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

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 …

…the masses' own slave morality vanish. The Greeks believed the individual should sacrifice himself for the development of the state, and modern thinkers believe that the development of the state should be sacrificed for the individual. As we forge ahead into the new millennium we must ask ourselves whether Plato's and Marx's ideas are contradictory, or if we can synthesize them into a future that feeds the unfettered development of both man and his community.