Lecture 6: Marx Con't Flashcards
Marx on capitalism
Marx believed capitalism would inevitably fail
socialism
the 5th stage of socioeconomic development
key features of socialism
- Abolition of private ownership of production
- Collective ownership of land, industry, and technology
- Production aimed at the public good, not private gain
- Centralized control of major institutions (ex. Medicine, education) by the state
class consciousness
- Worker’s awareness of their exploitation by the bourgeoisie
- The Proletariat must recognize their oppression to organize and act
Proletariat Revolution
- Actions: overthrow the bourgeoisie and the current production system
- Result: socialism emerges as the synthesis from class struggle
Marx on communism
Humanity inevitable destiny, according to Marx
key features of communism
- Communitarian mode of production: collective ownership of all resources
- Abolition of social classes: no class oppression or exploitation
- End of alienation: people achieve self-determination and true emancipation
Marx and Engel’s early views on the law
the law is a tool of the ruling class
purpose of law according to Marx and Engels
protect and advance the economic and political interests of the bourgeoisie
Marx and Engel’s foci
- Law
- Customary rights
- Private property
Marx’s articles on law, customary rights, and private property
- Wrote five articles for the Rheinische Zeitung titled “Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood”
- Criticized a new law prohibiting wood gathering in Rhenish forests in Germany, based on revisions to the 1837 Forestal Theft Act
Other German States’ Restrictions on law, customary rights, and private property
- Baden (1833): 220 rules and punishments governing forest use
- Thuringia and Saxe-Meningen: Similar laws enforced strict forest regulations
specific restrictions on law, customary rights, and private property
- Written permits are required for gathering berries and mushrooms
- Dead leaves and forest litter allowed for fodder only in extreme need
- Cutting trees for uses like Maypoles, Christmas trees, and tools was punishable by fines and imprisonment
cusomary rights (wood-gathering)
- Peasants had traditional rights to gather wood and other resources in forests
- Subsistence rights date back to ancient practices, like biblical laws (Leviticus) mandating help for the poor
- Forests provided vital resources: fuel, food, and materials for housing and farming
Industrialization’s Impact (wood-gathering)
- 19th-century crises and industrial growth restricted access to forests
- Timber demand skyrocketed for:
1. Railroads (beech for ties)
2. Machinery and mining (oak)
3. Shipbuilding (hardwoods like oak, elm, and ash)
legal restrictions on wood-gathering
- Forest ownership shifted to the Prussian government (by 1841, over half of Rhenish forests)
- Aggressive enforcement by forest police led to soaring prosecutions for wood theft
- 1836: 75% of prosecutions in Prussia were forest-related
- By 1842, one conviction per four inhabitants in Baden
key notes on wood-gathering (Marx)
- Reflects a clash between capitalism and the last remnants of common land ownership
- Criminalizing forest use symbolized the rise of capitalist exploitation
Marx on contradictions in the law
- Marx argued the law on wood theft targeted the poor and served private interests
- Claimed to protect forests but benefited rich landowners by forcing violators to work for them and collecting fines and compensation
- Poor’s customary rights conflicted with private property laws: Rooted in ambiguous medieval property rights, now shifted to strict private ownership & gathering fallen wood was treated as theft, punishing the poor unfairly
- Provisional assemblies, dominated by landowners, passed laws favouring private interest
- Marx exposed the law as biased, sacrificing the poor for landowners’ gain
political economy
the analysis of how politics, economics, and law interact in shaping societal structures
scholars on Marx’s theoretical focus during his articles on wood thefts
- Franz Mehring: Marx’s reasoning was still based on justice, not economics
- Paul Phillips: Articles show Marx’s early use of economic interests to explain law
- Peter Linebaugh: Articles revealed Marx’s ignorance of the political economy at the time
patterns in Marx’s historical legal analysis
- Class exploitation
- Property as an opportunity for profit-making
- Legislation serving the interests of the propertied class
Historical Example: The Black Act and Customary Rights
- English Law in 1723, expanded over decades, made permanent in 1758
- Introduced 50+ capital offenses, targeting crimes in forest estates (poaching, wood theft, trespassing)
- Forest villagers (the “Blacks”) disguised themselves to resist landowners’ control
- Customary rights of villagers included wood gathering, hunting, and grazing for survival
- Landowners enclosed forests with fences, denying villagers access
- Forest resources exploited for capital accumulation, creating conflict between villagers (users) and landowners (exploiters)
criminalization of custom & class power
- Criminalization of custom: traditional practices like wood gathering became crimes
- Laws shifted to defend property over people, favouring landowners
- Whigs framed resistance by the “Blacks” as treason and sedition to protect their property and status
- Justice became a tool for the propertied class, reflecting their economic dominance
Thompson on the criminalziation of custom and class power
The Black Act illustrates how law served as an instrument of agrarian capitalism, aligned with Marx and Engel’s critique of law as protecting class interests
Marx on censorship laws
- Marx’s early writings in the 1840s focused on law and censorship of the press
- He used a dialectical method to expose contradictions in censorship laws and counter his opponents
- At this stage, Marx followed Hegel’s idea of law as an expression of freedom
- Marx described censorship as “criticism of the monopoly of the government”
- He argued that censorship laws contradict the very idea of freedom they claim to protect
the new censorship instruction
- Marx’s early writings in the 1840s critiqued censorship laws as contradictions of freedom
- He used a dialectical approach to reveal how censorship opposes liberty
- Influenced by Hegel, Marx saw law as an expression of freedom and censorship as a monopoly of government criticism
- New censorship laws gave state censors arbitrary power requiring editors to meet strict qualifications while censors needed only vague traits like a tested frame of mind
- Marx critiqued the imbalance of power between writers and censors arguing that writers’ livelihoods depended on the subjective judgment of censors
- This arbitrary authority violated any objective legal standard
- Marx’s writings on press freedom laid the groundwork for his later theory of historical materialism
neo-marxian contributions to the law
- Marx and Engels critiqued laws as tools of the ruling class but did not create a coherent legal theory
- Neo-Marxian scholars like Pashukanis, Blabus, Renner, and Stone advanced Marxian legal theory
Two key approaches to Marxian legal analysis
instrumentalism & structuralism
instrumentalism
law directly serves the Bourgeoisie to maximize profits and control workers
structualism
law maintains capitalism through political, ideological, and economic spheres, but retains some autonomy
the labour theory of value
explains how class interests shape laws governing labour and commodities
commodities
objects created to satisfy humans’ wants with both use value and exchange value
use-value
utility of the commodity
exchange value
value based on the labour required to produce it
C-M-C
commodities sold for money to buy other commodities
M-C-M
money buys commodities sold at a profit (surplus value)
surplus value
profit generated from unpaid surplus labour by workers
exploitation
workers are paid subsistence wages, while their labour creates profits for capitalists
Commodity fetishism
- The belief that commodities’ value is inherent, ignoring labour as their source
- Workers lose control over their creations as independent, unchangeable objects
alienation in commodity fetishism
people view the social world through commodities, distorting their understanding of relationships
the role of money in commodity fetishism
- Conceals differences in commodities by abstracting their unique qualities into a universal value
- Transforms unique human labour into an abstract, universal measure of worth
Evgeny Pashukanis and Marxist Legal Theory
- Pashukanis was a leading Marxist legal theorist in Soviet Russia during the 1920s and 30s
- Known for his commodity exchange theory of law, outlined in The General Theory of Law and Marxism
- Before Pashukanis, Marxist-Lenninist views on law were instrumentalist, seeing law as a tool for the bourgeoisie to oppress the working class
- Pashukanis developed a more complex theory, drawing on Marx’s analysis of value and commodity exchange
the commodity exchange theory of law (Pashukanis)
- Pashukanis applied Marx’s concept of use-value and exchange-value to legal relationships
- Law emerges as a reflection of economic transactions in capitalist societies
- Legal concepts like “legal norm” and “legal subject” mirror commercial relationships
- Law regulates conflicts of interest in economic transactions, arising from private property and market competition
- Legal relationships become most apparent in capitalism, where workers sell their labor power as a commodity
- Law facilitates and mirrors the market, making it inherently bourgeois
- Under capitalism, people are treated as economic objects (commodities) and legal subjects (possessors of rights and duties)
Applying The Commodity Exchange Theory of Law to Crime
- Retribution in criminal law mirrors economic exchange between the offender and the state
- Punishment is proportional (principle of equivalency), matching the severity of the crime
- The criminal code functions like a price list assigning punishments for offenses
- Criminal justice procedures parallel market exchanges: public court proceedings ensure transparency (like checking a fair trade), adversarial trials allow offenders to “bargain” for liberty, and defence counsel serves as a broker in the legal process
- The state’s relationship with the offender operates within the framework of “fair trading” in bourgeois law
