Mill Vs. Marx

Classical liberalism is concerned with the danger to individual freedom from government interference, as well as the power of majority opinion in areas of culture and lifestyle. In contrast, Marx argues that under the capitalism, people will be trapped economically; since the freedom in economic, the rich will be richer and the poor will be poorer.

I feel that both ideas present a very good conviction for its own opinion; however, I do see flaws in both of them. Such as, Mill believes that people should have the right to decide what is best for them, if the situation is only a self-concern matter, government should not interfere. To certain extend, I do agree with Mill. Marriage for instance, it should be a self-concern matter, even for homosexual, government, religion should never interfere. Everyone has their own belief in religion; just like in our liberty of rights, freedom of religion. Marriage is a form of belief, some believes it is a religion ritual, some sees it as a business transaction, and some feels that it is ceremony between two individuals that are in love with each other. Shouldn’t the homosexual have their own freedom of rights as well?

Nevertheless, under some situation, I do feel that the government should have the right over individual. For example, drunk driving is not only a self-concern matter, in statistics, a lot of car accidents happen due to drunk driving. Or abortion, some may debate that is a self-concern matter, but it is not. If a woman decides to get an abortion, what she is trying to do is to end a human life. In those cases, the government should step in and prevent those actions from individual.

On the other hand, Marx argues that capitalism will lead to dangers in the economic system. Since with the freedom in the economy, the rich will become richer and the poor will remain poor. In a way, Marx is right on that theory. That is why we have the occupy Wall Street today, it is the result from the capitalism. Nonetheless, without the capitalism, our economy in this country would never have grown. Without the works from capitalists our country would more likely to become like most of the Eastern Europe countries, or perhaps North Korea. People are only allowed to have certain wealth that the government allows them to have, or like China, the one child policy, and because in the Chinese tradition, male are favorable, the parents are likely to abort any female infant, which causes China to have such an unbalance gender population.

Mill and Marx’s theory both have their pros and cons, to pick one over the other is hardly reasonable. The keyword for people, the individuals to learn from both perspectives is “balance”. If people have too much freedom, failures are meant to happen. However, without freedom, our living-style will become pet-like.