[Marxism] query on Marxism and the law

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For Marxism, private property and the state are two important aspects of
law. Engels discusses private property and the state very fundamentally in
_The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_. Marx discusses
private property and its antithesis in
The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, section  "Private
Property and Communism". Earlier, he started a Contribution to the Critique
of Hegel's Philosophy of the Right ( Law). It's Introduction contains his
famous analysis of religion, and the aphorism that when an idea grips masses
it becomes a material force.

Marx started out in law in school.

Also, see writing of Mitchell Franklin.

I have an article "For a Constitutional Amendment for a Right to A Job or
Income".

Charles


Karl Marx
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

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Private Property and Communism


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

^^^^^^

Abstract from The Introduction to
Contribution To The Critique Of 
Hegel's Philosophy Of Right (Law)

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Written: end of 1843-January 1844 
First Published: DeutschFranzösische Jahrbücher, 1844 
Transcription/Markup: Zodiac/Basgen 
Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000 


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The profane existence of error is discredited after its heavenly oratio pro
aris et focis has been disproved. Man, who looked for a superhuman being in
the fantastic reality of heaven and found nothing there but the reflection
of himself, will no longer be disposed to find but the semblance of himself,
only an inhuman being, where he seeks and must seek his true reality. 

The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not
make man. Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has
either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again. But man is
no abstract being encamped outside the world. Man is the world of man, the
state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, an inverted
world-consciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the
general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in a
popular form, its spiritualistic point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral
sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source of consolation and
justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence because
the human essence has no true reality. The struggle against religion is
therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is the
spiritual aroma. 

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and
also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit
of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. 

To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand
their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing
state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs
illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of
the vale of tears, the halo of which is religion. 

Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man
shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the
chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions
man to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been
disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself
and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which
revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself. 

The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has
disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of
philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy form of human
self-estrangement has been unmasked, is to unmask self-estrangement in its
unholy forms. Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the
earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law and the criticism
of theology into the criticism of politics..... 

The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons,
material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes
a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of
gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it
demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to
grasp the root of the matter. But for man the root is man himself. The
evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical
energy, is that it proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of religion.
The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest
being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all
relations in which man is a debased, enslaved forsaken, despicable
being..... 

The following exposition -- a contribution to that task -- deals immediately
not with the original, but with a copy, the German philosophy of state and
of law, for no other reason than that it deals with Germany..... 

 http://www3.baylor.edu/~Scott_Moore/texts/Marx_Contr_Crit.html


^^^^^^

Dialectics of the U.S. Constitution: Selected Writings of Mitchell Franklin
edited by James M. Lawler
ISBN 0-930656-65-2, cloth only $55.00, 200 pages, 2000
Mitchell Franklin (1902?1986) is described by the Buffalo Law Review as the
foremost Marxist legal philosopher in the English-speaking world. In these
selected writings, Franklin, a professor of law at Tulane University for 37
years, discusses how the development of natural law from an idealist to a
materialist concept in the transition from feudalism to capitalism is
reflected in the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and its interpretation
today.

Marxist Educational Press Book Titles
Books from MEP Publications 

http://webusers.physics.umn.edu/~marquit/


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