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I& #39;ve never understood Marx to be a liberal, even a philosophical one & I take him to be a good figure for marking a substantial break w/ liberalism toward establishing a particularly Left politics. A primary reason for this, emphasizing the "philosophical", is how freedom works https://twitter.com/BenBurgis/status/1254046965412900865">https://twitter.com/BenBurgis...
For one, liberals take an essentializing view of human nature on which they establish rights & the right to property is always a primary focus of liberal politics. But Marx& #39;s materialism breaks w/ this - a reason why Sartre sees "existence preceding essence" already in Marx
Property is a right primarily to secure our freedom against the freedom of others. From Hobbes to Locke to Kant, the freedom of others is a limitation on our own freedom & Kant is perhaps the most explicitly clear on this point. Certainly, a paradigmatic liberal thinker
The view rests on a metaphysics of human nature that places our freedom outside of material conditions. For Kant, in the noumenal. But Locke is there too. One of Locke& #39;s arguments for God concerns the impossibility of deriving free consciousness from unconscious matter.
So, human nature is grounded in a quasi-theological & supernatural realm beyond the bounds of historical material forces. Part of Marx& #39;s anti-essentializing move is to have human beings be partially molded by the material conditions in which they live in a reciprocal relation
For Marx, human freedom is not a supernatural property of the will that must be secured in the material world against the freedom of others which threaten it. Instead, freedom is only realized *through* the freedom of others - an basically anti-liberal position, philosophically.
Part of the reason is that under liberalism, w/ its emphasis on private property, the material conditions encourage competition under a zero-sum logic where my freedom is realized only by the denial of another& #39;s freedom. I am secure only by denying you.
But Marx rejects this & it is the philosophical underpinning of his ultimate criticism of private property & why private property is to be abolished as freedom is encouraged.
Freedom is only realized under material conditions of non-competition wherein the basic needs of each is provided for such that they can pursue their free ends without being captured by a wage system in which their freedom is commodified as labor for sale
