Marx’s conception of freedom leads to a radical critique of bourgeois society, the society we live in today. That form of society is underpinned by the liberal conception of freedom, and Marx has shown this conception to be confused. In the first instance, Marx’s account of freedom as self-governance is incompatible with basic tenets of the bourgeois order, most notably the capitalist mode of production and its social laws. For example, as Max Horkheimer puts it, in bourgeois society, the unemployed worker is asked to accept as objectively necessary the fact that economic laws make it impossible for him to be hired, because conditions are such that firms cannot afford to take on new staff (‘The Little Man and the Philosophy of Freedom’). But of course the laws governing social systems, such as economic systems, are social, and so up to us, and so not at all impossible to change – so long as we take charge of our conditions of existence. In treating these laws as immutable, bourgeois society abnegates responsibility for this task, failing to give expression to our freedom to self-govern.