Comparing Marx's Notion of Liberation with Mill's Notion of Liberty - Essay Example

ttttttttttttttttttt yyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and a French Novel In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx seeks to liberate the proletariat from economic and cultural constraints placed upon it by bourgeoisie capitalism while John Stuart Mill in On Liberty seeks to define a justification for individual liberties which is distinct from government and societal constraints. Mill’s humanistic assertion “Do no harm” challenges Marx’s apocalyptic call to overthrow bourgeois culture by establishing the integrity of the individual. Thus, Marx and Mill cannot be reconciled, even if one finds abundant evidence in George Sand’s Indiana that both men would clearly approve of the French woman’s perspectives on society, morality and the individual. Marx and the Individual In Part II of The Communist Manifesto (II - Proletarians and Communists), Marx gets down to the brass tacks, as it were, of Communism’s intentions and, in doing so, blows the lid off of much that societies and individuals have traditionally admired, even revered. If the liberation of the individual is a part of Marx’s world view, one is hard pressed to locate it. In demonizing capitalists - the bourgeois – Marx is clearly willing to deny an individual their rights or at least their preferences by giving those entitlements to a group, i.e. robbing Peter to pay the Proletariat. His concept of liberation is critically narrow to avoid philosophical messiness, for the only freedoms he stresses are those antithetical to Communism’s a priori assumption that Property is the root of societal evil. On page [pt II, paragraph 27] he specifies that the freedom he refers to is “free trade, free selling and buying,” as if those evils of capitalism constitute the extent that freedom needs to be discussed or valued. His commitment, even a passing nod, to the liberation of humankind is virtually non-existent, as his list of Communism’s aims reveals: 1) Abolition of property; 2) Progressive or graduated income tax; 3) Abolition of inheritance rights; 4) Confiscation of emigrant and rebel property [which would certainly leave German-born Karl with even less than he had!]; 5) State monopoly of banking; 6) State monopoly of communication and transportation; 7) State monopoly of factories and agriculture; 8) Obligation of all to work; 9) Abolition of the distinction between town and country by redistributing population [no doubt the Cambodian Khmer Rouge loved that one]; 10) Combining education with industrial production. One does not have to have the politics of a George Orwell to perceive in Marx’s list a profound mistrust of individual initiative and responsibility. And, though it is not in this paper’s scope, to ask why a respect for individuality is absent is not invalid. Finally (a point I will return to in a later section), Marx’s question asked on page [PT II, paragraph 59] gives us some understanding, though vague, of his mistrust. “Does it require deep intuition,” he writes, “that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?” The question reveals a sad misunderstanding of what we often refer to as the Human Condition. It suggests – indeed, asserts – that the sole basis of human thought, of poetry and music, of science or of religion, is merely material, and that, for example, Beethoven’s deafness or Galileo’s persecution diminished their accomplishments, though we have evidence that the opposite, in fact, was true. Mill and Society Mill’s forthright Introductory makes his subject clear: “The nature and limits of power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. [Ch. I Paragraph 1] However, in Chapter V, Mill makes a startling assertion: “. . . the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.” [Ch. V Para. 2] Though he immediately qualifies this by allowing that individuals are accountable to society to the degree that society needs protecting, his inference that individuals must be free and licensed to do as their natures and aspirations dictate seems revolutionary, even in 2006 (perhaps even moreso in the current climate). But Mill makes clear throughout On Liberty that he is comfortable with paradox, and that society must be so as well if it and the individual are to beneficially coexist. His tradition is liberal, likely informed by Rousseau and Montaigne, but not without restrictions on individual rights, i.e. he accepts that society has a right to punish individuals whose conduct injures it but rejects societal intrusion into an individual’s private life. This is the nub of Mill: an accepted Social Contract between society and the individual that demands the individual respect society, accept its needs in distinction to the individuals’, but also that society equally respect the individual and allow imperfections. Mill makes a strong case for ‘utility’ in considering ethical questions. [Intro Para. 11]. His liberal orientation assumes that humans are “progressive” and consequently seeking to better themselves as well as society. To accomplish this requires an acceptance of three inviolable areas of liberty: the inward domain of consciousness; freedom to pursue one’s own tastes; an ability of individuals to unite. Once again, however, his caveat for each of these is always that they do no harm to others. [Intro Para 12] Lastly, the title Mill gives to his essay is not On Government or On the Individual but On Liberty. This is so self-evident that it may be overlooked, but it is crucial to his analysis: Liberty is the driving force behind human endeavor and the always beguiling, if unreachable, notion of human perfectibility. Mill is thus squarely in the Humanist mode of western thought. Marx versus Mill At the beginning of this essay, I referred to Marx’s Manifesto as ‘apocalyptic’ and Mill’s essay as ‘humanistic.’ This distinction is a natural consequence of each author’s intent: Marx wished to eradicate inequalities in society by remaking society itself, Mill to explain those inequalities and, in so doing, stipulate at what point and to what degree society may be justified in limiting individual freedom. Their essays, separated by a mere twenty years, reflect a profound disparity of what in those decades was the debate of perfecting imperfect man and imperfect society. Both men perceived imperfections; it was their prescription for remedying those imperfections that separated them. Marx’s assertion that human consciousness changes with the alterations in a person’s “material existence” (see above) might have prompted Mill to reply that “deep intuition” is not required but that respect for individual prerogatives is. This is the crux of their approaches and their divergence. The class struggle Marx delineates is the motive force of Mill’s assertion that man is “a progressive being.” [Intro – Para 11] While Marx sees society as fixed and moribund, only dynamic to the extent that capital – i.e. money and production – ebbs and flows, Mill observes that human intercourse and nature are the catalysts for society’s fluctuations: not always beneficial but also not always deleterious. Evident in a close reading of Marx’s Manifesto and Mill’s essay is their divergent approaches to liberation and liberty. Liberation and Liberty, after all, are different words with different definitions, denotative and connotative. Their roots, however, suggest commonality. But searching through Marx and Mill for commonality is a waste of time. Marx’s purpose was to alter society, Mill’s to analyze its relationship to the individual and, ultimately, to find a place where society and the individual draw the line between governance and freedom. One cannot deny, however, that Marx’s (and of course his partner Engels) little pamphlet proved more explosive than Mill’s deliberative essay and that it has effected the world in ways Karl Marx most certainly did not anticipate and which John Stuart Mill would have abhorred; maybe Karl would have, too. Reconciliation George Sand’s Indiana was her first novel, written sixteen years before The Communist Manifesto of 1848 and, frankly, light years from Marx’s vision of society. Overwrought in plot as well as style (at least in G. Burnham Ives’s translation), it conforms to a genre popular at the time in France and England, and has as antecedents novels of Sand’s friend, Balzac, as well as English novelists such as George Eliot. It also, however, reflects in its elucidation (and, by inference, condemnation) of society precepts which Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill would have approved – and applauded. The essentially loveless marriage of Indiana and Delmare is not unusual; Eliot described a similar marriage in Middlemarch and Balzac’s Emma Bovary shares urges similar to Indiana’s. What is unique about Sand’s creation is the bluntness of her societal critiques. In a sentence that astonishes us because it could so easily have been written by John Stuart Mill, she writes, “Society punishes only those acts which are injurious to it; private life is beyond its jurisdiction.” [ch. 10, para 15] In this we hear an echo of Mill’s assertion made in Chapter V of On Liberty that society may not demand an individual make an account of their actions when their actions concern no one but that individual. There is inherent in this the quaint cliché that “a man’s home is his castle,” but Mill would agree with Sand’s observation. Implied in her sentence is Mill’s often expressed caveat to individual liberty: do no harm to others. Also, in a general sense, Sand exemplifies in Raymon de Ramiere’s treatment of the Creole maid Noun the essence of Mill’s caveat to liberty, for the scoundrel’s actions do harm – ultimate, fatal harm – to Noun. It is of course unlikely that Mill drew on Indiana when creating his essay but the parallel is fascinating. It is also unlikely Sand’s novel influenced Marx and Engels but her observations about society and its ills are reflected in The Communist Manifesto. For example, in Chapter 6 Sand wrote that Indiana “. . . by dint of watching the constant tableau of the evils of slavery [on Ile Bourbon] . . . had acquired an incalculable power of resistance to everything that tended to oppress her.” [para 2] One feels in this the ardor Marx expresses when denouncing bourgeois repression of proletariat slaves, and he would have understood Indiana’s development of a resisting power to her oppressions. Moreover, the circumstances prohibiting a marriage between Raymon and Noun as articulated in Chapter 4 can without too big a leap be considered another justification for Marx’s insistence that marriage be abolished. There is in Chapter 2 an observation made by Indiana whose underlying assumption may have been familiar – and amusing - to the Marx who supported Suffrage. In the drawing room, the 19 year old’s health is being questioned by her husband and Sir Ralph. Indiana is reduced to admitting, “I am here alone against the two of you, so I must make up my mind never to be right.” [para 10] It is a sad declaration, to be sure, but its drollness does not belie its underlying assumption: that women must defer to the opinions of men. To know with any certainty that Marx or Mill ever read Sand’s novel would require searching their diaries. But the authoress’s observations of society and individuals, her implied condemnation of ills and oppressions, parallel concerns expressed in On Liberty and The Communist Manifesto and may, to a small degree, help us imagine some reconciliation between the visions of Marx and Mill. Works Cited Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto Mills, John Stuart, On Liberty www.bartleby.com Sand, George, Indiana www.digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sand/indiana Read More