As our Marx Madness month starts to wind down, we here at The Philosopher’s Shirt would like to do what philosophers do, and do a little thought experiment. What would a world be like without capitalism as the predominating economic force?

Can we, for instance, imagine a world in which we do not have to stay in one place for eight hours a day, five days (give or take) a week? Can we imagine not having to rely on a large company so that we can get our basic needs met? Can we imagine freeing our own productivity for ourselves, rather than on behalf of a corporation that owns us?

Catching Up with Marx

Earlier in the month, we wrote about the historical context of Marx’s critique. The mechanical stretching and yawning in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was a different time from the staid commercialism and complacency of today, with AI and computers on the rise. But is it, really? Or rather, can we get takeaways from then that we can use now?

If we took the idea of alienation of the worker seriously, we could, perhaps, apply it to our own situations now. And if we understood the fact that Marx never saw capitalism as something that would last forever, could we possibly further this thought and consider a society that is post-capitalist?

Work, Memes, and Human Trafficking

In the 21st century, work has become so central to our lives that we make tons of work-related memes, like the one you see here, and so much of our discussion and identity is focused on our labor. We laugh about relatable work stories we see on Reddit, for instance, or get angry when we hear things in the news about people being cruel to retail employees or companies that relied on unpaid labor (read: slavery).

In fact, as your TPS writer writes, I think about something that happened a few days ago, very close to where I live. In the United States, in Georgia, a flooring factory was raided. The conditions were terrible, and it was alleged that the owner of the factory, who brought foreign nationals to work there, was engaging in human trafficking and not paying these workers.

We’ve definitely sanitized our terminology of the age-old abhorrent practice of slavery, referring to it as “human trafficking,” as though it is any different than it was before, when it was still unpaid labor and terrible conditions.

The Ultimate Marxist Question

While the England and Europe that Karl Marx lived in had mostly abolished the practices of classic slavery, the Industrial Revolution brought with it new ways to do this. And of course, in the United States, its people have long had to contend with its storied past of unpaid labor and treating human beings as economic property.

But what Marx ultimately questioned, when it comes down to his criticisms of capitalism at the time, and what I ultimately question here–thinking back to  my own work as a grocery store clerk during the Covid-19 lockdown–is, are we truly free? And what makes us free? If we are so tied to economic production for companies, are we truly free?

Pooping on company time is a last resort, in some respects. We run off to the bathroom, as this may be one of the few times we have to be alone, other than a lunch break. It is, in a sense, an act of defiance. The well-beloved bathroom cry–or poop. But is this indicative of a freedom, or of our own chains?

At the end of the day, what would unfettered freedom look like? I’d like to think this is Marx’s true question when he critiques capitalism, and when we take the essence of that critique and apply it to today. Would we be freer if we didn’t have to participate, and not maligned and thrown to the margins for not doing so?

The Labor Theory of Value and Freedom

A world that is not hypercapitalistic. What would that look like? Some (including the Pope) have posited the idea of universal income being a possible resolution. Would there be less consumerism if capitalism were gradually and gently removed as the prevailing economic factor? Or would be still get smacked by Adam Smith’s invisible hand?

Marx speaks at length about the Labor Theory of Value, which discusses the importance of production to a society versus what the worker gets out of it in relation to what the employer gets out of it.

Imagine a company that sells cars, if you will. Imagine the people in the factories who build these fancy (and aesthetically displeasing) cars, and what they gain from building them. Imagine what society as a whole receives by purchasing them, and imagine what the CEO of the company receives in having them built and bought.

The workers are perhaps paid a moderate wage for building the ugly cars. The cars are bought only by the people who are wealthy enough to purchase them, thereby benefiting a small subset of the overall society. And the person who truly benefits from all of this is the CEO, who just profits and profits and profits.

Marx suggests to delete this kind of capitalism and instead replace it with labor that helps to feed a society, helps to keep it housed, and helps to keep its needs met in better and better ways. For the society. Not for one person.

Perhaps, then, freedom consists in working for a better good rather than working for the man?

It is most important, I think, to consider Marx (and philosophy as a whole) as a way to question things. And in so doing, we create thought experiments, and we do not maintain an easy, unthinking complacency. To be more of a critical thinker, we must learn to do so, and by reading and engaging with philosophy like Marx, we (hopefully) build and flex that muscle.