"Liberty too can corrupt, and absolute liberty can corrupt absolutely."
-- Gertrude Himmelfarb





When conquered people pay tribute to their conquerors, is this free exchange, is this
fair exchange? When propertyless people pay their proprietarian employers in surplus
labor (surplus value), is this free exchange, is this fair exchange? If it is imperative that
people produce in order to have what they need to live, then how can it be said that
propertyless people are free to access the land or the factories they must have access
to in order to produce what they need? Do productive workers really not mind it that they
have to give a large part of what they produce to those who happen to have an exclusive
and privileged right of ownership of material land and physical factories? If workers
submit themselves to the rule of capital, is this submission the best freedom that
capitalism can offer to those who produce?





"There remains the necessity to frame, clarify, and defend social ideals. Without vision
there can be no viable political reflection. Indeed, without vision, there can be no viable
politics."
-- Peter T. Manicas, The Death of the State, 1974