Hegel's Oppression And Its Effect On Society

Our economic and political system is not only supposed to work as a base for progress; it is also presumed to allow everyday people the opportunities to succeed and sustain their basic lives. In a world dominated by capitalism, humans are not getting the freedom they require to survive because they are being exploited, oppressed, and ignored by the dominant force or state. This topic of state oppression is an important one to discuss because the results of state actions affect society in a broad sense and similarly, it affects individual people. The state and powerful corporations have connections and more resources to hide their exploitative actions and evade accountability. Discussing Marx’s alienation, it will become clear that it is a result of Hegel’s

Furthermore, without alienation, there would be no need for the state or powerful corporations to impose a false consciousness on society.
To begin to understand the master-slave dialect, we must analyze Hegel’s concept of self-consciousness first. Hegel suggests that self-consciousness only exists when it is recognized by another (Hegel, 1977, p.111). He believes that because beings are conscious of objects, it suggests self-awareness as a subject that is separate from those objects. This is referred to as the Notion. When self-consciousness “comes out of itself” it is called a process of Recognition; where self-consciousness loses itself, finds itself as another being, and supersedes the other self-consciousness because it sees it as its own self (Hegel, 1977, p.111). Ending the process is the play of Forces, where “they recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another” (Hegel, 1977, p.112). This leads to two extremes of self-consciousness opposing one another with one recognizing, while the other is being recognized. (Hegel,