Freedom in Modern Liberal Capitalist Societies, Essay Example

Introduction

The system of modern liberal capitalist societies is evaluated in terms of the morality of the fundamental economic relation on which it is built. In relation to this, the analysis will cover the action that follow as a result of that relation. This paper looks at the basic structures and practices of the system, seen as relations of people and as practices that involve transaction. The question that will be answered is: Are these relations just and fair? Or are these relations sources of domination and repression? Capitalism is a system based on accumulated industrial capital; that is where its name comes from. There is no accumulation in a countertrade economy, which means that goods are traded for goods of equivalent value; residue is not given. Moral considerations are raised by the questions: how was capital initially accumulated? How is capital increased within a system? More importantly, are the means to accumulate capital undermining freedom of all individual?

Private ownership on the means of production is another defining characteristic of the capitalist system. The means of production are used by some individuals, but the former is not owned by the latter. These individuals are employed by others and work in order to get wages. Wages are the main source of earning for the majority of people. The working individuals sell their labour (i.e. Earn money) to keep their families alive. These relations happen within the market that is supposed to be “free”. A free market is not controlled by the government or any other group. In this kind of setting, the government is not responsible for setting the prices of goods, setting the wages, and controlling production. Competition is vital to a free market system. Resource must be free to move within the system in order to gain larger returns on investment.

This paper claims that freedom in modern liberal capitalist societies is partial and one-sided. It is partial because the system limits the freedom of individuals. It is one-sided as this freedom can be practiced by individuals as long as it falls within the framework of liberal capitalism (i.e. to serve the interest of the ruling class). Its ideology represses and dominates those who do not belong to the ruling class.

Discussion and Analysis

The argument will be framed within a perspective common to the ideas of Marx, Marcuse, and Weber: All of them subjected human consciousness to critical scrutiny. Their works reveal a discrepancy between human consciousness and the human condition. Consciousness does not properly reflect the human condition. Therefore, one has to criticize human consciousness.

The Alienated Individual is Not Free

The theory of alienation explains why freedom in modern liberal capitalist societies represses the freedom of individuals. Wages, profit, and rent – according to Marx – all culminates in the idea of alienation (Marx). Alienation comes out of the material condition, which is commodity-producing commercial society. The system behind this kind of society is what is now called the capitalist economy. Marx identified four dimensions of alienation (Marx). First, alienation that arises from the object of production. Second, alienation that is in the act of production. Third, alienation that arises in the “species being” (i.e. What makes one human). Finally, alienation from fellow man. Marx grounded the theory of alienation in the material practices. Alienation reaches its height when labor had become a commodity, when profit drives the economy, and when private property emerges.

An alienated individual is not a free individual. The alienation of a worker from the product is a condition wherein the “realization of labor appears as loss of realization of the workers” (Marx). A product becomes alien from a worker when the worker is not free to identify himself or herself with his or her work. Moreover, “labor is external to the worker” (Marx). In this kind of condition, the worker “does not affirm himself, but denies himself… does not freely develop his physical and mental energy” (Marx). For example, a worker sees his or her labor as some sort of a cage wherein the worker anticipates being “freed from” when the worker’s paid hours are over. This is how an individual is alienated from the act of production.

In addition to this, labor is economically forced upon the workers in the sense that it is through the wage the workers earn that they can survive. Also, the workers’ activities belong to somebody else. This happens when workers have to obey what the boss says without any questions. Marx argued that when an individual is alienated from his or her labor, the individual is also alienated from his or her nature; for according to Marx, what makes one human as distinct from other species is that the ability to transform, through labor, the material world to meet one’s needs according to “a plan.”

Finally, all these results to individuals alienated from fellow humans (Marx). Humans begin seeing fellow humans as object, or as an instrument, as humans enter the world of profit maximization where humans tend to think of the cheapest means to reach a certain end. Such is the nature of relationship among human beings in modern liberal capitalist society: to treat others as an instrument that can be utilized to reach a certain ends.

The theory of alienation explains why freedom in modern liberal capitalist society is reserved only for a certain group of classes in society. As mentioned, the workers’ activities belong to someone else. One can ask, belong to whom? Belong to whom, indeed. These are the elite members of the financial sector, who are willing to dominate and repress others (i.e., Exploit them) in order to own the latter’s product of labor to for profit maximization.

Modern Liberal Capitalist Societies Dominates Individuals

Max Weber’s theory on the interrelationship of institutional orders that make up social structure (Weber) explains how that freedom in modern liberal capitalist societies is partial and one-sided because the highest form of freedom is reserved only for the elite members of the financial sector. There is domination in the means of production. This is dominated by the elite class of society. Weber adopts Marx’s historical materialism and expanded it to be a “heuristic principle” by taking into account the “disposition over weapons and over means of administration” (Weber).

Weber’s formulation of modern society as rational explains how certain group of people efficiently manages to dominate other groups of people for the latter to push forward the interest of the former (Weber). In Weber’s understanding of the interrelationship among institutional orders that make up a social order, Weber sees efficient operational processes that integrate human beings into the “process of bureaucratic machinery” (Weber). According to Weber, this bureaucratic machinery is the “shackle upon the liberal individual.” Weber identifies bureaucracy with rationality. Moreover, he identifies rationalization with mechanism, depersonalization, and oppressive routine. Rationalization is identified with a mechanism because the bureaucratic processes flow efficiently to attain the interests of the ruling class. It is identified with depersonalization because it takes away the freedom of the individual for self-determination; that is, individuals were given a pre-determined role in the capitalist machinery. It is also an oppressive routine as it systematically undertakes activities and decisions that undermine the freedom of individuals as moral agents in the name of advancing the interests of the ruling class. Weber maintains that rationality, in such context, as such limits freedom.

Modern Liberal Capitalism Represses the Individual to Think Critically

Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man explains the dominating and repressing forces of modern liberal capitalist societies. The book also explains how the modern liberal capitalist system limits freedom through integrating individuals’ consciousness to the system itself via capitalist consumer mode of thinking (Marcuse). Modernity is defined as a situation where individuals feel less coerced to feed to capitalist machine. The form of control is also becoming integrated within the individual as the individual adopts the capitalist consumer mode of thinking. This form of control from the inside is a manifestation of cultural domination. Marcuse maintains that capitalism is not only a source of exploitation, but also of cultural domination. One-Dimensional Man is a critique of new modes of domination and control under the modern liberal capitalist society (Marcuse).

Marcuse expanded Marx’s theory of alienation and argued that the modern society has pushed the worker to the limits (Marcuse). The result is that the workers began recognizing themselves in the commodities that they are producing. The worker has become an extension of the commodities that they are asked to produce. These happened within the modern society, where the ideals of individual rationality are valued by classical liberalism over irrationality. Within this setting, human consciousness was expected to be mechanical, or, as mentioned earlier, think of the most cost-effective means to reach a certain end. This mode of thinking is what is called technological rationality. The political and economic systems of modern liberal capitalist society cultivate this mode of thinking. Eventually, the result is that individuals become more and more integrated into consumer capitalist mode of thinking and behavior “mechanics of conformity.” The condition created is necessary for the efficient operation of the one-dimensional society.

In this kind of society, critical thinking is repressed by the “advances” created by the modern industry and the consumer capitalist mode of thinking. Individuals still have his or her consciousness. On the other hand, individuals are so integrated into the liberal capitalist society that individuals have the same standards as society. Individuals see society as something outside their selves and evaluate society based on its own standards. Moreover, the greater the mass culture means the fewer individuals there are. Individuals are stripped off the freedom to think as individuals (critical thinking is repressed) because individuals are so immerse in the liberal capitalist system and mode of thinking.

Therefore, the values, aspirations, and ideals that do correspond to the capitalist consumer mode of thinking are repressed. Individuals are then “homogenized” in order to make the individuals more efficient in fulfilling their role in the liberal capitalist machine. Gradually, the liberal capitalist system was able to shape the consciousness of human beings in such a way that the latter’s consciousness will blindly obey the orders of the former; blind, that is, to their decreasing freedom as moral agents that can critically think for themselves.

Modern liberal capitalist societies pride themselves to have realized the highest form of human freedom, but this is not the case. As demonstrated in the previous paragraph, individuals were homogenized in the sense that they think the same way (capitalist consumer mode of thinking) that is compatible with the liberal capitalist system. As a result, individuals bought what liberal capitalist societies are selling: the idea that liberal capitalism has, indeed, realized the highest form of freedom.

Modern liberal capitalist societies publicize socio-economic and political freedom, but these freedoms are actually designed to cover domination and repression. An individual may think that he or she is free, but for the reasons stated above, an individual is only free within the parameters imposed by capitalist consumer mode of thinking. For example, people have economic choice in the market place. However, the people do not have the capacity to take part in the economic competition. On the one hand, individuals may have the options whenever elections come. On the other hand, these choices are already premeditated. Moreover, the content of the mass culture repertoire is the scope of individuals’ freedom of thought. This is the social reality where the majority are offered a very limited, if not illusory, notion of freedom.

Conclusion

In some, this paper argues that modern liberal capitalist societies still foster alienated individuals. From the perspective of Marx’s theory of alienation, this paper demonstrated that an alienated individual is not free. An alienated individual is not free because the individual cannot identify with his or her product. Also, labor is economically forced upon the workers in the sense that it is through the wage the workers earn that they can survive. Weber’s theory on the interrelationship of institutional orders that makes up social structure explains how that freedom in modern liberal capitalist societies is partial and one-sided because the highest form of freedom is reserved only for the elite members of the financial sector. This paper also argues that modern liberal capitalist societies practice forms of domination. This domination exists between the ruling class and the ruled class. Moreover, modern liberal capitalist societies repress individuals’ capacity to think critically. Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man explains the dominating and repressing forces of modern liberal capitalist societies. The book also explains how the modern liberal capitalist system limits freedom through integrating individuals’ consciousness to the system itself via capitalist consumer mode of thinking. This is how such societies limit the freedom of individuals.

Indeed, freedom in modern liberal capitalist societies is partial and one-sided. It is partial because the system limits the freedom of individuals. It is one-sided as this freedom can be practiced by individuals as long as it falls within the framework of liberal capitalism (i.e. to serve the interest of the ruling class). Its ideology represses and dominates those who do not belong to the ruling class.

References

Marcuse, Herbert. One-dimensional Man: Studies in Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London: Routledge, 1991.

Marx, Karl. “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: Estranged Labor.” na. Encyclopaedia of the Marxists Internet Archive. 9 May 2012 <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm>.

Weber, Max. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Trans. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.