This paper is about individual autonomy in contemporary society. It investigates the possibility of forming individuals capable of thinking and acting by themselves in the context of capitalist relationships. According to such classical writers as Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno, who have analysed social transformations in contemporary society, when industrialization transforms the productive process working becomes a more and more abstract, strange and alienating activity to those who execute it. The subject loses, then, both the perception of this process and the principal parameter for the formation of the individuality. The power to control their own time and space decreases in the milieus where they could possibly carry out different experiences from those imposed by the laws of the market. Research done demonstrates that there are not actual favourable circumstances for the formation of autonomous individuals.
individuality; autonomy; industrial society