Is Capitalism “Liberticide” for Mankind?

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“Everything […] which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theater; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant.”

— Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscript

“The liberty he [Mill] values therefore includes liberty of thought and discussion, and liberty of conduct. Both are required for the flourishing of individuality. As he notes, “there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by means other than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them”.

— Mill’s “On Liberty”: A Critical Guide, published by Cambridge Critical Guides

Despite their radically different political philosophies, both Marx and Mill converge on a central crisis: modern industrial society renders human beings into uniform, uncreative cogs. Catalysed by the advent of modern technologies, the current social and economic order inherently stunts human potential to the point where we seek pleasure in the sheer alienation of possessing things. Ultimately, our overdependency on private property, engagement in socio-political institutions, and, perhaps most insidiously, the very comfort we derive from aligning with dominant social groups is proof that authentic human liberty, most specifically the liberty that fosters individual creativity, is subjugated to the dominant reign of capitalist realism. If “capitalist realism” was the condition prevalent during the times of Marx and Mill, it is, by no doubt, the condition that is still prevalent today.

Capitalist realism, first theorised by critic Mark Fisher, fits many requirements to be considered “liberticide” of not only human individuality, but of human confidence (by “liberticide” I am referring to the systemic narrowing of the conditions under which genuine individuality can develop). It normalises the idea that man’s main purpose and freedoms are confined to the limits of late capitalism. A failure in a public setting naturally manifests itself as a failure in a personal setting; a financial recession or a rise in youth unemployment has culturally conditioned us to believe we are simply “not working hard enough” or we are not suitable candidates for the “corporate grind culture”, whilst in reality internal issues are systemic issues as the outcome of pervasive structural inequality. Such a culture has birthed a practice of constant “busyness”, where we make sacrifices to stay competitive in the market. The less we consciously force ourselves to think that happiness will be the end product of being successful in the capitalist system, the more we realise that “happiness” is the natural by-product of pleasures humans pursue for their personal sake, for their own nature. If we emphasise our internal feelings to cultivate our unique individual cultures, we will better contribute to the wider intellectual culture.

“The cultivation of human feelings is the primary of a cultivation of reason.” was Mill’s conclusion to this matter. First absorbed in a philosophy of utilitarianism, Mill realised that such an approach to life was deemed cold and calculated — the idea of being overly rational in the absence of human feeling is much more irrational than its counterpart. Mill engrossed himself in the experience of testing what utilitarianism had limited, and in what facets it was limiting when exploring the spectrum of human liberty. In his work Utilitarianism, Mill attempts to restructure the single definition of utilitarianism first offered by Bentham and instead argues that it is “better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied”. Through this, Mill argues that “higher” intellectual and moral pleasures are infinitely more valuable than base, physical ones, meaning an enlightened but struggling mind is a better state than blissful yet ignorant satisfaction. This debate is not only the core of Mill’s inspiration for writing On Liberty, but it also acts as a notable argument when confronted with the issue of “liberticide” in Fisher’s notion of capitalist realism; as under capitalist realism, true liberty is destroyed not by an authoritarian state, but by a market system that systematically reduces human beings from “Socrates dissatisfied” into “satisfied pigs.” Bentham’s previous argument that there is no distinction in the quality rather than quantity of pleasure is precisely what capitalist realism thrives off of - the hyper-efficient delivery of lower pleasures. If the system already provides surface-level contentment to all, at least enough to satisfy basic dopaminergic loops, then people will find no purpose in distinguishing between happiness for basic survival and happiness when pursuing their own intellectual interests. That is “liberticide” in a loosely defined sense; the “birth” of a life of oppurtunity, but the “suicide” of a life of alternative oppurtunities. Our horizons are incredibly narrow.

Marx crafts his dissent towards capital realism through a lens that is arguably similar, yet altogether different. While both thinkers share an almost identical horror of the human being reduced to a state of unthinking, animalistic compliance, they arrive at this conclusion through completely different intellectual lenses. Marx approaches the idea of “liberticide” through a fear of alienation (Entfremdung). He argues that the market system doesn’t just reduce human beings from a state of “Socrates” to “pigs”; it firstly alienates them, strips them naked of emotive capacity, and moulds them into the ascetic yet productive industrial slave. For Marx, the solution to this alienation is not simply more consumption or better wages, but the reclamation of our ‘species-being’ — the capacity for creative, self-directed, and collective activity that defines us as human. To the political economist, a worker’s “luxury” is no longer defined by what they indulge themselves in, but how much time they indulge themselves in it, as more time spent away from the industry is less time spent improving the public culture. Every meager enjoyment of a “worker” — defined most blatantly as one who sells his soul to wages of his labor — seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the most abstract need – be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a manifestation of activity – seems to him a luxury. From Marx, we realise that the ultimate tragedy of modern capitalist realism is that it frames this liberticide as the pinnacle of human freedom.

Yet on what basis do their opinions on capitalist realism diverge? Are they mutually exclusive, or do they, together, share a combined dissent towards the liberticide of human liberties? A plausible answer lies in their divergent philosophical foundations. Mill, the liberal utilitarian, conceives of liberty as fundamentally negative; the absence of interference from the state or from society’s “prevailing opinion.” His vision is individualist and reformist and he frequently notes that the danger of capitalist realism lies in its homogenizing effect on the mind, its reduction of human beings to “satisfied pigs” who have never been encouraged to pursue higher intellectual and moral pleasures. The solution, consequently, is education, diversity of opinion, and the protection of “eccentricity”, all of which are liberal reforms that expand the space for individual self-development within the existing economic order. Marx, by contrast, operates from a materialist and collectivist framework. For Marx, freedom is not merely the absence of constraint but the presence of conditions that enable genuine human “flourishing” - namely, unalienated labor, collective ownership, and the abolition of class exploitation. His vision is more positive and even hints towards an intellectual revolution against capitalism; the market is not a neutral framework for individual liberty but the very source of unfreedom, alienating workers from their creative essence and simplifying intimate human relationships to transactions. The proposed solution for Marx is not liberal reform, but revolutionary transformation.

However, it is equally important to understand where their common interests lie. Despite their different foundations and strategies, both thinkers share a profound commitment to the same end: the flourishing of human beings as creative, thinking, self-determining agents. Mill’s “higher pleasures” construct and Marx’s “species-being” are, at their core, two pathways towards achieving the same human aspiration - the desire to live a life of meaning, creativity, and purpose beyond mere survival and consumption. Their approaches are not mutually exclusive, but complementary. Mill offers a psychological and cultural diagnosis of capitalist realism, stating it dulls the mind and flattens the soul; whilst Marx offers a structural and economic diagnosis as it exploits labor and prides the worker for being a productive slave. Together, they present a comprehensive indictment that capitalist realism is both a spiritual and material crisis, both a failure of social cultures as it is a failure of economics. The ultimate tragedy is that it divides us humans against ourselves, making us believe we must choose between individual liberty and collective justice, between internal cultivation and external transformation.

Yet in a society where humans are engrossed in a wider system of inequity, social injustice, wars, rebellions, and more, perhaps it is most wise to understand that achieving “true liberty” is not a single “state” to achieve, but rather a relationship to cultivate. You may liberate yourself through music, through art, through personal exploration, through literature - but all “states” of liberation from capital realism emphasise, above all, a “free” relationship, allowing you to see beyond all horizons what captivates your intellectual proclivity.

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