Freedom Beyond Domination: Marx, Freedom, and Socialist Political Thought

One of the fundamental reasons socialists condemn capitalism is that they believe this economic system makes people unfree. But how should socialists conceive of freedom? In the contemporary literature, increasingly many philosophers and political theorists argue that socialists should have a “republican” conception of freedom, according to which freedom is the absence of domination, or subjection to an arbitrary, unaccountable, or uncontrolled will. Some of those who argue for this perspective, who are generally known as “socialist republicans,” also claim that Karl Marx conceived of freedom along republican lines. In my dissertation, I demonstrate that this is untrue: in fact, in Marx’s work, we find a compelling, alternative vision of freedom to that which animates the socialist republican tradition.

In order to establish that this is the case, I first argue that Marx did not believe that freedom was the mere absence of domination, as many republicans do; in some passages, he characterizes freedom as requiring human control over nature, while in many others, he characterizes freedom as involving the development of human beings’ creative, intellectual, and social capacities for its own sake. Next, I demonstrate that Marx conceived of this second form of freedom, which he sometimes called “spontaneous activity,” as a defining characteristic of the free human society workers would establish after the downfall of capitalism. After that, I argue that Marx criticized capitalist exploitation because it restricts this form of freedom for workers, not simply because it facilitates their domination, as some have claimed. According to Marx’s account, then, capitalism does not merely make us unfree because we are dominated, nor does socialism promise mere freedom from domination. Instead, Marx criticizes capitalism and calls on workers to establish a socialist society in its place due to the impacts of these economic systems on his ideal of “spontaneous” freedom. In his view, socialism would expand such freedom for producers, offering them increased time and resources to create, produce, and socialize with one another simply for the sake of it, and more fully develop themselves in the process.

After establishing that Marx’s account of freedom takes this form, I argue that contemporary socialists have reason to find it attractive and compelling in comparison to the republican account. For one, I claim that Marx’s account may offer a more comprehensive picture of the kinds of unfreedom fostered by contemporary capitalism than that of socialist republicans. Additionally, I argue it better captures many socialists’ intuitive sense of the forms of freedom they are striving to achieve, as well as survives common objections to “perfectionist” political arguments, or arguments that make recourse to notions of human realization and development. Finally, I claim that Marx’s account has the potential to contribute to contemporary debates about why socialists ought to object to exploitation. Not only, then, does his conception of freedom differ significantly from that of republicans; it is also attractive, defensible, and of potential use to the socialist critique of capitalism. In the end, this suggests that contemporary socialists have pro tanto reason to conceive of freedom as Marx did, rather than as socialist republicans claim they should.