The Great Philosophers:Marx

Karl Marx 1818-1883

‘We are free when, like artists, we produce without the goad of physical necessity; and it is this nature which for Marx is the essence of all individuals.’

Observing that Marx is concerned more with difference than with equality, Terry Eagleton explains that freedom, for Marx, entailed release from commercial labour, ‘a kind of creative superabundance over what it materially essential’.

Eagleton outlines the relationships between production, labour and ownership which lie at the core of Marx’s thinking. He then gives a brilliant account of Marx’s utopia: a place in which labour is automated, so that ‘savouring a peach or enjoying a string quarter are aspects of our self-actualisation as much as building dams or churning out coat hangers.’