Marxist Law
Marxist Law – The Origin of Law
Marxists explain that law and human rights arise from the interactions of human beings within social structures
that contain economic class distinctions. Class divisions within societies create conflict and disorder and
therefore law (and the state) comes into existence to deal with this conflict. According to Engels, “In order that
these...classes with conflicting economic interests, may not annihilate themselves and society in a useless
struggle, a power becomes necessary that stands apparently above society and has the function of keeping
down the conflicts and maintaining ‘order.’ And this power, the outgrowth of society, but assuming supremacy
over it and becoming more and more divorced from it, is the State.”5
The state that rises to maintain order within society perpetuates the conflict as a dominant class wielding power
over classes with less power. Lenin explains, “The State is an organ of class domination, an organ of
oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of ‘order’ which legalizes and perpetuates this
oppression by moderating the collisions between the classes.”6 Laws are thus imposed by the state to quell
these disturbances.
Marxist Law – The Origin of Law
In the Marxist view of law, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the two classes involved in the struggle for
power. Societies that allow the bourgeoisie to make moral decisions and formulate laws are unjust societies.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx denounces bourgeois law as nothing more than a reflection of the desires of
that class. Speaking to the bourgeois, he says, “[Y]our jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a
law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of
existence of your class.”7
Bourgeois law is oppressive because it is based on the concept of private property, and thus laws are created
that promote unequal rights. Capitalism cannot create equal rights for all because the very nature of the
economic system creates haves and have-nots. Cornforth states, “There cannot be equality between exploiters
and exploited.”8
A capitalist society that creates unequal rights based on property and class leads those with fewer rights to
protest in the form of lawlessness. Engels explains, “The contempt for the existing social order is most
conspicuous in its extreme form -- that of offences against the law.”9 Society, therefore, is more responsible
than the individual for lawlessness. Indeed, criminals need not feel remorse for their actions because the unjust
bourgeois society leaves them no alternative but to lash out against it.
The Marxist solution to the unjust society and lawlessness is to overthrow the bourgeoisie, thus allowing the
proletariat to make the laws. The legal system that promotes the interests of the working class is called
proletariat law. Jawitsch believes, “Complete success in the masses’ struggle for their democratic rights and
liberties can only be achieved by overcoming monopoly capital’s economic and political domination and
establishing a state authority that expresses the interests of the working people.”10
According to Marxist legal theory, the working class may break capitalistic law if such an action is in pursuit of
equality. According to Lenin, “The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is won and maintained by the use
of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.”11
Marxist Law – Law and Socialist Economics
Once the revolution of the proletariat has succeeded, the new Marxist law (socialistic law) will reflect the
desires of the working people rather than those of the bourgeoisie. Law based on the will of the proletariat will
create a society that is less exploitative than that based on capitalist bourgeois law. According to Jawitsch, “An
anti-exploiter tendency is what characterizes the special features of all the principles of the law of socialist
society in most concentrated form.”12
The will of the proletariat becomes the basis for all rights, laws, and judgments, thereby negating natural law,
God, or any absolute moral code. Howard Selsem explains, “Marxism, which has been so often accused of
seeking to eliminate moral considerations from human life and history emphasizes rather the moral issues
involved in every situation. It does so, however, not by standing on a false platform of absolute right, but by
identifying itself with the real needs and interests of the workers and farmers.”13
