Illusions of Freedom in the American Psyche:

Free Market Theology and the Myth of Capitalist Freedom

‘They must not like freedom or the market.’

The details needed for a proper citation escapes me, but the above statement from Rand
Paul defending his views on healthcare in an interview on one or another of the
mainstream news networks like CNN or MSNBC echoed a prominent line of
propagandistic reasoning in the ‘Libertarian’ movement that is particularly egregious. Free
Market Capitalism (i.e. neoliberalism) is assumed to be the only means for providing
individual freedom, and so if you do not like Free Market Capitalism (and the associated
1
removal of all state functions beyond ‘optimizing competition’ ) it is assumed that you
dislike ‘freedom’ and ‘individual choice’ (i.e. if you don't think like us you must not like
freedom…). Moving past the absurd irony that a group of supposed individualists are
repeating the same (and if I may say rather basic) line of reasoning, this argument that being
opposed to Free Market Capitalism (or to any form of Capitalism in the eyes of the average
American) some how makes you an opponent of freedom is especially irksome because
the basic ‘world view’ that underlies the Capitalist system of scarcity, competition and
hierarchical domination is antithetical to freedom for conscious, reasoning beings who
possess the potential for freewill.
Capitalism is an outgrowth of the mechanical evolutionary process through which
2
biology developed. In nature, scarcity impels competition and the subsequent desire for
hierarchical domination. Capitalism, reflecting the form of mechanical evolution, impels
scarcity to produce passing time oriented competition and the desire for hierarchical
domination. Natural selection, through passing time, leads to ‘evolution’.
Conscious, reasoning beings with the potential for free will do not, however, evolve
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in the same form as unreasoning beings. Humans evolve in what we might understand as
an epistemological process—by directing our attention towards different ideas and
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experiences our ‘state’ mind (our ‘world view’) is transformed. Our culture, the ideas,
philosophies, stories, images, symbols, myths, principles, etc. that we pass down from
generation to generation, form what we might for heuristic purposes think of as the body of
our conscious evolution. An individual’s state of mind changes in an instant (however long
that instant may take to occur in passing time), and so, unlike the process of mechanical
evolution, conscious evolution is not bound to passing time. More change can happen in
an instant than has happened for centuries or millennia. At a more ‘practical’ level, we can
create technology to transform our biology faster than our biology can adapt to external
stimuli. Again ironically, even purportedly Libertarian philosophers like John Stuart Mill
understood the widely agreed upon definition of free will as the capacity to, through the use

1
Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics Lectures trans. Burchell.
2
Barnesmoore, “Conscious vs. Mechanical Evolution: Transcending Biocentrist Social Ontologies” Environment and Social Psychology
1(2).
3
Ouspensky, Tertium Organum.
4
States of matter are an apt metaphor.

of reason, direct one’s will in a manner that is free from determination of external stimuli.
Freedom requires reason, and reason requires conscious evolution; if a person does not
direct their will towards the cultivation of reason (and other such epistemological faculties
like emotion and intuition) they cannot be free.
With freedom comes responsibility. Conscious evolution, freed from
determination by passing time, is not a necessary function of passing time and devolution
becomes possible. If a being that is capable of conscious evolution does not direct their will
towards ideas and experiences that elevate their state of mind (that broaden their
intelligence, deepen their wisdom, enhance their emotional sensitivity, etc.) they will
devolve towards the unreasoning maelstrom of mechanical evolution. If a society does not
direct its collective will towards such ideas and experiences the potential for individuals to
do so is diminished (though thankfully not extinguished).
Capitalism as we know it is the outgrowth of an obsolete form of evolution. A
society developed from the principle of scarcity and the passing time regimented
competition and hierarchical domination it impels socializes its people in a manner that
traps them within the form of mechanical evolution and thus negates their potential for
conscious evolution and the quest for freewill therein. Capitalism, by the very essence of its
underlying mechanics and the assumptions concerning human nature implicit therein, is
anathema to freedom. Scarcity, competition and the desire for hierarchical domination
actively negate the potential for conscious evolution and, thus, for the cultivation of reason
and the actualization of the human potential for freewill therein. So no, we do not dislike
capitalism (free market or otherwise) because we have some secret or unconscious aversion
to ‘individual choice’ and ‘freedom’, we despise capitalism because it actively negates the
potential for humans to attain a state of being in which freedom is truly possible.

Luke R. Barnesmoore is Co-Founder/Director of the University of British Columbia

Department of Geography’s Urban Studies Lab, Executive Director of the Center for
Critical Interdisciplinary Studies 501(c)3 and Associate Editor of Environment and Social
Psychology (Whioce).