Is Marx's Thought on Freedom Contradictory?

ABSTRACT In The Longing for Total Revolution, Bernard Yack argued that Marx’s thought is plagued by a recurring contradiction. On the one hand, Marx criticized his Idealist predecessors for failing to get beyond the dichotomy between human freedom and natural necessity; and he identified labor, activity determined by the necessity of having to satisfy material needs, as the primary activity of human freedom. On the other hand, Marx’s account of what makes us distinctively human, as well as his view that capitalism dehumanizes workers, implicitly rely on the same dichotomy. However, while Yack identified a real tension in Marx’s writings, he overlooked the resources Marx has to escape it.