[OPE] The Nature and Historical Paradoxes of Freedom

 The concluding paragraph from my paper "The Nature and Historical Paradoxes of Freedom: A comparative study on Marx/Engels and liberal/neoliberal writers in their relation to classical liberalism". It will come out this yeras in in book dedicated to Italian philosopher Professor Demico Losurdo.

"In conclusion: this comparative study showsthat today’s theory of liberty or freedom is Marxism. It is thisperspective of permanent of emancipation of humanity, which makes Marxism tothe theory of freedom today. To show why and how wecome to this conclusion, this essay isorganised around four main theses. First,by relying on Hayek and Marx it shows that freedom is one of those socialgoods, which does not admit a division in infinite parts like natural objectsfor example. It occurs, therefore, in all spheres of social life as a whole. Inother words, if one speaks of freedom of speech, for example, he/she means bythis that it is not just about the free expression of thought, but it is at thesame time a particular form of the expression of human freedom as such. Itclaims, secondly, liberal (andconservative) writers on liberty since mid of 19th century gave up graduallythis totalising view on freedom. Since then they explore merely a concept offreedom that is not more than a concept of negative liberty. This shows, it isfurther claimed, that the system of liberty which neoliberal writers putforward is in fact nothing but a concept of coercion and a system of privilegesfor dominating (propertied) classes. However, third, the totalising view on freedom and the dialectical approachto the relationship of positive and negative freedom was what classicalliberalism tried to establish. The fourthmain thesis of the paper consequently is that this totalising view on libertyis reformulated by Marx and Engels from working classes’ point of view in anentirely new light, in the sense that they reformulated the concept of freedomas human emancipation. Therefore, this is how we would like to conclude, itseems to be justified to conclude that if one takes the concept of freedom reallyseriously and wants to see it truly realised that really breaks with any formof hair splitting legal formalism he/she has to seek advice from Marx’s andEngels’ works."

D.Göçmen
http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/
http://www.dogangocmen.blogspot.com/

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Received on Sat Feb 5 10:17:37 2011