The promise to have property (terra nullius), and in that property, is the tabula rasa of man’s new beginnings. Yet that liberty came at the further expense of aboriginal, black, and enviromental freedom. The flame from liberty’s chalice casts its lawful protection of those considered citizens, and in that, disavows certain men from that sense of having security: “[a] slave and prisoner of his own [private] opinion of himself” (4). The material consciousnesses of men sublates and alienates man from his/her self-development.
The alienating practices of patriotism as a form of hegemonic social control estranged man from his neighbours. S/he must balance between the necessity of “commerce and agriculture” (Ibid. , “Civil Disobedience,” 228) waged against the freedom of others. Rousseau`s and Thoreau`s idealism viewed different social forms in reaction to power, interrupted the natural world`s role in furthering the development of man’s intrinsic properties. Marx, although, believed the forces of production disenfranchised man from his ability to see nature in its grandeur.
That is, nature in its beauty, has already existed in such form outside man’s idealism and it is man’s productive essence to work with the material around him that in turn recognised that beauty. Man`s natural work is warped by the unnatural forms of capitalist labour: the “superfluously coarse labours of life [make it so] its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them” (Thoreau, “Economy,” 2).
Man’s drive is directed towards the desire of capital in “commerce” and “industry” (Marx, “Manifesto,” 210) which repurposes the labouring conscience of man’s “essence” (Ibid. “German Ideology,” 182) to the working “appendage of the machine” (Ibid. , “Manifesto,” 211). Gordon 7 His/her essence transcribes reality to the mechanised enterprise of liberty. That is, the practice of capitalism in the forces of production determine the trajectory of world-processes. Socioeconomic status privileges one with the appearance of a commanding presence, one that will attract authority. With this, the ideological tenets of capitalism led to an abuse of liberty, by oppressing the freedom of others.
Property is a sign of agency, and in the socioeconomic ivision of labour, prevents man from attaining it. Therein, man works to ends that do not meet, and is outside his means. This is what alienates man from others and his or her self as Other. The “enjoyment and labour” of intrinsic work is corrupted by the capitalist mode of “production and consumption” (Ibid. , “German Ideology,” 175). Wherein, man labours for the state working outside of their own intent. “Estrangement” (178) occurs when man is divorced from his intrinsic life-process(es) because they do not generate capital.
Thus man ay espouse the accumulation of capital to preserve material consciousnesses, sublates their “personal worth for exchange value” (Ibid. , “Manifesto,” 206) under hegemonic control and production, “both with what they produce and with how they produce” (164). The body’s drive to preserve itself in character image is inverted by capitalist modes of production. This mental act, in attempts of compartmentalising his/her behaviour in Gordon 8 public/private spheres; a dialectic between insight and responsibility. This converging dialectic between the maintenance of public order (freedom) and the happiness of the private ndividual (necessity) deemphasizes pleasure to those that cannot afford the leisure of capital.
If, accordingly, an individual partakes in pleasure beyond their means, it is called decadence—it is beyond their necessity for freedom. Thus man is caught in the paradoxically drive of the capital-value system, insofar, as his/her desire for capital as a means of freeing themselves from material bondage. Here, man mistakes the ideal image promised by capitalism as a false sense of freedom. The unhealthy promise of an idealised image of his/her body’s ideal reflects in the rotating brass of the capitalist machine.
One may desire that image driven by the perceived unpleasure of their own. S/he is tailored to an all-fitting suit: man is made to measure. Those in resistance to the garbs of power, must develop an individual form of liberty that is independent from external authority. S/he may be alienated from others, but s/he is protected from the capital production of himself or herself. The individual is coded by the master’s discourse which entangles the collective conscience and dilutes consciousness of power. The capitalist theory of practice goes unquestioned in the practice of its theory.
Power becomes visible but is divisible between its capitalist functionaries. There is no single authority. Therein, solidarity gives way for individuality as a false sense of fraternity. Newer generations are born into a world which Gordon 9 they take for granted past luxuries, for present necessity. The liberty of industrial capitalism only revealed the oceanic depth of authority. Man’s self-image influenced gazing at the societal mirroring of narcissistic capital power, plunges into its depths—for s/he cannot make out their own image from the bottom. Honest men are overwhelmed by the romise of possessing an image that is safe from their own opinion.
Liberty misread as luxury and capitalism waging that freedom over necessity, has led man’s labour to work outside of his/her nature. And in doing so, alienated him or her from his own internal properties to perceive their beauty. Whereby, man chooses to fend for his capital, than fight for the liberties of others. S/he becomes part of the machine, and therein takes on its image. By what authority then, by what measurement, does man merit his good will as an act of freedom or state of necessity?
It is the ultimate sin to progress without people, but to coincide, s/he becomes part of power’s progress, one that is a body without people. Thus, in contrast, Marx saw man in the nineteenth century increasing alienated during periods of industrial capitalism but may be reunited under socialism, Zinn had viewed man becoming more self-alienated (and alienating) due to modernist ideologies of “political rhetoric” (Zinn, “Scholarship,” 507). Zinn believed the capital industry was powered by an underlying social grid of the “knowledge industry,” and political systems of rhetoric such as patriotism, communism, capitalism.
These malformed man’s conscience, separating his Gordon 10 fraternity for one another into the ideal consciousnesses of nations, elite groups, dominant state of things hold the reigns with man as its saddle. Therein, man must develop a conscience outside the epistemic ”compartmentalization” of hegemonic ideologues. Yet in his/her pursuit, are meet with counterintuitive measures at the level of the university. Such institutions are grounded firmly enough that one needs “to dig beneath the abstractions so our fellow citizens can make judgements on the particular realities beneath political rhetoric” (507).