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Law, Marxism and the State

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International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique Aims and scope Submit manuscript

The doctrinal basis for scientific socialism still exists if a critical approach to adopted to the structural inequality in society.

Abstract

The Communist Manifesto’s salient point was set out in Critics of the Gotha Program as “From Each According to Their Abilities, to Each According to Their Needs” (Marx 1875, p. 19). The demise of communism in the former Soviet Union has caused its critics to claim that ‘revolutionary’ political theory has no basis for legal or philosophical development. The contention of those who oppose radical socialism achieved by the levelling of the classes proclaim that this is an unattainable goal. They argue that a ‘withering of the state’ is not possible for the implementation of Marx’s theory because of the centralisation that is inevitable in socialism which leads to an aggregate of relationships that redistributes power at the apex of the hierarchy. However, this appraisal has to be viewed with reference to the adoption by Marxists of socio legal theory as an analytical tool that has spawned arguments based on legal realism. This article examines the construction of these arguments within the sociology of law and looks at the inception of critical race theory which projects historical injustices towards a racial minority and seeks to transform society by exposing law as an instrument of oppression.

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Notes

  1. See [38].

  2. See [29].

  3. See [27].

  4. See [16].

  5. See [39].

  6. See [40].

  7. See [21].

  8. See [41].

  9. See [41].

  10. See [47].

  11. See [13].

  12. See [38].

  13. See [33].

  14. See [34].

  15. See [35].

  16. See [30].

  17. See [7].

  18. See [42].

  19. See [49].

  20. See [1].

  21. See [24].

  22. See [26].

  23. See [15].

  24. See [12].

  25. See [23].

  26. See [46].

  27. See [48].

  28. See [47].

  29. See [44].

  30. See [20].

  31. See [45].

  32. See [3].

  33. See [36].

  34. See [43].

  35. See [17].

  36. See [18].

  37. See [19].

  38. See [41].

  39. See [44].

  40. See [22].

  41. See [28].

  42. See [8].

  43. See [9].

  44. See [10].

  45. See [4].

  46. See [5].

  47. See [6].

  48. See [25].

  49. See [14].

  50. See [11].

  51. See [2].

  52. See [31].

  53. See [32].

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  1. London, UK

    Zia Akhtar

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Correspondence to Zia Akhtar.

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Zia Akhtar is a member of Grays Inn. He lives in the UK and is a specialist in public law and legal theory. His articles have appeared in several leading law journals.

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Akhtar, Z. Law, Marxism and the State. Int J Semiot Law 28, 661–685 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-015-9413-1

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