I agree that liberalism has historically functioned as a facade for domination. But just as chemistry emerged from the quest of alchemy, Marxism identifies the germ of humanism within the chaff of the liberal state. I am not suggesting we complete liberalism, but that we realize its hollowed-out promises by stripping away its class-bound distortions. Just as liberalism sublated feudal honor into human dignity of the citizen, Marxism sublates the abstract citizen into the social individual. What is preserved isn’t always the core of the historical era, but what allows for the continual, universal, and material emancipation in ever widening circles from the political to the human. The extension of emancipation to all is his normative anchor.
Regarding the individual: simply inverting the liberal structure and placing the collective conditions where the individual used to be is a mechanical negation, not a dialectical synthesis. If the individual is merely subordinate to the collective conditions, alienation remains.
“The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances… forgets that it is men who change circumstances.” - Theses On Feuerbach
You cannot transform collective conditions without the development of individual class consciousness. These two are in a bidirectional, internal relationship. They sublate one another. The result is an association of free individuals who are conscious of their social nature, not cogs in a machine.
“Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.” - Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
You say that Marx’s guiding ideas were Hegelian, not liberal. But Hegel was the philosopher of the modern liberal subject. He didn’t seek to abolish the individual in favor of the collective; he sought to move the individual from an abstract freedom (the right to be left alone) to a concrete freedom (the power to act in a rational society). Marx is working within the tradition of human emancipation. He isn’t trying to subordinate the person to the collective; he is using Hegelian logic to find a material way to actually achieve the individual autonomy that Liberalism promised but could never deliver.
I am at peace with leaving the argument here: for Marx, the collective is the means, but the ‘complete return of man to himself’ is the end. To lose sight of that human end is to lose the very essence of the critique.
Honestly, I agree we should leave this here. You’re not engaging Marx’s body of work, you’re engaging in quote-stacking to defend a position that directly contradicts Marxism as a scientific framework. That’s the same method religious radicals use: isolate passages, abstract them from their material context, and retrofit them to a preconceived conclusion.
Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao all have writings on this. Marxism is grounded in dialectical and historical materialism, which leads to the opposite conclusion from what you’re arguing. Your position remains idealist, you start from abstract values (“humanism,” “autonomy,” “dignity”) and then try to read Marx backward through them. Marxism starts from material production, class relations, and social practice.
Emancipation is not a “liberal value.” Liberal values emerge from capitalism and express its internal logic. The system cannot be separated from its so-called ideals. The purpose of a system is what it actually does. Liberalism historically produced slavery, imperialism, enclosure, colonial genocide, and modern wage exploitation. “Autonomy” and “self-determination” are structurally impossible under liberalism, they are not its values, they are ideological justifications. The marxist project is to explain this contradiction, not spiritually redeem it.
You also misrepresent what I said about the individual and collective with the “cogs in a machine” framing. That’s liberal projection. Marxism does not erase individuality, it shows that individuality is socially produced and materially conditioned. The collective is not merely a neutral tool; it is the necessary foundation for any real individual development. Liberalism inverts this by treating society as secondary to an abstract subject.
Marx inherits dialectics from Hegel, but he decisively breaks with Hegel’s reconciliation of the individual with the bourgeois state. Hegel attempts to philosophically justify modern society. Marxism locates contradiction in material production and aims at abolishing bourgeois society altogether.
Marxism is not liberal humanism completed. Liberalism is bourgeois ideology. Communism is not the realization of liberal autonomy; it is the abolition of the social relations that made liberal autonomy necessary as an abstraction.
I agree that liberalism has historically functioned as a facade for domination. But just as chemistry emerged from the quest of alchemy, Marxism identifies the germ of humanism within the chaff of the liberal state. I am not suggesting we complete liberalism, but that we realize its hollowed-out promises by stripping away its class-bound distortions. Just as liberalism sublated feudal honor into human dignity of the citizen, Marxism sublates the abstract citizen into the social individual. What is preserved isn’t always the core of the historical era, but what allows for the continual, universal, and material emancipation in ever widening circles from the political to the human. The extension of emancipation to all is his normative anchor.
Regarding the individual: simply inverting the liberal structure and placing the collective conditions where the individual used to be is a mechanical negation, not a dialectical synthesis. If the individual is merely subordinate to the collective conditions, alienation remains.
You cannot transform collective conditions without the development of individual class consciousness. These two are in a bidirectional, internal relationship. They sublate one another. The result is an association of free individuals who are conscious of their social nature, not cogs in a machine.
You say that Marx’s guiding ideas were Hegelian, not liberal. But Hegel was the philosopher of the modern liberal subject. He didn’t seek to abolish the individual in favor of the collective; he sought to move the individual from an abstract freedom (the right to be left alone) to a concrete freedom (the power to act in a rational society). Marx is working within the tradition of human emancipation. He isn’t trying to subordinate the person to the collective; he is using Hegelian logic to find a material way to actually achieve the individual autonomy that Liberalism promised but could never deliver.
I am at peace with leaving the argument here: for Marx, the collective is the means, but the ‘complete return of man to himself’ is the end. To lose sight of that human end is to lose the very essence of the critique.
Honestly, I agree we should leave this here. You’re not engaging Marx’s body of work, you’re engaging in quote-stacking to defend a position that directly contradicts Marxism as a scientific framework. That’s the same method religious radicals use: isolate passages, abstract them from their material context, and retrofit them to a preconceived conclusion.
Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao all have writings on this. Marxism is grounded in dialectical and historical materialism, which leads to the opposite conclusion from what you’re arguing. Your position remains idealist, you start from abstract values (“humanism,” “autonomy,” “dignity”) and then try to read Marx backward through them. Marxism starts from material production, class relations, and social practice.
Emancipation is not a “liberal value.” Liberal values emerge from capitalism and express its internal logic. The system cannot be separated from its so-called ideals. The purpose of a system is what it actually does. Liberalism historically produced slavery, imperialism, enclosure, colonial genocide, and modern wage exploitation. “Autonomy” and “self-determination” are structurally impossible under liberalism, they are not its values, they are ideological justifications. The marxist project is to explain this contradiction, not spiritually redeem it.
You also misrepresent what I said about the individual and collective with the “cogs in a machine” framing. That’s liberal projection. Marxism does not erase individuality, it shows that individuality is socially produced and materially conditioned. The collective is not merely a neutral tool; it is the necessary foundation for any real individual development. Liberalism inverts this by treating society as secondary to an abstract subject.
Marx inherits dialectics from Hegel, but he decisively breaks with Hegel’s reconciliation of the individual with the bourgeois state. Hegel attempts to philosophically justify modern society. Marxism locates contradiction in material production and aims at abolishing bourgeois society altogether.
Marxism is not liberal humanism completed. Liberalism is bourgeois ideology. Communism is not the realization of liberal autonomy; it is the abolition of the social relations that made liberal autonomy necessary as an abstraction.