Positive Liberty: The Way Beyond the Socialist-Capitalist Dichotomy

Socialism has allowed itself to become trapped in a false dichotomy, in which capitalism = freedom and socialism = slavery. Far from capitalist propaganda, historical socialism has in fact conformed to this expectation. The more socialist a state becomes, the more the individual is enslaved by the group and ultimately by the state, until a state of perfect socialism is reached in which individual liberty disappears entirely. I made this observation to a Marxist professor once whose response was, "You don't think you are free, either, do you?" In other words, he implicitly accepted the state of unfreedom on the premise that capitalism is also unfree. While true, this response rather misses the point. The goal of socialism has always been stated to be liberation. If socialism does not result in liberation, it must reexamine its premises. Historically, socialism suffers from the very repression that it condemns in capitalism. It is as though the repressed herd, unable to shake off the memory of its repression, merely replaces one form of servitude with another. Socialism and capitalism are both caught up in a struggle that can only end in anti-liberation, whoever wins. In order to achieve its own apotheosis, socialism itself must transcend itself, not through repression, but through assimilation of its opposite - assimilation and transformation, in the service of an ideal that transcends the dichotomy of self and other. In other words, it must sacrifice the idea of sacrifice itself, and its whole historical foundation in traditional notions of religion and renunciation. This is true dialecticism.