Richard Dien Winfield: A Hegelian Defense of Class Society Contra Communists

[@kyoshinka]

"If the class division is a necessary outcome of satisfying self-chosen needs in reciprocity with others, the just society must be a class society." is a big IF! A voluntary choice is not the same as a choice based on the will of a person. I await the evidence to support this claim

[@intellectual421]

To rigorously deconstruct Winfield's defense of class society, I’ll critically examine his arguments on class freedom, market autonomy, and his Hegelian critique of classless society, focusing on the weak points that expose vulnerabilities in his reasoning. Here’s a breakdown of key areas where his argument can be dismantled: ### 1. **False Freedom in Market-Based Class Society** - **The Illusion of Autonomy**: Winfield claims that market-based class society enables true freedom because individuals voluntarily choose their class roles. This notion of freedom is easily exposed as flawed when viewed through the lens of systemic inequalities. Economic class structures in capitalist societies are profoundly shaped by inherited wealth, access to education, and social capital, which create significant barriers to class mobility. For instance, individuals born into wealth often have access to better education, networking opportunities, and financial safety nets that the working class typically lacks. - **Constraints of Economic Power Dynamics**: The idea that individuals enter class roles "freely" neglects the coercive nature of economic survival in a capitalist society. In most cases, workers "choose" to sell their labor only because they lack alternatives to earn a livelihood, especially when capital ownership is concentrated among a small minority. The term “wage slavery” may therefore be apt, as it captures the reality that many workers do not enjoy meaningful autonomy; they engage in market participation out of necessity, not genuine choice. ### 2. **Reciprocal Recognition as a Dubious Ideal** - **One-Sided Recognition in Capitalist Class Relations**: Winfield’s argument hinges on the Hegelian concept of “reciprocal recognition,” where class members purportedly recognize each other’s autonomy. However, capitalist labor dynamics reveal a fundamental asymmetry. The worker’s recognition of the capitalist’s autonomy (to hire, fire, and profit from labor) does not translate into an equal recognition of the worker’s autonomy. The capitalist benefits disproportionately from the worker's labor, which is extracted as surplus value. As Marx pointed out, this relationship is exploitative at its core, meaning that the "reciprocal" recognition is skewed in favor of capital, not labor. - **Instrumental vs. Mutual Recognition**: Hegel’s idea of mutual recognition requires a genuine respect for the other’s will and autonomy. Yet, in a capitalist framework, the relationship between employer and employee is fundamentally instrumental, with labor valued primarily as a means of profit. This utilitarian view of human labor stands in stark opposition to Hegel’s ethical recognition, where individuals should be valued as ends in themselves. Winfield’s appeal to “freedom” in such a market structure seems hollow under closer scrutiny, as it reduces workers to tools within an exploitative hierarchy. ### 3. **Winfield's Defense of Class Society as an End in Itself** - **Assumption of Class Necessity**: Winfield’s argument that a just society "must be a class society" presupposes that economic organization inherently benefits from hierarchical class distinctions. However, this is not a universal truth but rather a product of capitalist ideology. Many non-capitalist economic models-such as worker cooperatives and communal ownership-successfully operate without hierarchical class distinctions, showing that productivity, innovation, and freedom can thrive outside the constraints of class stratification. - **Misinterpretation of Individual Autonomy**: Winfield suggests that a classless society would curtail individual freedom by imposing a "universal proletarianization" under state control. This is a misrepresentation of classless society theories, many of which advocate for decentralized, democratically managed economic systems. In cooperative or communal models, individual autonomy is often enhanced as workers collectively own and govern their workplace, exercising direct control over their labor and its conditions, rather than being subordinated to capitalist employers. Therefore, Winfield’s critique of classlessness conflates state-centric command economies with all forms of classless organization, a logical error that weakens his stance. ### 4. **Inadequate Foundation of Rights on Rational Will Alone** - **Overreliance on Abstract Rationality**: Winfield grounds rights in the universal rational will, yet he rejects any natural or historical basis for rights, aiming to construct them from pure logical necessity. However, detaching rights from material conditions and social needs risks rendering them overly abstract and disconnected from real-world injustices. By relying exclusively on rationality, Winfield neglects the social and economic contexts that shape individuals’ lived experiences of rights and freedom. Rights, for example, are meaningfully constrained by economic inequality-people in poverty lack equal access to basic freedoms, regardless of their rational will. - **Self-Justification as Circular Reasoning**: Winfield’s argument against foundationalist views on rights leads him to assert that rights are “self-grounding,” or justified by the very interactions they enable. This approach verges on circular reasoning. If rights justify themselves through their necessity for rational freedom, any social structure that claims to uphold rational freedom could, in theory, define and limit rights as it sees fit. This opens the door to relativistic abuses of rights in the name of preserving “freedom,” since any particular society could claim its version of freedom is the true one, without requiring objective justification. ### 5. **Economic Freedom vs. Actual Freedom** - **Market Freedom as Limited Freedom**: Winfield’s portrayal of economic freedom as equivalent to true freedom rests on a narrow definition of autonomy that aligns closely with individualistic capitalist ideals. However, a broader view of freedom-encompassing social and relational dimensions-reveals that true freedom requires more than mere market participation. In capitalist economies, most workers are bound to labor for others to survive, with limited capacity to shape or control the means of production. True freedom, therefore, might instead require communal or cooperative ownership structures, where individuals collectively manage production and determine economic policies that align with shared social values. - **Economic Inequality as a Constraint on Autonomy**: By claiming that class society secures economic freedom, Winfield overlooks how economic inequality inherently limits autonomy. Wealth inequality translates into power disparities, with the economically privileged exerting control over political, legal, and cultural structures. These power imbalances mean that those without wealth are less free, even in supposedly democratic systems. Winfield’s defense of class society inadvertently supports a model that allows the wealthy to dominate others, contradicting his claim that all participants enjoy mutual respect and freedom. ### In Conclusion Winfield’s Hegelian defense of class society against Marxist critiques contains critical flaws. His reliance on abstract ideals of freedom and reciprocal recognition ignores the lived realities of economic constraints, inequality, and coercion in capitalist systems. The argument collapses under scrutiny, as it fails to substantiate how market-based class structures can offer true autonomy or mutual respect, especially when confronted with the systemic imbalances and exploitative practices inherent in capitalism. In short, Winfield’s theoretical vision upholds a flawed conception of freedom that ultimately serves as a rationalization for economic injustice rather than a genuine path to individual and collective autonomy.

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

@intellectual421 Was this written by ChatGPT? At least, it seems like it was used to aid in writing it. This isn't an internal critique, but a bunch of external points that completely ignore the system Winfield is building on. Just the first points on false freedom in markets due to inequality have nothing to do with Hegelianism, which rejects equality.

[@g.boychev9355]

Your relationship to production is limited in capitalism too. You don't decide on your own to have a business, the bank or financial entrepreneurs decide if your business project is economically feasible and if you should get the funding to execute it. There is no formal difference if the institution deciding what gets produced is a bank or an investment market or whatever communal institutions exist in a classless society - you still need social approval to create any project larger than doing artisinal work in your garage.

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

@g.boychev9355 It was well explained in the text itself: your personal capacity or availability of the option has nothing to do with it. It's the principle that the option to not be a prole for the state or community is open by whatever means you find either by yourself, with others, with something existing, or with risking something completely new. There is both a formal difference and a content difference. Selling to people whatever I have within maintaining rights, and them deciding they want it or not, for how much, has nothing to do with communal political decisions or bank decisions.

[@g.boychev9355]

​@@AntonioWolfphilosophy The option is open to you in a classless society. You're free to try to organize any economic initiative. Make a business plan - what resources you need, what you want to do, how you will organize the tasks within the business, how you will distribute your product - and present it to the commune. That the resources are all communal and that you wouldn't be selling anything but rather distributing your product freely is irrelevant for the fact that you still have economic freedom, that is: the freedom to choose your work and support yourself by your own labor. Selling property on a market has never been the only exclusive way to achieve that, let alone being the logical necessity for economic freedom.

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

@@g.boychev9355 >The option is open to you in a classless society. You're free to try to organize any economic initiative. Make a business plan - what resources you need, what you want to do, how you will organize the tasks within the business, how you will distribute your product - and present it to the commune. That's the problem. That's stupid. What has the community to do with *me* and *you* so long as we aren't infringing any rights? Nothing. It's no one else's business what I sell and what you buy. There is no reason to have a third party involved at all. We can make it work between ourselves. If it turns out to not be profitable, we will find out. If it turns out wildly profitable, either the state competes with me, decides that this popular thing may indeed be unethical, or leaves me be.

[@g.boychev9355]

​@@AntonioWolfphilosophy The community has everything to do with me and you under capitalism and under any form of society really. I can't acquire capital outside of the socially recognized institutions that allow me to acquire capital and I can't run a business outside of the institution of the market and I can't take obligations or claim rights against others outside of the legally recognized contractual forms. The difference between capitalist society and a hypothetical communist society would be in what the institutions are. We can make it work between ourselves under communism too. We can make anything work, from slavery to drug cartels, the question is what we want to do and how.

[@kyoshinka]

I will watch this video taking in mind the incredibly huge difference between discretion and volition. Discretion is not the same as volition. Just because you have the ability to act does not mean necessarily that whatever people do is freedom or comes from the will of the people. It just is not true. People can act in ways which violate their own rights, people can act in ways which are contrary to their own needs. So, it's important to keep this in mind when making a true claim against Marx. I've seen too many people conflate these two. Discretion and volition.

[@Booer]

6:00 wage slave is an evolution of slavery. Being able to quit has nothing to do with how that term is used. 10:45 the ACP has and is continuing to work out the distinction of capitalist from entrepreneurialism- this isn’t antithetical to communism.

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

Wage work is not slavery categorically. Wage slavery is a slimy moralist term you throw around knowing full well what you want to imply despite it making no sense. The ACP isn't a communist org, their redefinition is an abuse of language as relates to Marxism.

[@kyoshinka]

@@AntonioWolfphilosophy Why is it slimy? Who are the socialists sliming bro? You may call it ignorant but you do sound like you have some more moral qualms with the use of the word. I'm curious what you mean by that

[@kyoshinka]

well this sounded pretty lousily written. I'm disappointed. I actually thought he might have a point. Got my fingers curled up and everything. Very spooky title.

[@theeternalempire7235]

Youve made 5 comments already showing nothing but your seething. Calm down and cope

[@kyoshinka]

@@theeternalempire7235 😆 Alrighty bucko. Thanks for telling me I'm coping and seething etc. etc.. Have a good day/night.

[@kyoshinka]

Before accusing communism of being against freedom, please inform me of how a "free market" necessarily implies a market for freedom. Oh wait. You can't! LMAO

[@jemandoondame2581]

"Injstice" "Marxist call" pick one

[@benzur3503]

11:43 what stops you from finding such willing people in a classless society? Where in capitalist society the whole or at least the most of a common workers life is devoted to maintaining their fiscal survival, under communism recognising the economical needs for survival and flourishing which has to be organised is to be identified to have its necessities organised societally. The realm of personal freedom to craft any luxury once those minimal conditions are filled out and organised isnt rejected. If you cant find willing collaborators for your ideas, welp. Tough cookie. Under capitalism the freedom of interest is the freedom to use capital to convince people to put aside their personal interest. Under communism the interest needs to be engaged as it is if one is willing to collaborate in producing according to it. The fetish of money does not reduce the choice in performing the labor to “should i do this or should i starve?” for efforts which are not necessary to prevent starvation. “For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” -Karl Marx, The German Ideology

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

The time you linked doesn't make sense with what you commented, so I'll freely interpret it. I assume you're referring to what can be produced and how. You have an abstract idealist view of production, like Marx does despite claiming he's a materialist. Most things in capital are frivolous luxury beyond any need as recognized by Marxists. The aim of markets is not to satisfy survival, it is to sell whatever people want, including the selling of the making of wants (marketing). You cannot plan these kinds of wants, it doesn't make sense. Beyond broad politically established boundaries to certain things a community decides they do not want or do want to promote in them, individuals can produce and exchange between each other however they wish, with the market allowing one to to unify their desires with the desire of others through value exchange. This isn't play of personal or collective kind, nor is it directly a serious thing of survival effort for both. This is frivolous desires that find their arbitrary reality in finding sellers and buyers if the most varied kinds and most inane things. An individual finds their freedom in having the option to choose for themselves either to follow established trends, or to break with them. The Marx quote is one I consider idealist garbage these days. If you have worked in production or distribution today, you have a realization that the world you live in is not the pastoral homesteading Marx is dreaming of. In that world you neither need nor are needed by anyone, hence you have no responsibility to meet any production quotas. You can do as you please precisely because you have no needs. You *can* do this today in this society if you personally like. There are states where you can buy dozens of acres, pay very low property tax, and live off the land with the benefit of having worked a few years for buying modern technology and knowledge for increasing your private production. Almost nobody wants this. Why? We like our frivolity. The market is the freedom of arbitrary desire, and the choice to meet those desires as our means to satisfy ourselves and others. Individuals by and large decide this instead of political committees, though there are ways in which political decisions can rightly limit what is produced and how. If you allow for entrepreneurs to compete with state production, and you allow for private capital accumulation to chase fulfilling and making desires, what do you think you're advocating that China is not already doing today? It seems nothing, and it seems that Marx's poetic dream falls away.

[@benzur3503]

@@AntonioWolfphilosophy i am an idealist, i simply find marx’s critiques of capitalism to contain many valid conclusions. I dont oppose the existence of luxury, and as the woute shows neither does marx, i oppose people having to participate in producing luxuries by heternomic motivations, growing a disjointed and alienated understanding of their function in that production beyond necessity. Producing a luxury recognised and acted towards as a luxury by its producer is fine. A luxury being a necessity to keep a producer of it from exposure to the elements is absurd. A person choosing to collaborate not out of will to take part in the project they collaborate in but out of will to make money is a person detached from the effects of their labor. Do all the damn luxury markets you want. Do them with workers who have interest in the project for what it is, otherwise the class system incentivises two major issues A: an organising of reification to the class positions within the system by limiting potentials of lower classes, so as to maintain a larger serving class, what in capitalism manifests as the reinforcement of a reserve army of labor to motivate workers to remain in jobs which they would not have chosen without the threat to their use of their capacities, and B: the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, as the capitalist mode of production doesn’t motivate to produce commodities or services for the good of those commodities or services, but motivates to make money without limits, which motivates monopolies, which use what means they can to limit whichever uses their company takes part in making to only them and their customers. I apologise for repeating basic marxist shit you probably know, i just want to show where my understanding is coming from and how i dont see your or Winfield’s answers to be contending with those issues.

[@ShiningSta18486]

Metaphysical gibberish ngl and the language is incredibly flowery without actually saying anything. "Class is good bc the market lets people voluntarily express themselves" as if the Market isnt in the process of monopolization into fewer and fewer hands due to the machinations of capital and social mobility isnt hindered at all lol

[@leavesofgrass1917]

Spot on

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

@ShiningSta18486 It's basic English for the most part. You mad that your religion was denied?