When he describes capitalist society, Marx is constantly making the point that everything in it is under "illusions of the epoch", is dominated by "fetishism", and hence is unfree-except, of course, for the "fully conscious" revolutionary group. "As in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand". The freedom Marx has given with one hand he seems to be taking back with the other; everywhere he looks, everyone seems to be in chains. Yet if men are "free", how is it possible for them to have got into such a state of "unfreedom" in the first place? Or, alternately, if men are encased in a fly-bottle, how will it be possible for then to see things in any way but through a glass, darkly? If their whole outlook on life is "fetishistic", how will be possibel even to recognize that they are enslaved, let alone make the effort to set themselves free? The paradox here is the familiar paradox of self-deception. Who, exactly, is supposed to be doing the "deceiving"? If the subject himself, in what sense is it meaningful to say that he is actually "deceived"? If it is meaningful, how, once having suceeded, can he undo the job, and "undeceive" himself? These are perennial problems for a therapist, not to mention a philosopher; they are also central to Marx's analysis of capitalism as an "infantile disease", he might have said, of man, who with its passing was "comming into his own".