The Relationship between Labor and Freedom in Classical Social Theory

The agenda of classical social theory has been formed to understand social and economic developments, the effects of these developments on society, and suggestions for solving social problems. The emergence of capitalist production and its impacts on society are areas where the intellectual activities of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim, known as founding sociologists, are concentrated. Changes in labor characteristics and the principles that shape working life have found a place among the various concepts and discussions of the founding sociologists, and a theoretical ground for understanding modern labor has been formed. Based on relevant theoretical discussions, the main goal of this article is to develop an inquiry into the possibility of considering the concepts of labor and freedom together. Consideration of freedom, one of the most ancient and deeply rooted issues in the history of thought, in the context of labor will help us understand in which situations labor can create an opportunity for freedom or, on the contrary, a different form of slavery. The historical tracking of the relationship between labor and freedom is another element aimed in this article, from master–slave duality in Ancient Greece to the modern worker who has the right to freely sell his/her own labor power. In precapitalist societies, the structure of freedom that excludes labor made labor respectable, along with 19th-century social thinking. Contrary to the precapitalist freedom structure that excludes labor, the 19th-century social thought elevated labor to a respectable position. In this context, the relationship established by classical social theorists between labor and freedom has been effective in breaking away from the traditional definition of labor and becoming a reality that cannot be ignored for daily life, and in this reality, it becomes a necessary and desirable position in terms of freedom from time to time.