Marxism is also in favor the individual and their liberty, but not the liberty to dispossess another of those liberties. He doesn’t see the individual as a natural object, but a creation of social and historical conditions. By destroying the class system, it liberates the individual to pursue their aims when they wish.
[I]n communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
For Marx, the ‘Individual’ is not a finished product to be protected from society, but a potential to be realized through an equitable society.
Liberalism and “liberal values” are not the basis of Marx’s work at all, they are one of his main targets of critique. Marx doesn’t start from liberal individual rights and then argue they’re imperfectly realized. He argues those rights are themselves products of bourgeois society and function to mask class domination. Saying Marx supports “individual liberty” doesn’t make him a supporter of “liberal values”, because liberal liberty is abstract and formal, while Marx’s freedom is material and social. This second response just restates Marx’s view of the individual as socially produced, which is correct, but it is reinforcing Marx rejection of liberalism. Marx was never refining liberal values, he was explaining why they arise under capitalism and why they cannot deliver real human freedom.
Marxism is also in favor the individual and their liberty, but not the liberty to dispossess another of those liberties. He doesn’t see the individual as a natural object, but a creation of social and historical conditions. By destroying the class system, it liberates the individual to pursue their aims when they wish.
For Marx, the ‘Individual’ is not a finished product to be protected from society, but a potential to be realized through an equitable society.
PS… Dig your username
Liberalism and “liberal values” are not the basis of Marx’s work at all, they are one of his main targets of critique. Marx doesn’t start from liberal individual rights and then argue they’re imperfectly realized. He argues those rights are themselves products of bourgeois society and function to mask class domination. Saying Marx supports “individual liberty” doesn’t make him a supporter of “liberal values”, because liberal liberty is abstract and formal, while Marx’s freedom is material and social. This second response just restates Marx’s view of the individual as socially produced, which is correct, but it is reinforcing Marx rejection of liberalism. Marx was never refining liberal values, he was explaining why they arise under capitalism and why they cannot deliver real human freedom.