A note on "agency" and its use in justifying imperialism
Read part two of this post here
One of the most common refrains now, extending from liberals to conservatives, is the reference to “agency” and its supposed denial by anyone who brings attention to imperialism and the acts of Western states. “Oh, you’re pointing to the CIA’s influence in that coup? Well have you considered you’re denying the AGENCY of the people of that country when you say that? CHECKMATE!”
There’s this implication that you’re somehow nefarious, racist, xenophobic, chauvinist when you deny this “agency”, a brilliant reversal of the pro-imperialist’s position. You see, they’re not engaged in denying “agency” and all the bad things that come with it, no it’s you who are doing so.
Maybe I’ll do a post someday about where this term originated from and how it ended up being used by prominent members of the Western media and political class to justify the imperialism of their states (it’s got something to do with postmodernism and its critique of Marxism, which it claimed also “denied agency”).
For now let me just quickly point out how asinine this term and its use is in these contexts.
There is no singular “agency” at play in any event, at any given time, in any given society. There is a wide variety of “agencies” at play, and when someone says you’re denying it in this or that case, they’re obfuscating the fact that they’re picking and choosing which particular “agency” they believe is most important and ought to be focused on (this is the normative claim) by presenting it as some universal, objective, valid position that everyone should accept at face value.
So take the case of a coup orchestrated by the CIA in some Latin American country. When you’re talking about this and someone says you’re “denying the agency of the people of that country” when you do so, what is the actual claim being made? It’s that you are somehow denying that the people of that country were capable of making their own decisions free from the influence of a foreign entity, the CIA in this case. It has the appearance of a profoundly moral claim, right? Who wants to deny that people are capable of carving out a path for themselves, and having the ability to pursue it? Are you saying they’re too weak or stupid to do so, and are instead in thrall of foreign powers and entities? Aren’t you just repeating the same racist/xenophobic/chauvinist/Western supremacist attitudes of the colonial masters who believed natives were pliant and weak and incapable of resisting?
It is exactly because of all this implied baggage that the term has gained such currency among supposed “leftists”, and has turned them into willful or ignorant dupes of imperialism and Western chauvinism, while imagining they’re in fact valiantly battling against it by invoking that magical word, “AGENCY!”.
Here is a basic fact: ten people, of about equal ability, are able to accomplish more tasks than one person of the same level of ability. They have more “agency”. A hundred people even more so. A thousand doesn’t even get close. How about if you introduce some other elements into this calculus: say you have ten people who are part of a well-organized, resourced, highly trained institution? So they have access to modern technology, vast funding, advanced weapons, ability to form narratives through their connections to high ranking political and media personalities, etc. etc. Do these ten people have more of an ability to affect reality than a hundred people chosen at random who lack all this? About a thousand? It seems like those ten people have more power, more “agency”, than the latter, right? If you deny this, and instead ludicrously assert that all those forms of agency enhancing capabilities those ten people embody and have access to as members of a particular institution are irrelevant, then you’re basically invalidating any kind of systemic, social analysis of power relations. If one billionaire has the same “agency” as a thousand poverty-stricken people, meaning “agency” is solely defined by numerical value, then what the fuck is the point of the concept except to justify the most grotesque inequalities and power imbalances under the pretense of being morally superior?
And that’s exactly what those who justify imperialism like so much about the term. It allows them, in the eyes of the ignorant (willful or otherwise) to play the part of paragons of virtue when in fact they’re the exact opposite.
The United States is the most powerful state in the world. It has the most wealth, it has the most advanced weaponry, it has the most well-funded intelligence services and army, navy and air force, and it extends its empire across the globe. The notion that they have the same “agency”, the same ability to affect things in the world as a poverty-stricken small country, is frankly deranged. It’s as absurd as the notion that a billionaire has the same ability to affect things as a homeless person, and obscures the very real destructive things that this power imbalance results in, which is why those on the left want to redress these imbalances.
This denial of power imbalances and preventing the doing of any kind of systemic analysis (which in turn prevents any notion of a politics that is aimed at systemic change, hence why liberals and those who imagine themselves to be radical love the term so much), is a fatal flaw that by itself invalidates the use of “agency” by anyone who seeks to justify and deflect away from the reality of imperialism.
But there are other flaws equally fatal. I mentioned in passing already the question of the vagueness and ambiguity of the term whenever it’s used while there’s a pretense that it’s in fact highly specific and concrete. But whose agency are you talking about? Societies are complex, and the larger they are the more complex they are. There are many forces at play, from political parties to unions to business organizations to obviously the state and its armed components (police, military, intelligence services). Charismatic leaders on whatever side play an outsized role. People who are incredibly wealthy. And all this is just internal. Then you have the wide variety of external forces: competing countries, business interests, foreign agents, NGOs, all the money that’s sloshing around in various organizations and among various people. Corruption, or as it’s called in the West, lobbying. All this complexity is reduced to a simplistic picture of Good versus Evil, where the person who employs “agency” is obviously on the side of the former and the one whom it’s being used against is on the side of the latter.
Ambiguity and vagueness masquerading as profundity and virtue. But you’ve already taken sides without acknowledging it. You’ve chosen which forces in this complex whole are the solely legitimate holders of “agency”, and which are totally irrelevant and don’t enter into your calculations (namely, Western forces and those internal who are aligned with them).
Take the case in the image I added at the beginning of Patrice Lumumba, and you can extend this to Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, and other instances of imperialism. Here is a brief description of the 1960 overthrow of Lumumba in Congo from the article I linked to just now:
In 1960, American meddling escalated. President Eisenhower decided to skip the coup and go straight to assassination. He ordered — once again using the false pretense of an impending communist threat — the CIA to assassinate Congo’s democratically elected prime minister Patrice Lumumba, the young nationalist who ended seven decades of brutal Belgian rule and promised Congolese citizens a better future with greater control over the country’s natural resources.
When the plot to poison Lumumba failed, the CIA outsourced the job to Congolese accomplices and Belgian officers. With the help of Joseph Mobutu, the repressive military dictator installed by the United States who would rule for three decades, they eventually captured him and handed him over to his enemies. They tortured Lumumba, then murdered him by firing squad on January 17, 1961 — just three days before John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the freely elected president of the United States.
You can read a more detailed account of CIA involvement in Lumumba’s capture here. Notice the variety of forces, of “agencies”, involved here. You have the external forces, the CIA and Belgian troops and intelligence and the vast resources they had access to. Then you have the internal forces who are aligned with them, Mobutu and the military under his command. Quite a lot of “agency” there, and it’s internal, “native” agency, too! And there were many other forces as well, like the Lumumba-aligned organized movement which had established a foothold in the city of Stanleyville (Kisangani).
Clearly in this case those who opposed Lumumba had more “agency”, more power, and were capable of destroying him and his movement. This wasn’t because Lumumba was weak, did not have enough numerical support, or was stupid and incompetent. No, it was because vast resources from some of the most powerful states in the world were arrayed against him, and just as one person can’t win a fistfight against a hundred and a billionaire is more capable of affecting reality than a poverty-stricken person, so a leader, no matter how charismatic and popular, can’t defeat a powerful imperialist force if they do not have the resources to do so.
Those who cry “AGENCY!” in situations like these reveal just how hollow that phrase really is. There is no serious analysis or understanding, only cheap moralism hiding behind a thin veil of profundity and clarity. Lumumba, Allende and Árbenz were overthrown because they and the mass movements they represented were too weak, incompetent, stupid to understand the “agency” they had. Because after all, the only “agency” that exists is that of the supposed all-powerful monolithic “natives” who should act and behave on the side of the Good as defined by the user of the phrase. And if they don’t, it’s their fault and their fault alone. That is the actual claim being made, and it’s a profoundly depraved one.
Addendum:
This is a very good point which I didn’t touch on in the piece but is worth mentioning:
As I noted in passing, the term “agency” was developed by postmodernist academics, who used it as a weapon against the “structuralist” and “agency-constraining” analyses of among others Marxists. But as Alexander points out, when you get rid of any kind of structural, systemic analysis, what you end up with is a view of the world that is very close to the most radical libertarian one, wherein individual agency is invested with supreme power and virtue with the pretense that this is the only moral, good understanding of how society works.
But just as with its use in the context of imperialism, it is the exact opposite, as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu points out succinctly in the introduction to his “Forms of Capital”:
Under this libertarian view of the world wherein individual agency is valorized at the expense of any kind of social, systemic and class analysis, if you’re homeless, destitute, lack access to healthcare, education, are at the margins of society, this is solely your personal fault, and, moreover, as an extension of this, you are always, at any time, capable of overcoming it simply by an act of will. After all, you have AGENCY, and that’s all that matters.
It’s such a patently absurd view of the world, one that puts Elon Musk at the same level of ability to affect the world — of “agency” — as a homeless black immigrant in Skid Row, that you have to marvel at the immense disciplined self-delusion that is required to maintain it, which is not in short supply among the media and political class, and certainly not in academia either.
Ctrl+F "Ukraine"... 'Phrase not found' — sounds about right you weird bri'ish squirrel.