#19662 - 4.B.I. Critical Theories Marx Marxism Overview - Jurisprudence

MARXISM OVERVIEW

• Materialism = Marx’s philosophical method

• Commodification = from USE value to EXCHANGE value; M-C-M

  • Modernity = DRIVES commodification; as everything gets commodified – capitalism gets exposed

    • This is bolstered by globalization

• Human vs. political emancipation = the former is the end-goal; the latter only changes the oppressor (not root)

  • PART of civil society emancipates itself, not mankind more generally (i.e., all forms of power)

• Doubly-free laborer = is free to sell his labor; BUT is forced to do so - paradox

Vincent

• Marx flirted both with determinism and non-determinism = evidence of both in his writing

• Two examples:

  • Base and superstructure – causality vs interactive quality

  • Law and State – “executive committee” vs more nuanced POV

    • COMM theory of law and justice? No a priori rejection of law (e.g., alienation example)

Marx, Estranged Labor

• Alienation from humanity coz worker can express labor (basic aspect of individuality) ONLY via privately-owned industrial production; four types (alienation from):

  • Product

  • Activity of work

  • “Species-being”

  • Other persons

Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto

• Exploitation has now become naked; bourgeoise will collapse eventually

• Communists = different from proletarians; communism allows people to appropriate, just not subjugate labor

• History of society = class struggle; bourgeoise gained power from feudalists

  • Bourgeoise must expand non-stop – crisis of over-production; always need to expand to new market

• History will end because:

  • Class antagonisms = simplified

  • Exploitative relations have become naked (ideology not enough to mask it) = all self-interest

  • Bourgeoise must non-stop expand and revolutionize = leads to instability

Johnson

• Racial capitalism – black worker is subject BOTH to capital AND white supremacy

• There is NO capitalism WITHOUT slavery – e.g., Manchester wouldn’t have happened but for Mississippi

  • Black and white workers AREN’T the same – dynamic between capitalist EXPL and white SUPR

• Slavery isn’t a residual, marginal form in capitalism (like Marx thought) – it’s in its very FABRIC

• E.g., labor vs capital distinction – black people are BOTH

Pashukanis (+ Balbus, CMD)

• Doesn’t look at functional RELAT between law and CAP – wants to understand the forms of CONSCIOUSNESS associated with law and legal form

  • There is an internal RELAT between commodity form and legal form

• Commodity is form that wealth takes under CAP

• CMD form is exchange RELAT under CAP = this explains the legal form as a SOC practice and forms of legal thought (the latter obscures “full reality” of SOC RELATs in CAP)

• CMD = unity of use-value, and value (labor in the abstract)

  • Use-value – concrete qualities = e.g., satisfying hamburger (burger), thirst (Coca-Cola), vanity (e.g., haircut), etc.

    • If this is disregarded, one property remains – products of labor

• If one abstracts from use-value characteristic of CMDs, one also abstracts from material constituents that make them use-values = includes distinct forms of labor needed to produce them; CMDs are no longer distinguished – altogether reduced to human labor in abstract

• What makes CMDs values is property of being products of abstract labor

  • Quantity of abstract labor-time socially needed to produce CMD = value

• Abstract labor = RELAT of SOC validation that is constituted in exchange

• Abstract labor isn’t just labor-time used in production – social validation occurs only when brought into RELAT with other CMDs in exchange

• Equality between different kinds of labor is only possible if one abstract from their real INEQ – one must reduce them to characteristic they have in common = expenditure of human labor-power (human labor in abstract)

• Use-value gets equalized as abstract labor in exchange

• Pashukanis’ main claim – legal subject and legal form are ALSO results of the abstraction of SOC RELATs that emerge in and through exchange of CMDs

  • Exchange is constitutive of abstractness of value; it is also constitutive of the legal subject (a “free and equal”, abstract subject with capacity to possess rights)

• ERGO - way in which we see each other in CAP is deeply legal – we can mock freedom, equality etc., BUT it’s more than an ideological superstructure = we RELATE with each other as commodity owners

  • Man transformed into legal subject in same way a natural product is transformed into a commodity

• Upshot of all this – as CAP is transcended into communism, law should also theoretically disappear (since legal form is intertwined with CAP ECON) = “withering away” thesis

  • You would still have rules (e.g., driving on rights side of road)

Althusser

• Marx thought of each SOC as having levels – infrastructure (economic base, “unity” of productive forces/RELATs of production), and superstructure (two levels):

  • Politico-legal (law and State)

  • Ideology (religions, ethics, politics, etc.)

• State has no meaning except as function of State power – State power (the objective of class struggle, i.e., gaining it) is different from State Apparatus

  • SA may survive collapse of State

• After seizing State power, PROL must dismantle the BOU SA and replace it with a PROL SA, later on, the State itself must be destroyed (end of State power, and of all SAs)

• SA itself consists of two layers:

  • RSAs

  • ISAs

• Reproduction of RELATs of production is secured, mostly, via legal-political and ideological superstructure

• Three key features:

  • All SAs function by repression and ideology (but it’s a matter of degree)

  • RSAs are centralized,...