Relations of Freedom: Developing an Account of Karl Marxs Concept of Freedom - Literature review Example

Liberty is a topic that attracted many philosophers including Karl Marx, Hobbes, Rousseau, and John Staut Mill among many other. They agreed on many principals on liberty but differed to a larger extent. Hobbes explained liberty as the absence of opposition. He said that the lack of opposition make people decisions upon which they think is right. Hobbes says that ‘freedom signifieth the absence of opposition’ (Hobbes 136). On the other hand, Marx argued that liberty is ‘the power belonging to each man to do anything which does not impair the right of others’ (Marx, 16). Marx says that liberty is the right of an individual to anything while not infringing on the right of other people and their properties. Hobbes and Marx have discussed have done a lot to expound on the topic of liberty. The papers explain liberty as envisioned by Marx and Hobbes and also draw on their similarities and differences. Hobbes in defining liberty says that human are not at liberty when they live in an environment or in a space which is determined by other people. He says that the opposition deny people freedom by curtailing the choice of space and time. People who are living in within walls, imprisoned while at their own volition would not be in such conditions are not at liberty. However, Hobbes argues that there is no absolute liberty. The constitution curtails people to do what they feel like, and it denies them the power to move, but not a denial of liberty. Hobbes said that a free man is that who is not hindered to do ‘those things which by his strength and wit he does are not hindered to do what he has a will to’ (Hobbes 136). Hobbes differentiates liberty on bodies that are subject to motion and those that do not have move. He argues that motionless property cannot be denied the power to move and thus cannot be denied liberty. In talking about liberty and fear, Hobbes says that the two are consistent. He gives an example of the will of individuals fearing to lose his properties in a sinking ship throws away his goods into the sea. He does this out of fear and on his willing. Therefore, man does action to avoid injuring himself. For example, people pay the debt for fear of being imprisoned. These are the action of people at liberty (Hobbes 137). Hobbes argues that the actions done in commonwealth country for fear of law are actions which people have liberty to neglect. Hobbes in his analysis of liberty says that it is consistence with necessity. According to him as in the water which has liberty and the necessity to flow down the channel, so do the actions of men do voluntarily do to satisfy every desire and which come from a cause. He draws an analogy of creation that God created man to pursue all his desires and in doing so accomplishes the necessities of doing God’s will (Hobbies 137). Though people can do what God has not commanded, God had given men liberty to choose what interest them, but must face consequences for not adhering to his law. The necessity to do Gods will prohibit attack on others and due do his omnipotence, he looks over men. Hobbes also talks of liberty of subjects. According to him men have created an artificial man known as the commonwealth. It has a majority of the laws governing the action of men on what is right and what is wrong. Therefore, given that men cannot create laws to guild on all actions and words of men’s the law permit liberty to people to pursue what in their own judgement is most advantageous to themselves (Hobbies 138). However, the liberty to do what is profitable to men in circumstances where the law is none explicitly defined can lead to put the written laws in jeopardy. Therefore, the liberty of subject supports ‘liberty to sell and buy and contracting with one another. Hobbes refers liberty under sovereign power as the ability of a person to act on one’s own volition without being hindered physically. People who are physically hindered to act are only the prisoners and those that are chains for various reasons. Therefore, subjects have utter liberty within in sovereignty. Hobbes argues that the artificial chains such as civil laws and contracts are controlled over by the sovereign, and do not infringe on absolute liberty because the subjects are the creators of the chains. The subjects establish social contract and also authors sovereign’s power. According to Hobbes, the liberty of the subject does not abolish the right to live and die or limit it. Hobbes says that ‘the sovereign power of life and death is not abolished of limited’ (Hobbes 138). Karl Marx unlike Hobbes defines liberty as ‘the power belonging to each man to do anything which does not impair the rights of other’ (Marx 16). He draws this explanation from the Declaration of Right of Man, 1791. This chatter defines liberty as ‘the power to do anything which does not harm others’ (Marx 16). Therefore, unlike Hobbes who defined liberty as non hindrance to motion, Marx defined it in a simpler way that men has right to do anything, but should not harm people in their pursuit of actions. Marx argued that there is the limit that guild on the extent at which individual can act without harming people. He referred to law as the set boundary which people must observe to avoid harming other people. Marx says that liberty is not drawn from the respect of man from man, but rather a separation of men. It is the right of individual limited to him. According to Max the fundamental of a right to liberty among men is the right to own private property (Marx 16) Marx in his understanding of liberty referred to the 1793 constitution which explicitly says ‘ the right of property is that belonging to every citizen to enjoy and dispose of his goods, his revenues, the fruits of his labour and his industry as he wills’ (Marx 16). The right to property is the liberty of men and is the basis of establishment of civil society. Therefore, people find limitation in other people and not realization of their freedom. Marx discusses equality and security to further explain liberty of men. Marx referred equality as the equal respect of right to liberty. He said that every person is equal and self sufficient. The 1795 constitution says that equality is ‘the fact that the law is the same for all, whether it protects or whether it punishes’ (Marx 17). Moreover, security is defined in the 1793 constitution as ‘the protection accorded by society to each of its members for the preservation of his person, his rights and his property’ (Marx 17). According to Marx, security is a crucial social concept where liberty to private property is adhered. The concept of police is derived from this social concept of security. Marx says that society exist to ensure that all members right to property is respected and preserved. Marx viewed liberty in a materialistic perspective. He says that men are independent of one another, but bonds only in pursuit of ‘natural necessity, private interest, and need, maintenance of property and to feed on their egoistic persons’ (Marx 17). Marx differs with liberal definition of freedom. He is critical of the work of Thomas Hobbes and other philosopher such as Adam Smith and John Locke. Marx accuses Hobbes of dealing with an abstract man and not men and their human activities. Hobbes argues for justification of men entering in a social contract and the formation of a society. For Hobbes, the need for security necessitate establishment of the social contract and society. However, Marx says that people has always been a social being and has always been living in a society. Moreover, it is consciousness that make people interact with other people. According to Marx social contract theorists like Hobbes falsely explain their theories to explain individual freedom as in competition and in conflict with other such that ‘other freedom encroaches on one’s own’ (Soester 9). According to Marx this explanation is misguided. Marx argue that people have developed consciousness such as ‘self-consciousness and social consciousness’ (Soester 9) and is unified, but not distinctly on human as social beings. Marx says that consciousness come about due to social activities. On political theory, Hobbes is regarded as an advocate of absolutist government. His philosophy is undertaken as geared to promote tyranny over equality in learning of the sovereign state. Hobbes is considered as a philosopher who willingly tolerates the suppression of liberty for the cause of individual and state security. This is contrary to his understanding of liberty. Hobbes in his reference to commonwealth argued that people are prevented from interfering with other people freedom by law. Moreover, he said that the sovereign works as the custodian of the law to ensure that men liberty to work, live and the pursuit of their interest is not affected. Furthermore, Hobbes argued that the existence of liberty is a core principal that establish social and political relationships among human being (Harrington 1). Marx argued for a political system that guaranteed freedom for the people in harmony with their human nature. He regards human as social beings that would live in alienation if made to live otherwise and not as social beings. He believed that human dynamic history is guided by conflict, and it is the struggle among social classes that bring fort development in the society. Hobbes and Marx had the same observation of the nature of state and its role. Hobbes argued that people can revolt against the state when certain moral laws are violated. In his theory of sovereignty, Hobbes says that the subjects, as well as the sovereign, have each independent obligation to morality. The people who are deemed equal are bound to respect civil law, moral law and the laws of nature. Hobbes says that when the laws of the land are violated by the sovereign it opens the door for a war and thus a revolution arises (Kain 25). According to Hobbes when the state fails to control the subject in adhering to set laws of state, then the citizen rise against one another and the state (Kain 25). Marx more like Hobbes says that conflict is inevitable in a class society. According to Marx it is the class interest that make rise to revolutions. Marx argues that the political class governs putting their interest to accumulate resource rather than serving the subjects. The subject’s role in the state is to provide labour to the capitalist society. Marx says that the capitalist society is doomed to wither away with time. When the proletariat acquires self-consciousness they will revolt against the domination of the economy by the bourgeoisie. Once such a revolt has occurred, Marx says that a new system of government will take root where resources would be shared equally (Kain 25). Hobbes political theory presents a basis of engagement which he calls social contract. He says that there is a contract between the people and the sovereign that limits the power of the sovereign. According to Hobbes, social contract results to the establishment of a democracy. However, the existence of an engagement of people and the sovereign does not outline how a government could be formed and ruled. Unlike Hobbes, Marx discusses a society predominated by private property, competition and conflict to individual interest that prevailing in society. According to Marx a society without these would be a utopian society, an ideal society. Marx explains his political theory after the revolution borne out class conflict as a society ‘characterised by community, equality, radical democracy, and a general will’ (Kain 163). Therefore, the ideal society as envisioned by Marx has to abolish private property class conflict and exchange for equality, democracy and community to be established. Marx had the problem with democracy as defined by Hobbes. He argued that democracy must be practised through representation that must be radically understood in a new way. He says that the community must be reabsorbed to the political state to establish an ideal democracy (Kain 169). Marx argues that political and social theories are guided by innate economical belief. According to Marx all human actions that individual engages into have an economic agenda underlying them. Marx says that any claim by other philosopher to explain circumstances of human being in nature are based on pure reason and that they are as Marx calls it ‘ideology’ which is deceptive. He says that all theories are influenced to a certain degree by economic principles. Marx also argues that the perception that people have a similar right to other people and property is wrong. People have different right to needs. He despises capitalism because he thinks that it has brought so many social ills in the society, and it cannot bring contentment (Marx 212). On the other hand, Hobbes theory is guided by scientific concepts. He argues that nothing is good and that people refer to good things only when they have interest and desire over them. Moreover, they refer to things they are not interested as bad things. Moreover, he agrees with Marx that what is good or bad for a person is not always bad or good to another. He says that people maximises on their pursuit because they are self centred. To help manage the state of nature from the effects of individual interest, Hobbes says that a central government is necessary. The government would control the maximization of individual benefits. In his support of a central system, Hobbes says that because it represents the interest of individuals, then any decision made and approved by the government is right and that which is disapproved is wrong (Hobbes 319). Conclusion Marx and Hobbes discussion on the right to liberty underscores the need for the respect of individuality and the protection of people from aggression. This contradicts Marx argument for capitalism because the need to protect private property is the genesis of capitalism. However, Marx argument for freedom and liberty also play part for the establishment of a new society that is free from exploitation. The freedom chatter borrows much from Marx work on class conflict. Hobbes, on the other hand, explains liberty as a necessity from servitude. However, he excludes what he refers to as ‘artificial man’ from physical objects that deny liberty to men. According to Hobbes, the laws created to control individual liberty comprise the artificial laws and which he refers to as the commonwealth. Marx and Hobbes differ in terms of the purposes of government. For Hobbes, the government is the custodian of the law and prevent the society going back to the state of nature. Marx has different views of the state. According to him the state perpetuate the seeds of exploitation centrally to the ideal society or utopia. Work cited Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. 1994. Indianapolis, Indiana. Hackett Publishing Co. Kain, Philips. Marx and Modern Political Theory: From Hobbes to Contemporary feminism. 1993. Boston. Rowman & Littlefied. Marx, Karl. Selected Writings. 1994. Indianapolis, Indiana Hackett Publishing Co. Marx, Karl. The German Ideology in The Marx-Engel Reader, 2nd ed. Robert C. Tucker, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978) 158 Soester, Jessica. Relations of Freedom: Developing an Account of Karl Marx’s Concept of ‘freedom’. 2008. New York. ProQuest LLC. Read More