into our items; in all of that, what are we doing?--Are we domesticating ourselves against Wild indifference? the vast underbelly of the civ-ilege apparatus?
I think we need to negotiate how we close ourselves, given that we are metaphysically open to potentiality, to deconstruction.
Conclusions?
1. I am uniquely detached from being closed because it is trivial that there is no other like "me". Trivially: there is no other assemblage of (philosopher's) atoms that occupy this liquid 'place', and that "assemble" as this 'whatever' being.
2. I am uniquely open to the wild "unfettered" carnival that this body will negotiate, influence, negate, test, and destroy.
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