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• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Economics and Ideology: Aspects of the Post-ricardian Literature
• I: Political Economy
• The Classical Model of Political Economy
• Modernization, Ideology, and Economic Freedom
• Individualism Vs. Collectivism?
• The Industrial Revolution and Literacy
• Parliamentary Enclosure and Uprooted Labor
• Smith's Critique of Monopoly
• Ricardo and the “dual Development”
• Ricardo On Money
• Inflation and Political Crisis: Germany
• Inflation and Unemployment
• Government and Inflation: the Mccracken Report
• II: Concepts of Liberty
• Liberty and Its Components
• Is the Right to Freedom Vacuuous?
• Liberty, Slavery, and Utilitarianism
• Individualism, Freedom, and Society
• Liberty and Habeas Corpus
• Should Britain Have a Bill of Rights?
• Locke, Women, and Freedom
• Locke, Women, Freedom, and Individualism
• Locke, Property, and Individualism
• Children, Freedom, and Individualism
• Liberty and Mental Illness
• Sismondi and Liberty
• Mill: On Liberty
• Mill, Freedom, and Happiness
• Freedom of Speech and Moral Development
• Freedom In Kant, Hegel, and Marx
• Marx, Freedom, and Property
• Neoconservatives, Liberty, and Equality
• Freedom: the Politics of Justice and Existence
• Liberty and the American Revolution
• American Libertarians
• III: Economics and Public Policy
• How Economics Influences Political Theory
• Why Democracies Choose Deficits
• Inflation and the Welfare State
• Monetarism and the Depression
• Asian Monetary History: Gold & Silver
• Specie Money Vs. Antibullionists
• Inflation Effects On Capital
• Consumption of Public Health Services
• Factory Regulation and Vested Interests
• Poverty Programs and Government
• The Costs of Regulating Market Information
• Rent Regulation
• Engels On Economics
• IV: Social Analysis
• The Depoliticization of Society
• Is Philosophy Politically Subversive?
• Plato's Republic As a Political Dystopia
• Cicero and Modern Political Philosophy
• The Roman Jurist Gaius and Social Thought
• The Myth of Social Hierarchy
• Contract and Political Thought
• Private Vs. Public: the Domain of Freedom
• Montaigne and the Value of Tolerance
• Commerce, Utility, Character, and Republicanism
• Quintin Skinner and Western Political Thought
• Public Choice
• Editorial Board
• Contents of Vol. 33 No. 2
• Contents of Vol. 33 No. 3

Marx, Freedom, and Property

George G. Brenkert

“Freedom and Private Property in Marx.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 8 (Winter 1979): 122–147.

The Communist Manifesto declares: “The theory of Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” Karl Marx's opposition to private ownership remains controversial and ambiguous.

Many analysts of Marxian theory maintain that there is no possibility of a moral critique of capitalism by Marx, since, for him, all moral principles are imminant in the material situation. To the extent, therefore, that capitalism follows bourgeois moral and legal rules, Marx could not condemn private property as unjust or immoral. These analysts have therefore identified the essence of Marx's opposition to private ownership with various economic or historical factors.

On the other hand, some scholars claim that capitalist appropriation of the “surplus value” (or “unpaid labor”) inherent in a product represented for Marx an exploitation of workers. Such exploitation constituted a violation of the moral principle of justice.

Professor Brenkert finds both views in error. Marx based his critique of private property, not on the moral principle of justice, but on the moral principle of freedom. Human relations as determined by the bourgeois organization of society negate the value of freedom, as Marx viewed it.

At least three dimensions comprise the freedom that Marx advocates. First of all, one is truly free when one is exempt from fortuity and able to participate in the control of one's affairs. Private ownership, by dividing society into the propertied and the propertyless, denies to the latter the direction of their affairs, stands in opposition to a flourishing and harmonious society, and imposes upon all the clutch of the market's invisible hand.

Secondly, freedom requires the concrete objectification of man through his activities, products, and relations. Capitalism obstructs this objectification by providing for only symbolic interactions between people and things—in terms of exchange-value and money.

Thirdly, freedom can only be achieved in and through community—in contact and cooperation with others. In a society based on private property, however, privacy is raised to the level of an ultimate social principle: “Mind your own business.” This capitalist insistence on the separateness of individual interests effectively precludes an understanding of the fact that individual lives reflect and participate in a larger social order.

Prof. Brenkert next proceeds to discuss at length Marx's view of the relativity of justice. If the principle of justice has only relative value as a standard of judgment, how could Marx use the principle of freedom as a transcultural absolute in his condemnation of private property? For Marx, the development of man, his capacities, and relations constitutes the transcultural element in freedom which allows for a critique of all social systems. To one degree or another, every mode of production either fosters or discourages those factors comprising the threefold framework of freedom mentioned above (control of one's affairs, concrete objectification of products and relations, and community).

Unlike a standard of justice, which represents an effect or external product of a system of production, the elements constituting freedom are innate in the development of every economic system. On the basis of these criteria, Marx can assert that, under the system of private property, persons grow progressively less free. As a result, Brenkert argues, this form of economic and social organization is to be condemned.