One of the most visible currents in the history of political philosophy of the nineteenth century was the way that critics of government approached the problem of freedom in modern society. One aspect that caught the attention of many was the 1789 French Revolution, with its redefinition of boundaries and new applications for the word freedom within the constructs of society.
Two particularly visible thinkers that came to some conclusions regarding the problems of human freedom were John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx. Mill, one of the typical nineteenth century liberals, owed much of his initial thoughts on the subject of freedom to the works of Alexis de Tocqueville. Karl Marx, on the other hand, matured using the Hegelian dialectical traditions of conflict and argument, and was less of an idealist and more of a positivist than Mill. This paper will use Mill's On Liberty and Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts to assess the question of freedom in a modern society. It will begin with an overview of Mill's basic ideas concerning freedom and liberty, and will then turn to the Marxian premise of alienation, with specific reference to alienated labor. The two authors will then be compared and contrasted, and the paper will finally conclude with the way that each of the two thinkers have been applied on the subject of human freedom.
As a political philosopher, Mill warns the reader against accepting dead or outmoded theoretical positions on the nature of human freedom. The basic necessity of freedom is in both the intrinsic value of opinion, and the external value of expression. Each of these may also be placed in three additional categorizations. First, if any opinion from the individual is silenced one must acknowledge that it is true, and in silencing it may cause infallibility. Second, although an opinion may be wrong, it may be partly true. Finally, even if the prevailing opinion is the complete truth, it will no...