Laissez-Faire, Freedom, Labor

The shortcoming in the standard Capitalist concept of 'laissez-faire' is that of the Empiricist concept of 'freedom' in general--it leaves undiscerned apparently internally generated behavior that is actually the product of external conditioning. In contrast, Spinoza's concept of Adequate Causality, i. e. conduct determined by an Adequate Idea, recognizes and excludes such latent heteronomy. Now, probably the best-known instance of Adequate Causality is Kant's concept of conduct determined by a universalizable maxim. Another, implicit in the Ethics, is behavior that adheres to scientific law, e. g. eating on the basis of dietary principles. A third is suggested by Spinoza's example elsewhere of drawing a circle according to a constructive definition--skilled activity. Hence, Labor, as Marx conceives it, i. e. as the deliberate and controlled modification of given material, is an instance of the Rationalist concept of Freedom. Accordingly, the cardinality of the Labor Theory of Value in his system expresses not only a difference between Rationalist and Empiricist Psychology, but, perhaps, the superiority of the former.