Term Paper on "Free Will Agency According to Marxism and Free Market Capitalism"

Term Paper 7 pages (2211 words) Sources: 6 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Free Will/Agency

Free Will and Human Agency

The philosophical arguments about 'free will' and 'human agency' both focus on the capacity of human beings to act on their own. The concept of "Free Will" presupposes the rationality of human beings and boils down to the ability of individuals to take a course of action from among a vast array of options (O'Connor, 2005). Having free will also means that the choices of an individual are not the mere consequence of causal chains, but are in fact free or undetermined.

A similar concept is 'human agency'. Human agency states that human beings do in fact make decisions on their own and apply them accordingly to their own situations. Whether by free will or due to some other consequences that drive human beings to act is not the question. What is important is the claim that human beings can be agents of change. They are capable of altering their own conditions. Because people are seen as decision-makers, they are now regarded as under the obligation to think and apply value judgments to the consequences of their actions. Human beings are now to be held responsible for whatever decisions they make. It must be noted that 'human agency' does not merely imply the ability of the individual, rather the capacity of a group of individuals or a collective unity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_agency).

Marxism and Free Will / Human Agency

The human being lies at the heart of Marxism. Somewhere along the many intertwined and complex concepts of Karl Marx on the different fields of the social sciences like history, economy, sociology, politics, and many others; the individual is relegated to having the most importance. In fact, the whole of Marxism revolves around the hardships of people in a capitalist society vis-a-vis his theories on alienation and the social classes involved in a vicious stratification of society, and how to liberate these people, both proletariat and the bourgeoisie by making them seek a society of both prosperity and equality.

The Alienated Individual

Alienation may be described as a situation wherein people are dominated by forces that they themselves have created but ironically control them. People are then said to be alienated from their own worlds. From a Marxist point-of-view, all the major institutional spheres in capitalist society- such as the state, religion, media, political economy, education, family, and others are marked by a condition of alienation. With these interconnected institutions that impinge on man, it is then implied that man faces alienation from everywhere, from each and every are of the world he is enmeshed. Yet according to Marx, it is the alienation in the workplace which rises above all the other aspects of alienation. Since man is Homo Faber or Man the Maker, the individual must actually be free to create, and regenerate himself without the dictation of other people, and with the happiness that is accounted for the act of working (http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Marx/MARXW3.HTML).

Alienation in the domain of work has a fourfold aspect: Man is alienated from the object he produces, from the process of production, from himself, and from the community of his fellows. Ritzer (2001) explains this in detail. Man is alienated from the object he produces because at the end of the day, with his meager income, he won't even be able to buy his or her own product. This is contrary to the rule of nature, that one's produce becomes one's own. For instance, a farmer's crops are his because he was the one who planted them in the first place. Man is alienated from the process of production because in a capitalist society, production is compartmentalized for efficiency. For example, a factory worker will just be putting the sole of a shoe; some other worker will be putting the laces of the shoe, etc. Because of this, man is alienated from the joy of working for the sake of working itself, not exactly because of the money or wage that he would earn. Man is alienated from himself because in a capitalist society that is obsessed with generating more and more capital, workers are required to work for longer hours yet with smaller wages, in order to compensate for the costs of production. Because of this, they no longer have time or energy for their families or for other endeavors and recreation that would make them grow as individuals. Lastly, they are alienated from their community of fellows because of the competition that is latently taught in a capitalist environment. A worker looks at his co-workers not as people but as competitors who are or may someday get in the way of his own promotion.

The Individual and his/her Social Class

Social stratification for Marx includes two major classes that are defined and structured by their access and ownership to the means of production. The main classes in capitalism are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. However, other classes such as landlords, petty bourgeoisie, peasants, and lumpen-proletariat also exist, but are not primary in terms of the dynamics of capitalism.

The bourgeoisie or capitalists are the owners of capital. They are the ones who purchase and exploit labor power through the surplus value attained from the employment of the working class. The important aspect of belonging in the bourgeoisie lie not only in being wealthy but the ownership of capital and its maximization to exploit labor and generate more capital. It is necessary for the capitalist class to find means and ways to make their wealth self-expansive- and one effective way is to employ and exploit labor. Simply put, the bourgeoisie are the "haves," those who own the means of production and buy labor power from the proletariat, who are recompensed by a salary, thus exploiting the proletariat.

The proletariats are those individuals who sell their labor power, and therefore add surplus value to the products. In a capitalist mode of production, they are the "have-nots," those who do not own the means of production. According to Marx, the capitalist system establishes the environment favorable for the capitalists to exploit the working class. They accomplish this because of the knowledge that labor power can be extended and is able to generate capital far more than machines, or raw materials could do. The proletariats are owners of labor power with no other resources than the ability to work with their hands, bodies, and minds. In order to survive and have the economic means to buy the basic necessities in life not only for themselves but also for their families, these workers are forced to find employment and consequently sell their labor to the market. The proletariat classes who have no access to the means of production must rely on the exploitative social relationship of a capitalist to employee. While the worker produces, the products created by this labor are taken by the capitalist and sold - thus producing surplus value or profit for the capitalist but poverty for workers. This capitalist system perpetuates itself since the workers are not exactly given the wages they deserve, limiting their capacity to save, and further pulling them to remain in the proletariat class. The capitalists are then very cunning in preventing the workers to acquire ownership of property. The antagonistic and exploitative nature of this system becomes all the more obvious with the capitalists' attempt to prolong working hours, reduce wages, limit benefits, and make the workers work more intensively (http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/s28f99.htm,1999).

Free Market Capitalism and Free Will / Human Agency

Capitalism is foremost an economic set-up with far greater social implications. It rests on a social relationship of a capitalist to a worker. The generation of capital in the form of money is the main objective of capitalism. Now to produce more capital entails that generation of more profit, meaning the minimization of the costs of production.

Free market capitalism is defined as a market where the price of each item or service is arranged by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers, seen in the supply and demand of a commodity. While a free market necessitates that government does not dictate prices or meddle with how the market is supposed to work, it also requires the traders and in effect businessmen themselves do not force or defraud each other.

The notion of a free market is closely associated with laissez-faire economic philosophy, which advocates approximating this condition in the real world by mostly confining government intervention in economic matters to regulating against force and fraud among market participants" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market).

The limitation on government intervention that is applied in free market capitalism presupposes that the market players are all on equal footing. This means that the all the traders have the same capacity to compete in the same arena. Whether you own small or big businesses, it does not matter. What is important is the fact that an environment of equal opportunities has already been created.

In free market capitalism, the government is also forced to take on a limited defensive role. Aside from levying… READ MORE

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