sociology of law

Marx

Learning Goals:

Marx’s approach to law and democracy

1. Labor theory of value demonstrates that capitalist societies are defined by class conflict (workers vs owners)

2. Political and legal institutions reflect and reproduce these capitalist social relations

3. Political and legal institutions shape our social, intellectual, and moral consciousness

4. Workers will eventually build democratic movements which will free them and move them towards true political self-expression

Summary of Marx’s approach to law and democracy

1. Labor theory of value demonstrates that capitalist societies are defined by class conflict (workers vs owners)

What classes?

i. Workers must sell their labor-power to capitalists for their own survival

ii. Capitalists must buy worker’s labor-power for profit

iii. These two classes are both dependent upon each other

Why class conflict?

iv. Workers seek to grow wages (“necessary labor time”)

v. Owners seek to grow profits (“surplus labor time”)

vi. This puts the two groups in fundamental conflict

2. Political and legal institutions reflect and reproduce these capitalist social relations

a. Capitalist social class relations determine political and legal institutions (class relations = the labor theory of value and workers vs capitalists)

b. The state mediates class conflict via private property laws, civil law and contract law develop in parallel

c. Therefore, class conflict shapes political and legal institutions, primarily around private property laws

3. Political and legal institutions shape our social, intellectual, and moral consciousness

a. Workers do not control their labor process or have ownership over what they produce, this leads to alienation

b. The “superstructure” shapes workers entire consciousness

i. Political and legal institutions that reflect the “base,” the “base” is class relations and conflict (workers vs owners)

c. Based on points A and B, workers are not “free” to truly express themselves through labor

4. Workers will eventually build democratic movements which will free them and move them towards true political self-expression

a. Workers are not free due to (1) alienation and (2) capitalist “superstructure” shaping their conciousness

b. Freedom = self-determination or self-management and true self-expression

c. Worker’s freedom from alienation and the freedom to the labor process can only come from democracy (the direct participation and involvement of society in governance).

1) Labor theory of value

We study marx in sociology because he was the first to elaborate capitalism as a social relation, these theories have broad application to society today

He demonstrated this logically and historically

Why is capitalism a social relation?

Start here – labor theory of value

1) What is profit?

2) Why is it important?

3) Where does it come from?

Classical economists all believed in the labor theory of value, Marx developed it to most advanced level

LTV provided an answer to the question “where does profit come from?”

It comes from labor-power, by paying workers less value than their labor-power produces

This is profit and this makes the world turn

Labor theory of value

· capitalist commodity production and exchange are the means of the social reproduction

· A commodity is that which can be bought and sold in the market

· a commodity has two-fold value: a functional use, or use-value, and it can be exchanged for other commodities, or exchange-value.

· Labor-power is the only commodity that can produce more exchange value than it is worth

· Therefore, labor-power is conceptually divided as necessary labor and surplus labor

· Necessary labor was production time in which the function of production was to account for the costs of production, including the worker’s wages.

· Surplus labor was production time in which the function of production was to create profit (for the capitalist who owned the means of production).

· The worker’s necessary labor and surplus labor both belonged to the capitalist who owned the means of production.

· The usurpation of surplus labor exists because of the institution of private property (private property LAWS)

· The capitalist used the appropriated surplus labor to create profit, and in turn, capital. The capitalist reinvested the capital into the productive process, which in turn created more profit for the capitalist, and the capitalist became wealthy. Therefore, the surplus labor of the worker was the source of capitalist wealth.

· capitalist commodity production necessitates a class-based society

· capitalism is defined as “the regime of capital, the form of rulership we find when power takes the remarkable aspect of the domination, by those who control access to the means of production, of the great majority who must gain ‘employment’” (Heilbroner 1985: 52)

Point one: “Labor theory of value demonstrates that capitalist societies are defined by class conflict (workers vs owners)”

Labor Theory of Value
Capital	+ Labor time	= Output
Machines Raw material Land	Necessary labor time (wages)	Surplus labor time (profit)	= output
Workers want:
Owners want:

· What classes?

· Workers must sell their labor-power to capitalists for their own survival

· Capitalists must buy worker’s labor-power for profit

· This means workers and owners are both dependent upon each other

· Why class conflict?

· Workers seek to grow wages (“necessary labor time”)

· Owners seek to grow profits (“surplus labor time”)

· This puts the two groups in fundamental conflict

· Marx will argue that political and legal systems emerge from these class dynamics

2) Political and legal institutions reflect and reproduce these capitalist social relations

· The labor theory of value demonstrates that capitalism is a social relationship that divides society into two classes – workers and capitalists

· Workers must sell their labor-power to capitalists for their own survival

· Capitalists must buy worker’s labor-power for profit

· This class relationship is the economic and material “base” of society

· This “base” dictated the shape and form of legal and political institutions, or “superstructure”. Consequently, the property owning class also conditioned the political and legal structures of society

The Relation of State and Law to Property

· “In the case of the ancient peoples, since several tribes live together in one town, the tribal property appears as State property,”

· “…to modern capital, determined by big industry and universal competition, i.e. pure private property, which has cast off all semblance of a communal institution…

· “To this modern private property corresponds the modern State, which, purchased gradually by the owners of property by means of taxation, has fallen entirely into their hands through the national debt, and its existence has become wholly dependent on the commercial credit”

· The state is controlled by the owning class (via public debt; state government = debtors, capitalists = creditors)

· “Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the State has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but it is nothing more than the form of organisation which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.”

· Under capitalism property is not owned by the community but individuals

· The state is controlled by the owning class (via public debt; state government = debtors, capitalists = creditors)

· The state serves the property and interests of the owning class

· “The modern French, English and American writers all express the opinion that the State exists only for the sake of private property, so that this fact has penetrated into the consciousness of the normal man.”

· “Since the State is the form in which the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests, and in which the whole civil society of an epoch is epitomised, it follows that the State mediates in the formation of all common institutions and that the institutions receive a political form.”

· How does the state use private property laws to mediate class conflict?

· Think about the conflict between wages (“necessary labor time”) and profit (“surplus labor time”)

· What entitles owners to the “surplus labor time”?

· Private property

· The wage share vs profit share is mediated by the state via private property laws

· The new deal as example

· “Civil law develops simultaneously with private property out of the disintegration of the natural community.”

· Civil law deals with the disputes between individuals, organizations, or between the two, in which compensation is awarded to the victim. Criminal law is the body of law that deals with crime and the legal punishment of criminal offenses.

· Private property necessitates civil law

3) Political and legal institutions shape our social, intellectual, and moral consciousness

a. Workers do not control their labor process or have ownership over what they produce, this leads to alienation

b. The “superstructure” shapes workers entire consciousness

i. “Superstructure” = Political and legal institutions that reflect the “base,” the “base” is class relations and conflict (workers vs owners)

c. Based on points A and B, workers are not “free” to truly express themselves through labor

3.A. Workers do not control their labor process or have ownership over what they produce, this leads to alienation

What does alienation mean?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30HeJvE9KCg

alienation = the feeling that the work that you are doing is not for yourself but for someone else, so you become disinterested in the work, you feel a lack of purpose.

It can also include being told to be grateful and ‘happy’ to even have the job and to be “positive”

3.B. The “superstructure” shapes worker’s entire consciousness

“Superstructure” = Political and legal institutions that reflect the “base,” the “base” is class relations and conflict (workers vs owners)

Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

· “…the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.”

What is consciousness = “the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.”

Social consciousness = who am I in relation to others? What are my morals? What are my priorities? What are my aesthetics?

· “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force” (1970: 89).

· A person’s “ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of…bourgeois production and bourgeois property,” and the material conditions of social class conditioned a person’s will and thought

· Workers assumed the ideas and social values of the bourgeois property-owners and in so doing internalized their own oppression and became alienated from any ‘meaningful’ intellectual and cultural instincts. 

Examples:

Social = we believe in the American dream?

Political and legal = we cannot imagine society without private property

Intellectual = we deny the labor theory of value

Aesthetic = are there standards of beauty? Are there hierarchies of aesthetics? Who determines them?

So The “superstructure” shapes worker’s entire consciousness

Imagine growing up in a house with no doors or windows, you would believe that there was nothing more to the world and everything you thought and believed is shaped by that house

Its like the Matrix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko8WoRehfNI

3.C.

Based on points A and B, workers are not “free” to truly express themselves through labor

Why?

4) Workers will eventually build democratic movements which will free them and move them towards true political self-expression

What is democracy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihVcrnFag1s&t=1602s

at 24 min

Defining democracy:

· “[Marx’s] notion of democracy brings to mind Aristotle's definition of democracy as the class rule of the poor (in this case the proletariat) who happen to be the majority.”

But, the question becomes, why democracy?

“Marx's notion of freedom, as we shall see below, requires that the conditions of freedom result from the direct participation and involvement of society. Thus, not only must freedom be the end of politics; in addition, the means of achieving this end have to result from free activity,”

· Why are workers not free?

· 1) alienation

· What is the role of private property in alienation?

· 2) superstructure shapes consciousness

· What is the role of private property in shaping consciousness?

· For Marx, freedom = self-determination or self-management and true self-expression. What is true self-expression?

· The opposite of alienation

· What is that?

· Having consciousness be “free” from capitalist “superstructure”

· Democracy is the pre-condition for this freedom

· “freedom” is not possible without democracy

· In capitalist “superstructure”, the state is a top-down organization, controlled by the property owning class

· For workers, the state must be democratized for “freedom” to be possible

· “Freedom is possible only if the act of self-determination emanates directly from the participatory activity of the collective body of citizens.”

· Democratic procedures are secondary to this point:

· “This leaves us with two possibilities: Marx's early political theory is either one of pure direct democracy or one of representation through delegates.”

Summary of point 4:

Workers will eventually build democratic movements which will free them and move them towards true political self-expression

d. Workers are not free due to (1) alienation and (2) capitalist “superstructure” shaping their consciousness

e. Freedom = self-determination or self-management and true self-expression

f. Worker’s freedom from alienation and the freedom to the labor process can only come from democracy (the direct participation and involvement of society in governance).

Summary of Marx’s approach to law and democracy

1. Labor theory of value demonstrates that capitalist societies are defined by class conflict (workers vs owners)

What classes?

i. Workers must sell their labor-power to capitalists for their own survival

ii. Capitalists must buy worker’s labor-power for profit

iii. These two classes are both dependent upon each other

Why class conflict?

iv. Workers seek to grow wages (“necessary labor time”)

v. Owners seek to grow profits (“surplus labor time”)

vi. This puts the two groups in fundamental conflict

5. Political and legal institutions reflect and reproduce these capitalist social relations

a. Capitalist social class relations determine political and legal institutions (class relations = the labor theory of value and workers vs capitalists)

b. The state mediates class conflict via private property laws, civil law and contract law develop in parallel

c. Therefore, class conflict shapes political and legal institutions, primarily around private property laws

6. Political and legal institutions shape our social, intellectual, and moral consciousness

a. Workers do not control their labor process or have ownership over what they produce, this leads to alienation

b. The “superstructure” shapes workers entire consciousness

i. Political and legal institutions that reflect the “base,” the “base” is class relations and conflict (workers vs owners)

c. Based on points A and B, workers are not “free” to truly express themselves through labor

7. Workers will eventually build democratic movements which will free them and move them towards true political self-expression

a. Workers are not free due to (1) alienation and (2) capitalist “superstructure” shaping their conciousness

b. Freedom = self-determination or self-management and true self-expression

c. Worker’s freedom from alienation and the freedom to the labor process can only come from democracy (the direct participation and involvement of society in governance).