The Foundation for Capitalism

“We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless.” - Lech Walesa. Freedom - the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Such a small definition for a word with so much meaning. This miniscule word has inspired people and even started wars.This topic is rarely regarded; even though we would certainly know if someone took our freedom from us.

There is humanly no possible way to merely or easily define what “freedom” truthfully is, as every distinct person and each social order has opposing restrictions for what this belief is. Bureaucrats and social researchers, for example, have vastly diverse philosophies of what institutes freedom. This primeval belief has been ingrained into mankind since the beginning of time. Century after century mankind has fought in numerous wars for this concept of “Freedom”.

Freedom is a word we all know; we all hear it ring in our ears, but what is freedom really? The dictionary definition is “the condition of being free of restraints”. We are all fettered by something whether it is a cell phone or bigger like an addiction; we all have something that makes us feel a little restrained at times. Other times however we get so caught up in wanting to do whatever we want that we don’t see that is not really freedom. Another definition of freedom from the dictionary is that it is “a right or the power to engage in certain actions without control or interference”.

“We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless.” - Lech Walesa. Freedom - the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Such a small definition for a word with so much meaning. This miniscule word has inspired people and even started wars.This topic is rarely regarded; even though we would certainly know if someone took our freedom from us.

The Meaning of Freedom Freedom as defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary; the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action (Merriam-Webster, 1883). We all make choices so that would mean we all have freedom or so one would think. If we all truly have freedom then we should be allowed to do what we want, where we want, and how we want, however; that would lead to chaos. Just because we have freedom does not mean that we run around going crazy. That is where laws come in, they prevent the chaos from destroying society and the freedoms that we enjoy.

Freedom is defined in many different ways: The state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint;Political or national independence; Personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery.(Dictionary)

Karl Marx developed his theory on class division by suggesting that all societies have two major classes, a ruling class and a subject class. The ruling class owned a means of production such as land or capital, whereas the subject class did not. Marx argued that this leads to the ruling class exploiting the subject class. The ruling class use a superstructure of the legal and political systems to justify its position and prevent protests by the subject class. In capitalist societies the main classes are the bourgeoisie (capitalist) and the proletariat (working class). In these societies the bourgeoisie exploits the working class through wage labour. The capitalists pay wages to the workers, but make a profit because they pay the workers less than the value of what they produce. Capitalism is the newest type of class society but it will also be the last. Eventually it will be replaced by a communist society in which the means of production

Socialism came from a huge variety of influences.The ideas of socialism came from a few men who believed in a utopia. They believed worker's conditions improve if production was controlled by the government. Socialism also believed in common ownership of something. There’s different types of socialism ideals. One is the state directed economy which either state or work cooperatives owns production but is directed by the government. The other is de-centralized economy of which the ownership of enterprises is accomplished forms of cooperative workers. Socialism and communism has the same ideals for their country. They both believed in a perfect or utopian society. The government owns everything including their people and production. Socialism believed an ideal government, controlling all means of production and their own people.

Freedom is a state of mind and being in which a person has no barriers to hold them back. These barriers can be financial, emotional, mental or physical. I think that if someone didn’t have these barriers, they don’t necessarily achieve freedom, but they have the chance to. To go beyond this though, freedom needs to first be achieved within. When someone is free in their heart and their mind, I think they’ve achieved true freedom. In short, freedom is the freedom from restraints and the freedom to do what they please.

Capitalism refers to an economic system whereby ownership of as well as investment in the means of production is made by private corporations or individuals to whom wealth accrues since they own the means of production. Society morphed from the feudal system to a bourgeois one that did not eliminate class antagonisms (Marx and Engels para 8). Instead, “it has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones” (Marx and Engels para 9). At best, the capitalist society that emerged in place of the feudal system merely served to abridge class antagonism by erasing multiple hierarchical classes and replacing them with two classes, the proletariats and the bourgeoisie (Marx and Engels para 10). The bourgeoisie refers to the wealthy class who own the means of production and can, therefore, accumulate incremental wealth by subjecting the proletariat into endless labor. On their part, the proletariat does not own the means of production and are forced to sell their labor cheaply to earn a living, ultimately sustaining the capitalist machinery.

Capitalism and Communism are both economic systems, adopted by different regions, which has played a major role in how society has been shaped in the 20th century. Capitalism, is simply an economic system where things like property and/or businesses are owned and controlled by individuals instead of the government. The United States was one of the first majorly developed regions to adopt this philosophy and it has had a huge impact on the global economy by allowing free market competition and by promoting the culture of work. Communism, is an economic system in which things like businesses and property are own and controlled by the government. Communism was adopted by the Soviet Union and played a critical role in global politics and social classes.

     I think that there is no good definition for the word freedom for the simple fact nobody’s free

Today we accept that freedom is a basic right human right but what exactly is freedom. 1On one hand, there is physical freedom. People who are not imprisoned or enslaved are free. On the other hand, there is freedom as a the right to act, speak or think what you want. People cannot reach their full potential if they are not free in both senses of the word.

First, what is freedom? It's an ambiguous term that can hold many different meanings to different people. Where a person comes from, their socio-economic status, their race, age, gender and other factors play a role in defining what freedom is. It's used in many different senses, for example: is freedom being able to do as you like

Freedom has a large range of meaning. The encyclopedia Britannica defines freedom as “the quality or state of being free, and the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action” (Britannica). In the American society there is a lot of emphasis on freedom, and the right to be free, but one must question to what extent we are truly “free”.