The Doomed Enslavement of the Individual in Capitalist Society as Viewed by Marx Theoderek Wayne

Bourgeois society enslaves the individual such that any attempt to transcend one's environmental limitations results in self-destruction. Nietzsche "slave morality" theory is applicable to the works of Dostoyevsky, Mann, and Ibsen, and posits that an individual uprising under a bourgeois blanket leads to reactivity, not activity. Though each man calls for individuals values to be raised in some way (in the case of Nietzsche, by an über-mensch), each understands the impossibility of that under bourgeois rule. Marx argues that the only way to restore individuality is for the proletariat to band together and overthrow the society that hinders its freedom. Only then will slave morality be erased as individuals forge active change.

Nietzsche's distaste for modern society is evident as he prods his reader to critique moral values, to question the values of our values (First Essay, 6, p.20). He introduces the concept of superiority of the nobility to the common individual through linguistics. He discovers that the word "good" has the "same conceptual transformation" for "noble" and "aristocratic," whereas "bad" is associated with "common" and...