Marxism And The Leap To The Kingdom Of Freedom

The book's title echoes Engels's phrase "the leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom." "The kingdom of necessity" refers to the Marxist conception of the laws of history, "the leap" to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and "the kingdom of freedom" to the communist conception of freedom as control over economic and social forces. For Marx, the main enemy of human freedom was not political coercion but the "blind," uncontrollable forces of the market. Thus freedom could be realized only through rational planning that would liberate people from their dependence on material things and alienated social forces.