Marx saw market freedom and equality as real yet turning into their opposites

Evidence

Marx is here discussing a very central feature of our current topic, namely, the relationship of the ideas and values of freedom and equality to the exchange system; and he argues, just like Milton Friedman, that these concepts and values are real and objective, organically generated by the market system itself, and dialectically are indissolubly linked to it. He goes on to add — I was going to say now unlike Milton Friedman, but a pause for reflection allows me to remember that even these unpleasant consequences are also acknowledged, and sometimes even celebrated, by the neoliberals — that in practice this freedom and equality turn out to be unfreedom and inequality. Meanwhile, however, it is a question of the attitude of the Proudhonists to this reversal, and of their miscomprehension of the ideological dimension of the exchange system and how that functions — both true and false, both objective and delusional, what we used to try to render with the Hegelian expression “objective appearance”: Exchange value, or, more precisely, the money system, is indeed the system of freedom and equality, and what disturbs [the Proudhonists] in the more recent development of the system are disturbances immanent to the system, i. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 572

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘objective appearance’ (Hegelian term) as ideology that is simultaneously true and false, objective and delusional.
• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s stated task of a cognitive map of position in the world system — market ideology as objective appearance is a key rendering of that position. — connects to: Marx maintains inequality and unfreedom are inherent realizations of exchange-based freedom. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 804; Marx held that non-bourgeois strata could turn the bourgeois public sphere against its creators — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2367; Subordinating politics to markets failed to produce either freedom or equality — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 457 (+1 more)