How Marxism, and Neo-Marxism Both Erase Human Agency and Freedom, By James Reed

Both Marxism and what's often called "postmodern neo-Marxism" present significant challenges to human agency and freedom, though through different mechanisms and emphases. Yet both are inherently destructive.

Classical Marxism fundamentally views human consciousness and action as products of material conditions and class position. Marx's concept of "false consciousness" proposes that people's beliefs, values, and perceived interests are largely illusions created by their position in the capitalist system. Workers who don't recognise their exploitation or who support capitalism are seen as victims of ideological manipulation rather than autonomous agents making reasoned choices.

The theory of historical materialism presents history as following inevitable laws driven by economic forces and class struggle. Individual human choices become largely irrelevant to the grand sweep of history, the contradictions of capitalism will lead to its collapse regardless of what particular people believe or do. This deterministic framework leaves little room for genuine human agency to alter the course of events.

Marx's emphasis on base and superstructure suggests that culture, politics, law, and even personal relationships are ultimately determined by economic relations, economic reductionism. People think they're making free choices, but these choices are actually constrained and shaped by their class position and the broader economic system. True freedom can only emerge after the revolutionary transformation of society, Marx maintained.

Postmodern interpretations, particularly those influenced by thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, and later critical theorists, expand these constraints on agency in different directions. Rather than focusing primarily on economic class, they emphasise how power operates through discourse, language, and social categories like race, gender, and sexuality.

Foucault's concept of "biopower" and disciplinary mechanisms posits that modern institutions shape subjects so thoroughly that resistance becomes extremely difficult. People are not just economically constrained but are constituted as subjects through power relations embedded in every aspect of social life, from schools and hospitals to sexuality and mental health: sociological determinism.

The postmodern emphasis on the "death of the subject" challenges the very notion of a coherent, autonomous individual capable of genuine choice, as seen in classical liberalism, and Christianity. If identity is constructed through discourse and power relations, then the traditional liberal subject who makes free choices becomes an illusion. People are seen as effects of power rather than agents who can meaningfully resist it.

Contemporary identity-based critical theories often present individuals as primarily determined by their group memberships and social positions. One's race, gender, sexuality, and other identity categories are seen as fundamentally shaping consciousness and available choices. This can lead to a kind of group determinism where individual agency is subordinated to group identity and structural position.

Both approaches create a paradox: they claim to be "liberatory" while simultaneously arguing that genuine freedom and agency are impossible under current conditions. Classical Marxism promises freedom after the revolution, but sees pre-revolutionary consciousness as fundamentally compromised. Postmodern approaches promise liberation from oppressive categories and structures, while arguing that subjects are so thoroughly constituted by power that genuine resistance is nearly impossible.

The concept of "consciousness raising" in both traditions assumes that people's current understanding of their situation is false or incomplete, requiring external intervention by theorists or activists who possess superior insight. This dynamic can undermine the agency of those supposedly being liberated.

These frameworks tend to reduce human complexity to structural positions and power relations. The rich inner life of individuals, their personal relationships, spiritual beliefs, aesthetic experiences, and private struggles, becomes secondary to their position in broader systems of domination.

Both approaches can lead to a form of therapeutic authoritarianism, communist centralised technocracy, where experts claim to understand people's "real" interests better than they do themselves. If people's expressed preferences and choices are products of false consciousness or internalised oppression, then overriding those preferences can be justified as genuinely liberatory.

The emphasis on systemic and structural analysis creates a sense of fatalism where individual action feels meaningless against vast impersonal forces. This can paradoxically discourage the very political engagement these theories claim to promote, which is certainly the hidden agenda of these authoritarian positions, which serve the interests of the "new class" elites:

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Neither framework provides adequate space for the ordinary human capacity to transcend circumstances, make meaning from suffering, find joy in simple pleasures, or create genuine relationships across difference. They tend to view such experiences as either illusory or as forms of resistance that must be understood primarily in political terms.

The result is often a diminished view of human beings as primarily political creatures defined by their oppression rather than complex individuals capable of growth, forgiveness, creativity, and genuine choice within whatever constraints they face. The case against Marxism and neo-Marxism is outstandingly strong, just in terms of philosophy, let alone considering the history of genocide and mass murder, at least Marxism produced; well in excess of 100 million dead. And that says it all, making Marxism a philosophy of death.

https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-marxists-erase-human-will-and-agency