This question <145|145> overall <144|146> JohnGalt: <71|146>.  
  Question 278: Someone says: The law of value cannot hold. We are free people, we do what we want. We are not forced to price our commodities by their labor content. Explain to this person, along the lines of the argument Marx uses here, that this myopic attempt to assert one's freedom leads to unfreedom.   
  [145] JohnGalt: Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases.   Marx correctly claims that we are not free people; we have submitted our will and our ability to act to the power of human-created and driven social forces. These forces, whether as actors we choose to recognize them or not, act independently and continuously to provide equilibrium. Thus, they are able to determine the actions and exchanges created in the market. Men seek to control them and restrain their power, when in fact, it is them acting on men and any attempt to restrain them is actually another part of the social dimension.   
  According to Marx, attempting to assert one's freedom by seeking to “do what we want” will lead to a significant reduction in freedom. This is precisely because of the “dialectical conversion of quantity into quality.” This is the struggle to escape from the constraints, which dictate that exchange rates are not driven by labor processes, but instead are largely focused on use values. Thus, in order to maximize their productive and reward capacities, men should focus on those areas of industry which have the highest marginal rate of return and seek to innovate to gain advantages over competitors. By engaging in this rational process, humans further integrate themselves into the social division of labor. When people choose instead to separate or extricate themselves from the accepted social division of labor and the market system, they remain subject to the laws of the market. But by choosing to remain outside of the system, they refuse to commoditize the products of their labor and relate their labor to the general and abstract. Thus, the social movement, in combination with their own abandonment of the accepted rules and structures, restricts and constrains their ability to act or have any effect or place within society or the market, eventually isolating them and greatly limiting personal and market freedom.   
  Hans: Very good, but Marx sees a way out of this dilemma. There is no individual escape, but individuals have to work together to shape their social relations according to what they consider right. Arguably this is true freedom.   
 
 
 
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