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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

“Karl Marx applied his critical intelligence to Wealth of Nations… Where Smith had seen only the sunlight, Marx saw only the shadows thrown upon the human scene by the unimpeded exercise of individual liberty…” Elucidate.

  • UPSC 2016
  • Enlightenment and Modern Ideas

The sunlight-and-shadow image captures the ideological chasm between the Enlightenment's faith in unregulated individual liberty and Marx's exposure of its human costs.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • Smith's Sunlight: Liberty as Natural Harmony
  • Marx's Shadows: Liberty as Class Exploitation
  • Two Readings of the Same Liberty
  • Influences and the Wider Debate

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