The Politics of Absolute Freedom

Abstract

This dissertation argues that Marx’s theory of communist revolution is, ultimately, an attempt to resolve—by transforming—a certain version of the theodicy problem that he inherited from an array of thinkers ranging from Leibniz to Hegel. This is the problem of the possibility of human freedom in a complex world. In the context of rapid industrialization and an increase in population (i.e., the context of developing capitalism) this problem was sharply posed by the division of labor. Theorists of modern society saw in the division of labor a way of resolving and exacerbating human alienation. On the one hand, the division of labor seemed to be enormously efficient in providing for human needs; on the other hand, a complex system of countless anonymized interpersonal interactions could be disorganized just as much as it could be organized— raising the possibility that it could lead to a number of problems including (the ones I will focus on in the dissertation) fragmentation, negative unintended consequences, and impersonal domination. So the fundamental question for many theorists of capitalism and the modern state was what I will call the problem of rational integration: how to rationally integrate the particular (individuals) with the universal (the collective). Achieving a rationally integrated complex division of labor would eradicate human alienation—by ensuring an overcoming of fragmentation; that the unintended consequences were generally positive rather than negative; and that freedom, rather than domination, was its end result.