Happiness- third

Happiness
or How I Stopped Fearing and Learned that Happiness Doesn’t Exist for Capitalists


For political theorists Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill their theories are defined in terms of how they view the world and view happiness. However, one must ask is there really such a thing as happiness? Or is it just something that one calls the achievements one has in life? When looking at the idea of happiness and relating it to modern political theory one must decide what happiness is for one's self. The ideas held by an individual about happiness will color how one views ideas and thoughts about happiness of other people. Across the modern period of political theory there have been many conceptions of what is important for a government and society to be successful. These notions are directly related to the theorist's ideas about happiness. How could a government be legitimate without addressing the idea of happiness, either for the individual citizen or for the majority of the citizenship?
Karl Marx thinks of happiness as not being alienated. The alienation of the self from the self is a constant struggle for in his view for the proletariat. Jobs, in Marx’s view, had become an identity rather than a means to an end. The people becoming members of an estranged political state, and being alienated from each other become very important aspects of his view of happiness. If the people can free themselves from the alienation of the current society, then they can have peaceful lives where they have more than just their job, and be happy. The people could work to sustain themselves, and then thrive in the other areas they want to explore to fulfill themselves. Marx suggests places where alienation is prevalent such as: society, government and religion. The religious alienation that Marx describes is between religious society and political society. To stop alienation one must become free first by the government breaking from religion, and then secondly from government in a broader more total break, which most likely come through a revolution from the proletariat.
Marx sees the communist revolution as inevitable, and he banks that the happiness he envisions for society is also inescapable. Therefore, he has a hopeful viewpoint for the future of society because he sees happiness inevitable; the workers will rise and the alienation will stop. This hope makes him very different from other political theorists, such as John Stuart Mill, who are looking at happiness as something that is gained through individual freedoms.
John Stuart Mill wrote:
What are called duties to ourselves are not socially obligatory… The term duty to oneself, when it means anything more than prudence, means self-respect or self development; and for none of these is anyone accountable to his fellow creatures, because for none of them is it for the good of mankind that he be held accountable to them.
This quotation expemlifies how Mill percieves happiness. He views as something that happens on an indivdual level. People are happy because of their ability to do what is right for their singular interests. Mill was more of an individualist than Marx. He wrote about bettering one’s self, and working against the opression of the majority to live as someone outside of the mainstream. He was an elitist that thought there were people that were better equipt to thrive intellectually, but he also thought that people could be educated to higher levels than they would normally be able to reach. Mill thought that social tyranny was the worst form of tyranny because it was harder stop and guard against. Mill believes that no government even one that has the people’s backing should have the right to coerce the expression of people’s opinions, because he denies “the right of the people to exercise such coercion… The power itself is illegitimate.”
Mill’s idea of a legitimate governement was one that gave people the freedom from regulation unless they were harming someone else with their actions. The actions of man that impede other men’s ability to live and think are illegitimate in Mill’s estimation. For Mill there is no excuse for being opressed. Mill’s idea of happiness would then most likely be the abilty to be unrestricted and to be one’s self without judgement and persicution from society.
Mill and Marx were contemporaries. They have two different views on what kind of government is legitmate and how people should be regulated. Mill believes that people should have less regulation, and Marx believes the that people should regulate themselves for themselves. They have some similar themes in their writings. They both thought things needed to change, but they varied on how drastically. Mill is more of a reformist, and Marx is more of a revolutionary. Their ideas do, however, compliment each other. Mill wants freedom from control and freedom from the judgement of society, and Marx wants freedom from alienation of the people. They are both reacting to the times that they lived in. Mill is reacting from an elite view, and Marx is reacting from a worker’s viewpoint. Mill is reacting to the oppressive nature of Victorian Era England, and Marx is reacting to the henious conditions of the working class from the beginnings of Industrial Revolution. Mill was comfortable in his situation and had no need to move up in the world. While Marx was more contemplative of the greater ills of all society. They both agreed that social education was absolutely necessary for society to thrive. People needed to be educated so that they could see their situations and how to better themselves. Marx would say that wasn’t enough because there would still be alienation of the worker.
Mill and Marx’s views on happiness were also intertwined with the time they lived in. They were very specific in how they thought their world needed to change because of the circumstances that they were privy to. Both theorists have ideals of happiness that can be gleened from their writings.They contrast inspite of being contemporaties because they were focused on different things. Marx had a more social view of happiness. Mill had a more individual view of happiness. While Marx focused on the workers, Mill only mentions them in passing as they can move up through education.
I believe that happiness is not possible, because how can one judge happiness? If you try to use vague ideas to define the term you end up finding individuals' preferences rather than an overarching definition. The easiest way for me to understand happiness is that it is the achievement of goals. It is difficult for me to understand how happiness could be possible. In Marx’s works he talks about the inevitability of the Communist revolution and it has not happened; his happiness has not been achieved. It is also very likely that it never will be in today’s society that is even more capitalistic than Marx’s time of the beginnings of capitalist society. That being said I want Marx’s ideas to prevail. If I could choose a world to live in, I would choose the one that Marx writes about. Helping neighbors and being all for all are very appealing to me, especially because of the society that we live in today. Today we have a disjointed community where it is more difficult to relate to others because we are all programmed to go after our consumer needs, rather than look out for each other. A woman on the street that sees a scruffy looking teenager is more likely to pull her purse close to her than ask him if he needs help. The revolution that could happen is something that I want to be able to comprehend and that I want other people to be able to see and appreciate with me. Unfortunately Marx’s ideas have been associated with the Cold War and Americans are not particularly susceptible to ideas that they affiliate with a great enemy from the past. One is also hard pressed to find people who don’t merge happiness and financial success together in the US. It would be astonishing if people could take a step back from the opinions of old and look at the opinions of Marx in a new light.
The implications of his ideas of community are nearly beyond comprehension there would have to be a drastic change in mindset for people to really get behind his ideas. The idea of working not just to get ahead of the rest of the community, but instead to help better everyone is so alien from how we survive today; that I believe it would be just the sort of change needed to reunite our fragmented society. If his revolution (and it would have to be such that it was focused on Marx’s particular ideals) happened now I believe that the world would be a much better place to thrive. In my opinion happiness does not exist in today’s society because achievements are so precious to us; a drastic change, a revolution, could fix this. Society could focus on getting ahead together rather than racing so quickly to top of the mountain that some people get lost along the way. The Communist revolutions of the past have been, in my limited knowledge, more like reforms to make societies into the capitalist conception of communism. As I have thought more on Marx’s writings I tend to think that if the Communist upheaval of society came to fruition it would be something that would so change how we view the world and the people around us; that describing how that society would work is something that is a near impossibility.
Individual freedoms are not nearly as important to me as the greater good for society. Unfortunately the American West was founded on the beliefs of rugged individualism and self-reliance. For a person who is concerned about fellow human beings America is a difficult place to thrive. Survival is easy if one puts their head down and works for themselves, but if one wants to bring up society and the community around them how could that be accomplished with your head in the sand? Ignoring the poor will not stop them from being there, but if we could all work together for the good of each other not just the good of each, then wouldn’t we all be able to thrive? One might bring up the idea of free riders, but that is just a naïve concept if you think about happiness as being a part of a community. Free riders could occur because people believe that they will never get past a certain level in society so what is the point, if everyone was equal then why would not everyone what to work for the greater good? Happiness in a capitalist society is next to impossible. Equality and association with your fellow man are made even more difficult if class, or economic brackets divide you.
Political theorists’ views on society are directly related with their views of happiness, and one might lean towards a particular theorists’ view point, but happiness is in the eye of the beholder. Mill and Marx may have been contemporaries but they could not have thought more differently about happiness: Mill wanted individual freedom, and Marx wanted freedom from alienation. The question “What is happiness?” does not have a definitive answer. There are logics and reasoning that can be applied to try to find an answer, but there cannot be one all encompassing answer. Happiness is the goal of most human existence, and what happiness is varies from each to each, but there is much to be learned from reading and discussing other people’s perspectives on happiness.



Wooton, David, Modern Political Thought: Readings from Machiavelli to Nietzsche (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1996), 826.
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