o is to say that workers don’t have free will to leave one profession and join another? What is stopping them?” Marx would say that social conditioning is stopping them. Just as careful training effectively conditions soldiers to fight their own kind and follow orders, so the conditioning of society trains workers to always stay at their jobs. Those who leave their jobs are labeled as unstable, are denied new jobs, are denied credit, and have much trouble to deal with as a result. This gives rise to the question as to who is right with regard to modern society. While most workers would claim that they have free will in modern society, it could be true that they only believe this because they are trained to do so. Certainly people who are unstable are implicitly punished for not fitting the mold. So how many people work unhappily at their current jobs, or work harder than their co-workers and yet receive the same pay? How man can clearly see the excess profit they produce for the company, and yet resist the urge to demand a raise because of the potential threat of their being fired? These questions are the type that would have concerned Marx. Indeed, Marx’s writings and ideas struck such a vivid chord among many people, that the Communist system was tried around many parts of the world. But the Communist solution failed. The reason for this is that people need the illusion of free will. They must think that if they had made the right choices, or worked hard enough, they would have gone to the top of society. This, in turn, would greatly benefit the country in that this type of system involving reward for personal accomplishments would also enrich the country’s economy. Smith says that it is a merchant’s business to know how foreign trade will affect their individual wealth, but “to know in what manner it enriched the country, was no part of their business” (Smith 200). Smith is saying that as lon...
