Their Freedoms and Ours: The Genesis and Social Function of the Neo-Liberal Concept of Freedom

Abstract

The concept of freedom promoted under neo-liberal capitalism is not the invention of neo-liberal ideologues, but rather a class-specific interpretation that has been maintained and promoted for more than three centuries. It is rooted in classical liberal thinking, according to which individual freedom is largely a measure of the capacity of investors to control property and labour power. In this liberal tradition the pursuit of freedom has been associated with the removal of obstacles inhibiting the extraction of surplus value. Related principles, theories and arguments have functioned to depict the ‘freedom of capital’ as the ‘freedom of the individual’. This article shows that neo-liberal thought is playing a similar role in the 21st century, but that its current expression (aided no end by the world's experience of Stalinism) is at least partly shaped according to the needs of industrial and finance capitalism.