The Quest for Autonomy Against the Fantasy of Deliverance
Published in 2021, Terre et liberté. The Quest for Autonomy Against the Fantasy of Deliverance ranks among the most thought-provoking essays of recent years for rethinking emancipation beyond both technocratic dead ends and reactionary nostalgia. In it, Berlan defends a bold thesis: Western modernity has replaced the ideal of autonomy—the collective capacity to determine one’s own conditions of existence—with a “fantasy of deliverance,” according to which freedom consists in being liberated from material necessities through the labor of others, whether human or machine.
This opposition structures the entire work. Berlan shows that modern freedom has been built upon the externalization of constraints: social and colonial division of labor, wage exploitation, extractivism, and then automation. To be free would mean no longer depending on the earth, on natural cycles, or even on the labor required to sustain life. But this liberation always has a flip side: others—proletarians, slaves, colonized peoples, and today ecosystems—bear the material burden of existence.
One of the book’s great merits is its close articulation of ecological and social issues. The ecological crisis is not merely a technical glitch: it stems from a political imagination that values detachment from earthly conditions. True autonomy does not consist in fleeing necessity, but in collectively assuming it. It requires a reappropriation of the material conditions of existence: producing one’s own sustenance, inhabiting a territory, and deciding collectively on the use of resources. As Berlan writes, it is a matter of “regaining control over the material conditions of our existence,” that is, reconnecting with a freedom rooted in the world rather than projected outside of it.
This perspective resonates deeply with the communalist social ecology that we advocate at the Atelier. As critical heirs to social ecology, we have notably questioned Murray Bookchin’s faith in “liberating technologies.” Bookchin saw democratically reoriented technological development as a means to reduce the necessary labor and expand political participation. While this intuition bore fruit, its limitations are now more clearly apparent.
On this point, Berlan provides decisive tools. The promise of technological liberation perpetuates the fantasy of externalization. Even when “green” or “user-friendly,” complex technology involves extraction chains, heavy infrastructure, and an expanded and often invisible division of labor. The issue is therefore not merely one of democratic control over technology, but of its scale, its materiality, and the social relations it establishes.
Berlan does not advocate a nostalgic return to a pre-industrial golden age. Rather, he sketches a vision grounded in material autonomy: the capacity of communities to control the conditions of their subsistence. This entails revaluing concrete productive activities—agriculture, craftsmanship, care work—long devalued in the name of progress. Far from being alienating in and of themselves, these activities can become the foundations of substantial freedom when organized collectively and equitably. In this sense, autonomy is not self-sufficiency: it refers to a way of reconfiguring accepted, non-dominating interdependencies on a scale where they once again become politically manageable.
This shift is crucial for communalism. Political self-governance cannot be separated from economic reappropriation. Establishing assemblies is not enough if material conditions depend on global techno-industrial systems beyond local control. Political autonomy requires an adequate material foundation: communalization, reduction of artificially produced needs, transformation of lifestyles.
Berlan’s contribution is also anthropological. By revisiting the history of ideas, he shows how the contempt for necessary labor has taken root in a hierarchy pitting free citizens against compelled workers. Modernity has not eliminated this separation; it has displaced and globalized it. Freedom as liberation remains dependent on a dissociation between those who decide and those who execute, between those who enjoy and those who bear the costs.
_ Earth and Freedom _ thus offers an immanent critique of advanced industrial societies, even when they adorn themselves with ecological trappings. It calls for a break with the illusion of a transition that would preserve the essence of our lifestyles through technological innovation. Sobriety does not appear here as punitive austerity, but as the condition for a shared freedom, rooted in practices and living environments that are once again habitable.
For the Atelier, this book confirms the need for a rigorous reflection on technology. It is not a matter of abstractly pitting “technology” against “nature,” but of distinguishing between technologies that strengthen collective autonomy and those that erode it. In this regard, our exploration of “communotechny” finds solid theoretical support in Berlan: technology is never neutral; it shapes social relations and material dependencies.
Dense yet lucid, erudite without ever veering into academicism, committed without dogmatism, Terre et liberté does not offer a ready-made program. It offers something better: a rigorous conceptual framework for rethinking emancipation from the ground up, that is, from our shared earthly condition and the limits it imposes.
At a time when the headlong rush toward technology continues to present itself as an insurmountable horizon, the book reminds us of a truth too often obscured: there is no freedom without the collective reappropriation of the material and everyday conditions of existence. For anyone wishing to open up a communalist horizon on foundations that are both ecologically sustainable and socially coherent, Berlan’s work stands as a major reference.