In our world, dominated by neoliberalism, we feel that human beings know perfectly well the best way to pursue their own self-interest. But the huge power of conditioning, exerted by mass media on individuals, when it comes to deciding which products they need or which politicians they should elect, tells a different story. Moreover, in the last century Horkheimer and Adorno highlighted how reason had been reduced to a mere instrument, as it only guided the choice of means to achieve predetermined aims, but not the choice of innovative, different objectives. In the last decades, while capitalism has been inventing thousands of new products, presented as solutions to solve financial and technical problems, it has not generated a single new existential need or way to give authentic meaning to one’s life, apart from economic, emotional well-being and entertainment.

In our societies, any discussion on what is a good life is totally avoided, because such notion is either taken for granted or considered irrelevant (if not dangerous) for the system. Despite its rhetoric of individual freedom, neoliberalism is mostly based on conformism and massification. From this point of view, if by individualism we mean the freedom to choose some means to achieve a given result, and by individuality the ability to freely determine what condition is desirable for one’s existence, we can surely claim that capitalism fosters a widespread individualism, but it badly hinders individuality. Individuality is also strictly connected with autonomy, a concept which, since Immanuel Kant, has a central role in practical philosophy.

Against this backdrop, in my book “Exchanging Autonomy. Inner Motivations as Resources for Tackling the Crises of Our Times”, I defined three kinds of autonomy: relational autonomy, a condition which takes place when our actions are not influenced by our relations with other individuals; functional autonomy, as the condition whereby our actions spring from moral, organisational and cultural values, i.e. criteria for judging reality; and existential autonomy, when we perceive our own dignity independently from what we believe in, from our particular values. Such perception arises, in existentially autonomous individuals, from metavalues (such as abandoning one’s egoism), which are criterias to choose, and ways to interpret one’s values.

Autonomy is a very hard condition to achieve even among people who share criticism towards neoliberalism. For instance: young people, who take part in protests or are active in volunteering, might do so mostly because they are influenced by their social environment, including friends (and, therefore, they lack relational autonomy); they might desire social justice mostly because this is consistent with their social role, such as employee working in a nonprofit (which means lacking functional autonomy); or, even if they subordinate their actions to their own values, many people might consider themselves worthy only because of their convictions and activities (and, therefore, they lack existential autonomy). But when individuals lack autonomy, and in particular functional autonomy, they consider society only – like the philosopher Thomas Hobbes – as a tool to ensure pacific coexistence, and not also as a community, granted with an intrinsic value.

Autonomy implies also having an open and cooperative attitude: for instance, if I am inspired by some progressive values and I am active in an area such as the integration of migrants, I should be ready to interact with people and organisations active in other areas, such as protection of the environment, financial inclusion, gender equality and so on. But how could we become more autonomous? How could we stop considering rationality only as an economic paradigm, and a means to get materialistic benefits, as highlighted by Max Weber at the beginning of the 20th century?

Among the options which could foster autonomy in our societies, in my book I proposed exchanges of values and metavalues. Currently, in our daily transactions, ideas, convictions and values of the individuals have not a formal role. But if a given individual could exchange his or her own values with the values and metavalues of other individuals, he or she would have the possibility to become more or even fully autonomous. For instance, from a practical point of view, a physical or legal person A could transfer to B a document describing the benefits (certified by third parties) of a given value, such as solidarity (e.g. better human relations, reduction in public spending), experienced by A and others, and B might transfer to A a document describing the benefits of being innovative in one’s professional environment (e.g. higher efficiency, possibility of being promoted). In this way, A and B would be able to be inspired by values independent of their social role, thereby becoming functionally autonomous. Each document should also describe the values exchanged with the value to which the document is referred, and the actions that it has inspired. Moreover, if we could employ these sets of experiences as a means of exchange like money – meaning that we could exchange them with good and services -, we would have an economic incentive to personally applying any given value, thereby enlarging the sets of relevant experiences that we possess, which could be considered as a form of capital.

Thanks to these transactions, money would no longer be the only means of exchange universally accepted, and societies would also be communities, instead of simply large groups of often alienated people, deprived of autonomy, to the extent that the activities that they perform are simply conditioned by the desire to have and use that universal means of exchange. Moreover, such exchanges might have very positive implications in dealing with issues such as income inequality, pollution, financialisation of the economy and the influence of lobbies on decision-making. For example, if income inequality exceeded a given level, the State could distribute to the most disadvantaged part of the population, free of charge, a certain quantity of values and metavalues previously collected through the contribution of the totality of citizens in order to reestablish a fairer distribution of the resources. People with low income could on one hand exchange the relevant experiences with goods and services or values, and, on the other, employ the experiences to get an increase of the monetary income produced through their professional activities.