In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel seeks to justify the baselines (Grundlinien) of the modern state and the market economy by appealing to the historical achievement of the Idea of freedom as “freedom for all.” The progress in question does not reflect any form of divine providence that secures our historical freedom. There is no prospective historical necessity in Hegel, only the retrospective recognition that we have achieved a more adequate notion of freedom by progressing from the commitment that “some are free” to the commitment that “all are free.”15 This explicit recognition of our freedom is not simply the observation of a fact about ourselves but is itself transformative of who we can be and what we can do. The commitment to freedom entails a sense of practical necessity, in the sense that certain institutional practices can be shown to be necessary for us to be true to our commitment to freedom. This sense of practical necessity must be strictly distinguished from the antiquated sense of a metaphysically necessary progress in history, which is wrongly ascribed to Hegel. The Idea of freedom might never have become actual—it is a contingent historical achievement that depends on the commitments we maintain—and it can always fail to be actual, since the Idea of freedom exists only insofar as we sustain it through our practices.
The question, then, is whether the modern state and the market economy on which it depends are compatible with an “actual” (wirklich) free society. This is the critical question that Marx poses to Hegel, but it has to be posed in the right way. Marx’s own critique of Hegel is not as powerful as it could be, since he does not grasp Hegel’s philosophical logic. Marx assumes that Hegel is imposing an “abstract” Idea of freedom on society in order to justify the state protection of capitalist property rights and the exploitation of wage labor. Marx thereby misses how Hegel’s philosophical logic and his Idea of freedom provide crucial resources for the critique of capitalism that Marx himself pursues. To the extent that Hegel justifies capitalism, it is not because he imposes an abstract ideal on society, but because he does not follow through on the implications and demands of his own Idea of freedom in his actual analysis.
While Hegel clearly acknowledges that not everything is as it ought to be in his own Prussian state, he holds that the baselines for the Idea of freedom have been achieved with the advent of the modern state, the institution of fundamental rights of freedom, and the basic regulations of a market economy. At the same time, Hegel himself gives us the resources to question this contention in his Philosophy of Right, particularly through his treatment of the problem of “the rabble.” Hegel’s notion of the rabble refers to any social group that cannot recognize the demands of society as their own. Hegel’s main example of the rabble are those who are left suffering from poverty by the market economy of civil society. “The poor man feels excluded and mocked by everyone,” Hegel writes, “and this necessarily gives rise to an inner indignation….The poor man feels as if he were related to an arbitrary will, to human contingency, and in the last instance what makes him indignant is that he is put into this state of division through an arbitrary will.”16 Importantly, Hegel notes that the disposition of the rabble can arise due to great wealth just as well as due to great poverty. “On the one hand, poverty is the ground of the rabble-mentality, the non-recognition of right. On the other hand, the rabble disposition also appears where there is wealth. The rich man thinks that he can buy anything, because he knows himself as the power of the particularity of self-consciousness. Thus, wealth can lead to the same mockery and shamelessness that we find in the poor rabble. The disposition of the master over the slave is the same as that of the slave….These two sides, poverty and wealth, thus constitute the corruption of civil society.”17 The problem of the rabble is especially acute for Hegel, since his attempt to justify the modern state and the market economy hinges on that each citizen in principle can recognize these institutions as enabling her to lead a free life, a recognition which is precluded for the rabble.
Hence, the critical question is whether a capitalist society can avoid the production of a rabble and embody the commitment to the freedom of all in its institutional rationality. While Hegel’s answer is yes, his own analysis of civil society confirms Marx’s argument for why the answer is no.
As Hegel makes clear, the institutional rationality of a free society requires that the production of wealth is not an end in itself but for the sake of the well-being of each citizen. “The livelihood and welfare of individuals should be secured,” Hegel emphasizes, “i.e. particular welfare should be treated as a right and duly actualized.”18 Particular welfare is here not merely a matter of basic sustenance, but of having the social possibilities to lead a free life that can be recognized as dignified by oneself and by those whom one recognizes in turn. The commitment to the welfare and dignity of each citizen is contradicted, however, by the dynamic of wage labor that is the condition for producing social wealth under capitalism. As Hegel points out, the market economy of civil society can provide only two possible solutions to the problem of poverty and unemployment, with both solutions being fundamentally unsatisfactory.19 On the one hand, the poor can be supported by charity or public welfare provisions, but this is ultimately inadequate, since it does not allow for the social recognition of having a meaningful profession through which one contributes to one’s own well-being and to the common good of the society to which one belongs. On the other hand, the livelihood of the poor can be provided by the creation of more paid employment—more wage labor—“which would increase the volume of production” in civil society.20 Yet, as Hegel perceptively observes, “it is precisely in overproduction and the lack of a proportionate number of consumers who are themselves productive that the evil consists, and this is merely exacerbated by the two expedients in question.”21
The problem of overproduction arises when the production of commodities exceeds the purchasing power (the wages) of those who produce the commodities. Civil society is led to overproduction by trying to remedy the effects of poverty and unemployment, which in turn generates new forms of poverty and unemployment. Hegel therefore concludes that “despite an excess of wealth, civil society is not wealthy enough—i.e. its own distinct resources are not sufficient—to prevent an excess of poverty and the formation of a rabble.”22 To resolve the problem of overproduction, civil society is driven “to go beyond its own confines and look for consumers” in other nations.23 Indeed, Hegel explains that “civil society is driven to establish colonies” due to “the emergence of a mass of people who cannot gain satisfaction for their needs by their work when production exceeds the needs of consumers.”24 Far from resolving the problem, however, the international expansion of capitalist markets reproduces the problem of overproduction and the formation of a rabble on a global scale.
Hegel here points the way to what Marx will analyze as the fundamental contradiction in the capitalist production of wealth. The problem of overproduction and unemployment that Hegel identifies is unavoidable as long as the production of social wealth depends on wage labor. As we will see, the dynamic of wage labor minimally defines all forms of capitalism and is fatal for any attempt to justify capitalism as compatible with the institutional rationality of a free society.
Marx’s critique of capitalism is therefore best understood as motivated by a commitment to making the Idea of freedom actual.25 The comparison between wage labor and slavery, which Marx often invokes, is illuminating here. As Hegel was well aware in his own time, the professed commitment to the Idea of freedom (“all are free”) did not prevent allegedly democratic states from maintaining the institution of slavery. The crucial point for Hegel, however, was that the historical achievement of the Idea of freedom made it possible to recognize slavery as a contradictory and self-undermining social form, which must be overcome for us to be true to our Idea of who we are. Likewise, Marx argues that wage labor is a contradictory and self-undermining social form, which must be overcome for us to achieve actual freedom and
equality. There are many who would respond by saying that our economic and social life simply could not function without wage labor. One should remember, however, that the same argument used to be made with regard to slavery. Even many prominent thinkers who acknowledged negative and regrettable aspects of slavery still held the institution of slavery to be a necessity, without which a free society would fall apart. The idea that the enslavement of some is necessary for the freedom of others could only be overcome by disclosing—from within a historical form of life—other possibilities of living and working together. The same challenge holds for the critique of wage labor, which must disclose why our commitment to the freedom of everyone calls for a different form of sharing our economic life. Thus, I will seek to show that the Idea of freedom demands that we overcome the social form of wage labor. While the social form of wage labor bears the democratic promise of freedom and equality within itself, the dynamic of wage labor ultimately makes it impossible to achieve and sustain an actual democratic state, which would enable everyone to see themselves in the institutions on which they depend and to which they contribute. Such a state—as well as a global alliance of actual democratic states—is a necessary condition for mutual recognition of our ability to lead free lives.
III
As in the case of liberalism, it is crucial to understand that Marx’s critique of capitalism is an immanent critique—a critique of capitalism on its own terms. Marx has no nostalgia for the social forms and material modes of production that preceded capitalism. Moreover, capitalism is the historical condition of possibility for the ideals of equality and freedom to which Marx himself appeals. As Marx emphasizes, the economic relations of capitalism provide “the productive, real basis of all equality and freedom,” since “equality and freedom presuppose relations of production as yet unrealized in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages.”26 While the liberal ideals of equality and freedom can be fulfilled only through the overcoming of capitalism, the historical emergence of the ideals themselves is inseparable from the capitalist mode of production.
Two features of capitalism are of particular importance here. First, in a capitalist society the social order is no longer justified by appeals to religious dogma or aristocratic bloodlines. In previous forms of social life, power hierarchies were justified by a supposed divine or natural right—as though the superiority of one person over another could be established by mere birth. The economic class interests at the root of domination and exploitation were thereby hidden. Under capitalism, by contrast, economic power is explicitly acknowledged as the source of social inequalities. In principle we are all equal under capitalism, in the sense that no one has a given right to dominate anyone else. Power hierarchies are established through the relation between buyer and seller, capitalist and worker. But there is no divine or natural order that entitles anyone to occupy (or excludes anyone from occupying) one position rather than another. Each buyer is in principle entitled to property if he or she can afford it, and each seller is entitled to reject or accept a given bid. As Marx explains: “A worker who buys commodities for 3 shillings appears to the seller in the same function, in the same equality—in the form of 3 shillings—as the king who does the same. All distinction between them is extinguished. The seller as seller appears only as owner of a commodity of the price of 3s, so that both are completely equal.”27 No bloodline, no caste, no race, no gender, and no sanction of any God can legitimize domination under capitalism. This is not to deny that racism, sexism, and other forms of bias have continued to serve as justifications for exploitation under capitalism, but unlike in previous historical epochs these justifications can in principle be exposed as unjust.
Second, each participant in an economic relation under capitalism is formally recognized as free. Unlike the system of slavery in Ancient Greece and Rome, or the system of serfdom in the Middle Ages, no one has the right to own another person’s life under capitalism. Of course, as a matter of historical fact, many capitalist societies have nevertheless allowed for various forms of slavery. The system of wage labor, however, makes it possible in principle to recognize each person as “owning” her life. We are not forced to work for someone else, but are “free” to sell our labor-power to whomever we want. Most significantly, what is recognized as our own is the time of our lives. I may not own any property, and all the property I own can be transferred to someone else. But what is irreducibly my own—what belongs to me for as long as I live—is the time of my life. When I sell my labor time to someone else for a wage, I am therefore necessarily selling my own life. My time cannot be separated from my life, and under capitalism my time is explicitly recognized as valuable.
The ideas of equality and freedom that emerge through capitalist economic relations thus open themselves to an immanent critique. While we are formally recognized as equal, we are still unequal from the beginning, since the relation of power between us depends on how much property and capital we have inherited. If I own means of production, I can employ you for a wage and make a profit that in turn increases my capital. Whereas if you do not own means of production, you have no choice but to sell your labor time either to me or to some other capitalist (unless you “choose” not to live at all). While you are formally recognized as free, you are effectively forced to labor for the sake of someone else’s profit in order to survive. Instead of religion or nature, economic relations now serve as the justification for the subordination of one person by another.
To see how this works, we first need to have Marx’s basic categories in view. Let us therefore return to our village and its water supply. Even before capitalism, a supply of water can be a commodity in Marx’s sense, since the acquisition of water costs labor time. We do not have access to water automatically, but must perform some form of labor—if only the labor of gathering water from a stream—in order to acquire it. Anything that costs labor time can be a commodity in Marx’s sense. This is why the air we breathe (unlike the water we drink) cannot be a commodity. The air we breathe is available for us without any labor on our part and cannot therefore be a commodity. Clean air can become a commodity if we have to do something to clean it, and indeed it may become a highly priced commodity in the future owing to pollution.
The general form of a commodity is not specific to capitalism, but pertains to anything that has both a use value and an exchange value. The use value of a commodity is the purpose it serves, which means that a commodity can have multiple use values. The use value of a gallon of water, for example, can be to replenish someone who is thirsty, clean someone who is dirty, wash clothes or dishes, grow vegetables, and so on. The exchange value of a gallon of water, however, is not concerned with its specific use value but is determined by a comparison to the value of other commodities.
The question of exchange value is at work whenever we trade one thing for another. If I have two gallons of water when I only need one, I may set out to trade my extra gallon of water for a pair of shoes. By trading one for the other we establish that they have the same exchange value, even though their use value is entirely different (if I am thirsty a pair of shoes will not help me and if my feet are cold a gallon of water will not help me). The equivalence of exchange value can be expressed in the form of money—as when we say that a pair of shoes costs as much as a gallon of water—but it is important to remember that the money form precedes capitalism and is in turn preceded by more primitive forms of measuring exchange value. Any form of exchanging goods requires the category of exchange value, and thereby a standard of measure that makes it possible to compare the value of different commodities.
The profound question is how to understand the measure of value in exchange value. As Marx reminds us in Capital, Aristotle was the first to raise this question in a rigorous form. “There can be no exchange,” Aristotle points out, “without equality, and no equality without commensurability.”28 To exchange a gallon of water for a pair of shoes we must be able to co
mpare their value, even though a gallon of water is incomparable to a pair of shoes. Aristotle himself concedes that he cannot see how there can be a real basis for such a comparison. “In reality, it is impossible,” he asserts, “that such unlike things can be commensurable,” so he reduces the measure of exchange value to “a makeshift for practical purposes.”29 In contrast, Marx emphasizes that there is a real measure of value for exchange value, namely, labor time. The one thing that all commodities have in common—and that makes it possible to compare their value—is that they cost labor time to produce. We can compare the value of a gallon of water to the value of a pair of shoes because they both cost labor time. The exchange value of a commodity thus depends on the labor time required to produce it, even though the price of a given commodity can vary in relation to a number of factors.
According to Marx, Aristotle was unable to grasp the measure of value in exchange value because he lived in a society that was founded on slave labor. A commodity produced by a slave is not recognized as having “cost” labor time, since the slave is not granted any ownership of his time. The general value of labor time can be recognized only in a society where each participant in the process of exchange—and each producer of a commodity—is held to be equal. As Marx explains:
The secret of the expression of value, namely the equality and equivalence of all kinds of labor because and in so far as they are human labor in general, could not be deciphered until the concept of equality had already acquired the permanence of a fixed popular opinion. This however becomes possible only in a society where the commodity-form is the universal form of the product of labor, hence the dominant social relation is the relation between men as possessors of commodities. Aristotle’s genius is displayed precisely by his discovery of a relation of equality in the value-expression of commodities. Only the historical limitation inherent in the society in which he lived prevented him from finding out what “in reality” this relation of equality consisted of.30
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