Political and human emancipation - treasure map to actual freedom?
Contrary to Bauer, Marx believes that political emancipation—which separates religion from the state and removes property and ownership requirements for political participation—does not “abolish, and does not even strive to abolish, man’s real religiosity” (35). Instead, religion is transferred from the public sphere into the private one, thus assuming its role in civil society rather than governance. As a result of this emancipation, a divide between the public and private spheres—previously nonexistent—is created. While this means that property and religion are no longer prerequisites for participation in political society, they are not abolished completely but instead function exclusively within the private sphere.
Importantly, Marx emphasizes that such political emancipation does not equate to human emancipation, as liberal democracies’ focus on individual rights in the private sphere alienates citizens from their species-being and exacerbates oppression. This is because transferring religion and property into private matters does not prevent them from serving as instruments of oppression. Citizens can still exclude and oppress others—it will simply occur in a private capacity. Thus, individuals are granted the illusion of freedom but are not truly free in practice. For example, political emancipation grants all citizens the right to vote on property-related matters, but it does not ensure any real equality in the distribution of property. As a result, the political rights granted under political emancipation can be rendered meaningless if an individual does not own property. As I understand it, this illusion of equality within the political sphere can prevent citizens from recognizing the true inequality and subjugation they experience. This raises the question: does the belief in political equality within an economically stratified society serve as a more insidious form of control than explicit authoritarianism, since it convinces individuals they are free while maintaining structures of domination? What conditions—if any—would be sufficient to shatter this illusion and awaken individuals to their real oppression?
Despite Marx’s criticism of the oppression that persists under political emancipation, he acknowledges that it is “a great progress” (35) toward human emancipation—the abolition of all forms of alienation, including private property and class. To what extent does political emancipation make human emancipation harder to achieve by granting people just enough semblance of freedom to pacify them, preventing demands for more radical change? To what extent does it matter whether individuals recognize that their lives under political emancipation serve merely as a means to the greater end of human emancipation?
Violet's Original Post (still having tech trouble):
ReplyDeleteI am interested in the differences between Marx's and Locke's conceptions of the nature of humanity.
Marx argues that human emancipation requires overcoming the separation between political life and civic life because religion and the state are intermediaries to freedom or self acknowledgement. He describes, “Religion is precisely the recognition of man in a roundabout way, through an intermediary,” and “The state is the intermediary between man’s freedom” (32). The problem with political liberation to Marx is the way in which both the state and religion create a separation between people as species-beings and as political or civic beings. Human liberation requires recognition of people as species-beings, therefore so long as people acknowledge each other through an intermediary, one cannot reach human liberation. To him, political liberation alone is fundamentally insufficient because people acknowledge the personhood of themselves and others indirectly.
Marx's argument seems to presuppose a conception of human nature as being inherently connected to every other person under a universal human identity. This connection to other people must also be intrinsically tied to both political and civic association.
For Locke, however, political association grounded in self-interest is a necessary mechanism to create a government which respects people’s rights, suggesting he also believes this is the way people operate inherently.
Do both of their conceptions of good or bad government rely on their fundamental beliefs about humanity?
If Marx is wrong about the nature of humanity, and people are inherently self interested, would it still be a problem to have such a separation between the different parts of a person? Or is this separation wrong because it led to oppressive government?
Alternatively, if Marx is right that humans exist under a universal nature, but a Locke-ian government could create a just government free of oppression, would this still be wrong for how it violates the nature of humanity?
So Violet, I wonder if it distorts the picture a little to view Locke as appealing to political association grounded in SELF-INTEREST? Don't the laws of nature lay out terms of association, i.e. the claims of me on others and others on me, and the obligations I have to help in defending the claims of others? If the laws o nature lay out norms connecting us to persons, at least in part, then perhaps the contrast with Marx is not so stark. Might it be helpful to see Marx's point as that these connections of Locke's are relegated to our role in the public sphere as citizens, and deployed in the service of enforcing and 'legitimizing' self-interest, 'egoistic' disregard for our fellow human beings in our real, private sphere interactions with them?
ReplyDeleteSophia, your point about authoritarianism and your point about the move to a political system such as our being 'real progress' are intertwined in really interesting ways, ways that are worth unpacking in class. If, despite its problems, a liberal democracy amounts to real progress in important ways, would a move to authoritarianism surrender that progress on Marx's view?