ABSTRACT
If the masses are no longer poor, and their states are no longer corrupt, what are the remaining barriers to freedom? What is freedom if you live a middleclass life in an efficient polity? One might argue that it then becomes an entirely personal issue, a task of setting and achieving goals, of finding satisfaction in one’s chosen vocation, of deriving pleasure from friends and loved ones, and, ultimately, of realizing one’s full potential. These problems, a cynic could argue, became central to Marxism, its Western variety, only when there were no others left to criticize. Indeed, as we learned in Chapter 2, when the most egregious abuses of capitalism had been reined in, when states began to regulate and enforce, the Marxists began to look for more insidious signs, the commodification of culture, the manipulation of desire through advertising, the peddling of a false ideology that seeks status, selfesteem, and personal worth in material goods. The cynic is right in the sense that these questions only come to the fore when the more serious ones have either already been addressed, or have been addressed enough not to arouse mass protest. But that does not make them any less poignant. For Marxism is not about negativity for negativity’s sake, i.e., an uncompromising intellectualism that can only criticize and find fault, it is about liberating the creative potential of the human being through his or her labor. Yet, here new obstacles arise. In the modern era, as greater productivity and medical advances expand our lives beyond work, we are burdened with a new kind of freedom: how to spend our leisure time. In turn, however, our scope to shape this leisure sphere and find therein space for autonomous and creative expression is perpetually inhibited by capitalist influences on the production of culture.
