Igor Shoikhedbrod
Doctoral Student
Department of Political Science
University of Toronto
June 15, 2013
Karl Marx’s Radical Critique of Liberalism and the Future of Right 1
[DRAFT-Please do not cite or reproduce without the author’s permission]
The aim of this paper is to re-examine Marx’s radical critique of liberalism and to
question the prevailing orthodoxy surrounding his critical reflections on right and rights. It is
important to note from the outset that the German word for right (Recht) refers to legal claims
and entitlements as well as to normative standards of justice. 2 Although these different meanings
of Recht are related, I will consider Marx’s account of rights as legal claims when discussing
“On the Jewish Question” and Capital, and I will address his position on standards of right as
they relate to distributive justice when discussing the Critique of the Gotha Program. A holistic
reading of Marx’s position on Recht is warranted because he wrote in different periods as a
philosopher, a journalist, a critic of political economy, as well as a revolutionary involved in the
International Workingmen’s Association. Moreover, unlike his predecessors—Kant and Hegel—
Marx never wrote a single treatise on right. I will argue that Marx did not envision the abolition
of right and rights in communist society, even as human needs are satisfied in unprecedented
ways by the development of society’s productive forces under associated production. The logic
of Marx’s dialectical analysis points instead to the conclusion that right would assume a richer
and more adequate foundation that could not have been realized under capitalism. To make the
case for the continued relevance of right and rights, I will extrapolate from Marx’s work as a
I would like to thank Professor Richard Day from the University of Toronto’s Department of Political Science for
providing helpful comments and criticisms on an earlier version of this paper.
2
When approaching Marx’s position on Recht, I have in mind his outlook on standards of right and rights-claims
within and beyond capitalist society. My usage of Recht follows in the footsteps of leading commentators (i.e. Allen
Wood, Allen Buchanan, and Steven Lukes), who interpret Marx simultaneously as an opponent of rights-claims and
standards of right. Needless to say, I reach a different conclusion than these commentators.
1
1
whole and highlight two Hegelian concepts: transcendence3 (Aufhebung) and recognition
(Anerkennung) that have been neglected in the scholarly literature on this topic. Marx retains
these concepts and provides them with a historical-materialistic basis even after he criticizes
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. I hope to demonstrate that Aufhebung and Anerkennung are
essential for understanding the future of right and the free development of social individuals
beyond the narrow parameters of liberalism and ‘bourgeois right’.
In the history of Western political thought Karl Marx is still regarded as one of the most
powerful critics of liberalism. Liberalism consists of many diverse political outlooks and
movements, but it will understood here by its principled commitment to the freedom and equality
of individuals, whose dignity and moral worth is secured primarily through constitutional rights.
It is commonplace to view Marx’s critique of liberalism through his dismissal of rights as the
manifestations of the estranged and egotistic individual of bourgeois society in “On the Jewish
Question”. According to an interpretation that is now widespread, Marx sees rights only as
barriers and never as bridges to human freedom. Thus it is argued that Marx’s earliest and most
mature assessment of right and rights is consistently negative, which presumably explains why
both must be abolished, along with private property and classes, before real human emancipation
can be realized under communism. This interpretation of the withering away of law and right
was first proposed in a systematic way by the Soviet legal theorist Evgeny Pashukanis, who
argued that the concept of right was derivative from the commodity form and from generalized
exchange relations between buyers and sellers on the capitalist market. Pashukanis maintained
that the abolition of the commodity form and exchange relations would lead to the abolition of
3
Aufhebung is often translated as ‘sublation’ in English.
2
right and the replacement of the latter with technical regulation. Rights would be abolished as a
matter of course.4
The consensus around Marx’s negative depiction of right and rights, and their historical
irrelevance under communism, was not confined to Marxists such as Pashukanis. A myriad of
Marx scholars followed suit in arguing that right was essentially a juridical concept for Marx,
and that the end of class domination would spell the end of right and rights. Marx, it was argued,
had no patience for such narrow bourgeois considerations in the emancipated society. Allen
Wood inferred that “the end of class society will mean the end of the social need for the state
mechanism and the juridical institutions within which concepts like ‘right’ and ‘justice’ have
their place.”5 Not too long after Wood, Steven Lukes inquired whether Marxists could endorse
human rights; the answer to his query was resoundingly negative.6 Lezek Kolakowski went even
further when he insisted that Marxist philosophy is inhospitable to the idea of human rights
because it is based on “the belief that progress can be measured only by the ability of mankind to
control the conditions, both natural and social, of its life, and that, consequently, an individual’s
value is not related to his personal life, but to his being a component of the collective ‘whole’ ”.7
Kolakowski concluded that “one should naturally expect that the ultimate liberation of humanity
would consist in the coercive reduction of individuals into inert tools of the state, thereby
4
See Evgeny Pashukanis, Law and Marxism: A General Theory (London: InkLinks, 1978). Pashukanis castigates
socialist thinkers who think that proletarian law and standards of right would prevail in place of the bourgeois legal
form. He writes: “the withering away of the categories of bourgeois law will, under these conditions, mean the
withering away of law altogether, that is to say the disappearance of the juridical factor from social relations”
(Pashukanis, 61). Pashukanis concludes that “Marx conceives of the transition to developed communism not as a
transition to new forms of law, but as a withering away of the legal form as such, as a liberation from the heritage of
the bourgeois epoch which is fated to outlive the bourgeoisie itself” (Pashukanis, 63).
5
Allen Wood, “The Marxian Critique of Justice”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , Vol. 1, No. 3 (Spring, 1972), 271. I
had the privilege of discussing this topic in person and over a series of email exchanges with Allen Wood, who
remains adamant that Marx had no positive use for right and rights in communist society. From my understanding,
Wood takes aufhebung to mean abolition in Marx.
6
Steven Lukes “Can a Marxist believe in human rights?”, Praxis International 4, (1982).
7
Leszek Kolakowski “Marxism and Human Rights” Daedalus , Vol. 112, No. 4, (Fall, 1983), 92.
3
robbing them of their personality, of their status as active subjects”. 8 It is not my intention to
engage in a refutation of all the prominent interpretations associated with Marx’s treatment of
right and rights, nor do I wish to claim that these interpretations are without some merit.
However, I will suggest an alternative method of approaching this topic, which should provide
good reasons for doubting conventional liberal and Marxist interpretations on the abolition of
right and rights in communist society.
Marx’s earliest appraisal of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, in
“On the Jewish Question”, is an appropriate starting point for such an inquiry because critics
usually point to this work as the clearest evidence of Marx’s disdain for rights. “On the Jewish
Question” was written in 1843, at a time when Marx was not yet acquainted with political
economy and the decisive role that classes played in history. Marx would recount in a letter to
Arnold Ruge that he was asked by members of the Jewish community to endorse a parliamentary
petition in favour of granting equal civil and political rights to Jews in Prussia, an initiative he
actively supported. Marx makes it clear in this letter that despite his distaste for Judaism (and all
forms of organized religion), “the point is to punch as many holes as possible in the Christian
state and smuggle in rational [my emphasis] views as much we can. That must at least be our
aim—and the bitterness grows with each rejected petition.”9 In the essay that become “On the
Jewish Question”, Marx takes issue with Bruno Bauer, his former mentor and fellow left
Hegelian, who argued that Jews should not be granted civil and political rights until they
renounced their religious commitments to Judaism. Marx demonstrates the flaws in Bauer’s
argument while also revealing the limitations of political emancipation.
8
9
Ibid.
Karl Marx cited in David McLellan. Karl Marx: A Biography, 4th ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 79.
4
Political emancipation refers to a liberal constitutional state that has freed itself from the
influences of religion and private property at the level of politics. Marx’s first step is to refute
Bauer’s claim that the liberal constitutional state presupposes the renunciation of religion. Marx
points to the United States as the only country where the political state had actually been
emancipated from the influence of religion. However, religion was not abolished in the United
States; instead, it was relegated to the private sphere—the sphere of civil society—where it
continued to prevail.10 The enduring influence of religion in the United States reveals the
fundamental error in Bauer’s assertion that Jews could not be granted equal rights so long as they
refused to abandon their religious convictions. The liberal state presupposes the constitutional
protection of religion rather than its abolition, so there could be no legitimate grounds for
denying civil and political rights to Jews.11 If anything, the logic of political emancipation
requires that Jews be granted these rights as free and equal citizens of the liberal state. Any
liberal state that fails to secure civil and political rights for its citizens is therefore deemed
hypocritical on its own standards.
Marx makes the important observation that religious influence is relegated to civil society
by the liberal state, along with private property and such arbitrary distinctions as inheritance,
social status, education, and occupation. He notes that some states in America went so far as to
abolish the property qualification for democratic participation and representation. However,
Marx reasons that despite the avowed claims of the liberal state to treat all individuals as free and
equal citizens before the law, “the state, none the less, allows private property, education,
occupation, to act after their own fashion...far from abolishing these effective differences, it only
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker, (New York: Norton, 1978),
31.
11
Ibid.
10
5
exists insofar as they are presupposed.”12 The liberal state claims its universality by pursuing the
public good rather than any particular interests. However, in substance the liberal state does not
transcend these particular interests as much as it presupposes their continued existence. This
demonstrates for Marx that while the state can free itself from religion and private property, this
does not mean that individuals have been emancipated from religion and private property in their
everyday lives. There exists a contradiction between the free and equal citizens that live in the
liberal state and their empirical existence as warring egotists in civil society, where they are
unequal and unfree.13 Marx therefore asserts that “The limits of political emancipation appear at
once in the fact that the state can liberate itself from a constraint without man himself being
really liberated; that a state may be a free state without man himself being a free man.”14 It is in
this context that Marx formulates his critique of the rights of man as they operate in civil society.
What is most striking about Marx’s critical assessment of the rights of man is his decision
to focus almost entirely on the inalienable rights of equality, liberty, security and property in the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.15 To be sure, these inalienable rights were
the historical achievements of the French Revolution. Bearing this in mind, Marx will show that
these rights are characterized by the limitations that necessarily befall bourgeois society. Aside
from referencing the constitutional protection of religious freedom in the United States to refute
Bauer’s claims against the political emancipation of Jews, the inalienable rights of equality,
liberty, security and property form the crux of Marx’s critique of the rights of man in “On the
Jewish Question”, and for good reason. Nowhere does Marx argue against the right to a free
press, freedom of expression, due process, association, movement, and the right not to arbitrarily
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, 33.
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, 33.
14
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, 32.
15
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, 42.
12
13
6
detained, assaulted, or oppressed, nor does he oppose the rights of citizens to collectively
administer their political affairs.
Marx goes on to show that the inalienable rights of equality, liberty, security, and
property cannot rise above the contradictions of bourgeois civil society. Marx argues that the
right to liberty amounts to little more than the protection of the atomistic and competitive
individual from the harms done by other competing individuals.16 The right to equality does not
extend beyond the formal protection of this atomistic individual from external impediments and
threats before the law. The right to property authorizes individuals to own and exchange private
property without any concern for the welfare of others. Security is also defined as the legal
protection of personhood, rights, and private property.17 Given the serious limitations of these
inalienable rights, Marx concludes that “None of the supposed rights of man, therefore, go
beyond the egoistic man, man as he is, as a member of civil society, that is, an individual
separated from the community, withdrawn into himself, wholly preoccupied with his private
caprice.”18 By this time, however, most interpreters jump to the conclusion that these remarks
prove without a reasonable doubt that Marx saw no positive use for rights.
The problem with this interpretation is that it disregards Marx’s preceding declaration
that political emancipation, despite all of its flaws and limitations, constitutes a necessary and
progressive step in the struggle for human emancipation. Marx writes that “Political
emancipation certainly represents a great progress. It is, not, indeed, the final form of human
emancipation, but it is the final form of human emancipation within the framework of the
prevailing social order”.19 Why would Marx value political emancipation if he had no positive
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, 42.
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, 43.
18
Ibid.
19
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, 35.
16
17
7
use for rights? Or, put differently, why would Marx support a petition in favor of granting equal
civil and political rights to Jews if he only saw rights as barriers to human freedom? Although
the ideals of liberty and equality are undermined by the empirical reality of inequality and
unfreedom in civil society, the recognition of personhood and the protection of one’s rights
before the law constitute major victories over the arbitrary will of the feudal lord and the direct
relations of domination that preceded bourgeois society.20 Political emancipation is limited
insofar as the liberal state emancipates itself from religious influence and inequalities in the
ownership of property without actually resolving any of these contradictions in civil society.
This leads Marx to argue that the “the political revolution dissolves civil society into its elements
without revolutionizing these elements themselves or subjecting them to criticism”.21
At this point in Marx’s intellectual development, he insists that the contradictions of
political emancipation will be superseded when the private individual retrieves his or her
individual powers as social powers rather than projecting these powers onto the external state.
However, the act of retrieving one’s abstract powers as genuine social powers—what Marx
would later refer to as self-determination in the context of community—does not preclude the
recognition of one’s rights as a member of a community or association. Far from dispensing with
rights, Marx takes for granted the idea of equal rights and the recognition of personhood as a
necessary precondition for modern freedom. The historic achievement of political emancipation
consists in the recognition that all individuals residing in a liberal state are entitled to civil and
political rights. Hence, the chief issue for Marx is not that liberalism has gone too far with its
emancipatory agenda (in this regard, he often refers to liberal thinkers as ‘political liberators’);
on the contrary, liberalism has not gone far enough in achieving substantive human
20
21
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, 45.
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”, 46.
8
emancipation. Liberalism reaches its apex in capitalist society. However, the contradictions of
capitalist society cannot be resolved within its contradictory political horizons. Human
emancipation requires a revolutionary change in the material conditions of life and in the social
relations of individuals. If Marx is right, then such a revolutionary change would usher in a
transformation in human consciousness, culture, and values, while also creating the conditions
for a qualitatively distinct standard of right and a corresponding set of rights. The latter remains
to be shown.
In his later works, particularly in Capital, Marx seeks to demonstrate that the freedom
and equality of persons in the arena of exchange is undermined by capitalist production, where
the domination of capital over labour prevails under the banner of equal rights. Whereas Marx
located a definite contradiction between the abstract citizen of the liberal state and the empirical
individual of civil society in “On the Jewish Question”, equal rights and freedoms give way to
inequality and unfreedom in the sphere of capitalist production. By this time, however, Marx has
developed a historically grounded critique of political economy, and he also has a heightened
awareness of the significance of class struggle in revolutionary transformation. Marx actually
reflects on his intellectual development, particularly his shift from the critique of political and
juridical categories to the critique of political economy, in a telling passage from the Preface to
the Critique of Political Economy:
I was taking up law, which discipline, however, I only pursued as a subordinate subject
along with philosophy and history. In the year 1842-44, as editor of the Rheinische
Zeitung, I experienced for the first time the embarrassment of having to take part in
discussions on so-called material interests...The first work which I undertook for a
solution of the doubts which assailed me was a critical review of the Hegelian philosophy
of right, a work the introduction to which appeared in 1844 in the Deutsch–Französische
Jahrbücher, published in Paris. My investigation led to the result that legal relations as
well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so-called
general development of the human mind, but rather have their roots in the material
conditions of life, the sum total of which Hegel, following the example of the Englishmen
9
and Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, combines under the name of ‘civil society,’
that, however, the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy.22
Marx would follow through with a systematic critique of capitalist political economy. He would
also return to the important claim that legal and political categories are informed and constrained
by the mode of production in a dialectical totality. This will have important implications for my
claim that each mode of production, including the future communist mode of production, is
characterized by a distinct form and a corresponding content of right.
Marx’s preliminary outline on Capital was published posthumously under the title of the
Grundrisse. The Grundrisse is an influential work in part because it revisits the central themes of
estrangement and emancipation that inspired Marx’s early manuscripts. The main difference,
however, is that Marx’s arguments are now grounded in a careful historical analysis of different
political-economic formations, and he occasionally provides glimpses into the future communist
society. More importantly, Marx takes up his earlier assessment of equal rights and the ways in
which these rights manifest themselves in the buying and selling of labour power. Marx contrasts
these juridical relations with the relations that prevailed under slavery and feudalism:
The first presupposition, to begin with, is that the relation of slavery or serfdom has been
suspended. Living labour capacity belongs to itself, and has disposition over the
expenditure of its forces, through exchange. Both sides confront each other as persons.
Formally, their relation has the equality and freedom of exchange as such. As far as
concerns the legal relation, the fact that this form is a mere semblance, and a deceptive
semblance, appears as an external matter....Nevertheless, in this way everything touching
on the individual, real person leaves him a wide field of choice, of arbitrary will, and
hence of formal freedom [my emphasis]. In the slave relation, he belongs to the
individual, particular owner, and is his labouring machine. As a totality of forceexpenditure, as labour capacity, he is a thing [Sache] belonging to another, and hence
does not relate as subject to his particular expenditure of force, nor to the act of living
labour. In the serf relation he appears as a moment of property in land itself, is an
appendage of the soil, exactly like draught-cattle.23
Karl Marx, “Marx on the History of His Opinions”, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker, (New York:
Norton, 1978), 3-4.
23
Karl Marx. Grundrisse, Trans. Martin Nicolaus (Middlesex: Penguin, 1973), 464-5.
22
10
Although Marx hints in the aforementioned passage that the equal rights of persons are
actually a ‘deceptive semblance’ under capitalist production, he assumes without any
reservations that the recognition of personhood rules out direct juridical relations of domination
that characterized all preceding modes of production. Marx acknowledges that equal rights
constitute a positive achievement for the freedom of individuals, which is also why he takes
abstract persons as his starting point in Capital. Thus, there are two dimensions to Marx’s
assessment of rights. On the one hand, Marx identifies the rights of persons as an historical
advance; on the other hand, he argues that these rights also mask exploitative relations of
production in a society that claims to be free and equal.
Although Marx will identify the exploitative basis of capitalist production, it is a mistake
to think that he conceives of the rights of persons merely as semblances or facades. Scholars tend
to overlook the significance of Marx’s remarks in the opening chapter of Capital concerning
Aristotle’s inability to arrive at a unifying concept of value. Despite Aristotle’s insight that value
requires some standard of equality, his analysis came to a halt as soon he chanced upon two
qualitatively distinct commodities (i.e. houses and beds) that could nonetheless be exchanged.
Marx explains that Aristotle could not conceive of human labour as the equalizing standard of
value because he lived in a society that was defined by slavery, and therefore by inequalities
between individuals and their labour-powers. Marx writes:
There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that, to
attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human
labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon
slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour
powers. The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal
and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be
deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular
prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the
11
produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant
relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities.24
Marx’s starting point in Capital is, therefore, the abstract person as a possessor of
commodities. Marx speaks of independent commodity producers, whose social relations are
mediated through the exchange of commodities on the market.25 Elsewhere, Marx cautions his
readers that “In the form of society now under consideration, the behaviour of men in the social
process of production is purely atomic. Hence their relations to each other in production assume
a material character independent of their control and conscious individual action. These facts
manifest themselves at first by products as a general rule taking the form of commodities”.26
Marx’s depiction of abstract commodity producers is reminiscent of Hegel’s description of
abstract and atomistic persons in the Philosophy of Right. The overriding principle of abstract
right is the formal recognition of persons as bearers of rights. Marx builds upon Hegel’s
formulation of the abstract person to describe the exchange of commodities on the market. Marx
explains:
In order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as commodities, their
guardians must place themselves in relation to one another, as persons whose will resides
in those objects, and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the
commodity of the other, and part with his own, except by means of an act done by mutual
consent. They must, therefore, mutually recognise in each other the rights of private
proprietors.27
The exchange of commodities assumes that agents enter into voluntary contractual relations with
one another and respect each other’s rights as proprietors, that is, as owners of their person and
property. Marx extends his analysis to describe the formal contractual relations between wage-
24
Karl Marx Capital Vol. 1, ed Friedrich Engels. (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 59-60.
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 72-3.
26
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 92-3.
27
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 84.
25
12
labourers and capitalists on the market. As soon as labour-power becomes a commodity for sale
on the market, it is assumed that buyers and sellers of labour-power meet as equals on the
market, and that the worker maintains sovereignty over his person, which is to say that the
worker cannot sell his labour-power indefinitely to the capitalist, for this make him into the
private property of another. Marx observes that
in order that our owner of money may be able to find labour-power offered for sale as a
commodity, various conditions must first be fulfilled. The exchange of commodities of
itself implies no other relations of dependence than those which result from its own
nature. On this assumption, labour-power can appear upon the market as a commodity,
only if, and so far as, its possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is, offers it for
sale, or sells it, as a commodity. In order that he may be able to do this, he must have it at
his disposal, must be the untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour, i.e., of his
person. He and the owner of money meet in the market, and deal with each other as on
the basis of equal rights, with this difference alone, that one is buyer, the other seller;
both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the law [my emphasis]. The continuance of this
relation demands that the owner of the labour-power should sell it only for a definite
period, for if he were to sell it rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself,
converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an owner of a commodity into a
commodity.28
Marx cites §67 of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right approvingly in a footnote to the abovecited passage because it was Hegel, after all, who recognized that the achievement of abstract
right consists in the formal recognition of personhood, which rules out the possibility of
regarding persons as things, just as it prohibits the alienation of one’s labour power for an
indefinite period. The idea of persons as possessors of equal rights represents a dialectical
advance for individual freedom, and Marx recognizes this achievement. However, Marx will
demonstrate, as Hegel had done in a different context29, that the formal rights of persons are
substantively negated in the sphere of capitalist production, where the capitalist class dominates
and exploits the class of labourers. Far from dispensing with the idea of equal rights, Marx
28
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 168.
It is not a coincidence that Hegel’s section on ‘Abstract Right’ concludes with ‘Wrong’ in the Philosophy of
Right.
29
13
demonstrates the extent to which these rights are necessarily subverted under capitalist
production. Once again, Marx will show how liberalism’s celebrated ideals of freedom and
equality turn into their opposites in the capitalist mode of production.
Marx’s attempt to uncover the exploitative nature of capitalist production begins with his
characterization of the sellers of labour-power as being free in two senses. On the one hand,
workers enjoy equal rights and have ownership of their labour-power. On the other hand, short of
starvation, these same workers are compelled to sell their labour-power to the capitalists because
they are also ‘free’ from owning and having access to the means of production. Marx writes: “for
the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must meet in the market
with the free labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labourpower as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for
sale....”30 Marx argues that the unequal relation between labourers and capitalists is historically
situated and is the product of social and economic circumstances: “this relation has no natural
basis, neither is its social basis one that is common to all historical periods. It is clearly the result
of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of
a whole series of older forms of social production”.31
After outlining the immediate disparities between buyers and sellers of labour-power,
Marx calls attention to a shift in his analysis from the formal realm of exchange to the sphere of
production, where capital actively exploits and dominates labour through the extraction of
surplus value.32 However, before he considers the sphere of production, Marx leaves readers with
a satirical summary of the inalienable rights of man33, which underpin the realm of exchange. It
30
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 169.
Ibid.
32
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 176.
33
N.B. Marx places the inalienable rights of man in quotations.
31
14
is worth noting that these remarks mirror Marx’s formative critique of the rights of man in “On
the Jewish Question”:
This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of
labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule
Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a
commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They
contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they
give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation
with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for
equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham,
because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts
them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of
each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just
because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things,
or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual
advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all.34
Just as the move from the liberal state to civil society revealed the persistence of
inequality and hierarchy, the shift from free exchange to production exposes the substantive
inequality and unfreedom that characterizes capitalist production. Marx draws attention to the
profound change that is experienced by the worker, referring to this transformation as “a change
in the physiognomy of [this] dramatis personae”.35 Paying particular attention to the struggle of
workers to limit the working day, Marx asserts that
It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the process of production other
than he entered...The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour-power proved,
so to say, in black and white that he disposed of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it
is discovered that he was no ‘free agent,’ that the time for which he is free to sell his
labour-power is the time for which he is forced to sell it...for ‘protection’ against ‘the
serpent of their agonies,’ the labourers must put their heads together, and, as a class,
compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very
workers from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families
into slavery and death. In place of the pompous catalogue of the ‘inalienable rights of
man’ comes the modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working-day...36
34
Ibid,176.
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 176.
36
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 301-2.
35
15
Far from discarding the equal rights of persons, Marx goes to great lengths to show how
the equality and freedom of workers is effectively undermined by capitalist production. Marx
makes a point of this in the Grundrisse when he states that “in present bourgeois society as a
whole, the positing of prices and their circulation etc. appears as the surface process, beneath
which, however, in the depths, entirely different processes go on, in which this apparent
individual equality and liberty disappear”.37 This inference has led scholars such as Carol Gould
to argue with some persuasion “that the deeper relations between capital and labor, namely, those
in the sphere of production, are in fact characterized by the very opposite qualities from those
that mark the exchange process. These social relations in production are nonreciprocal relations,
which are unfree and unequal, and which...may also be characterized as unjust”.38 In this regard,
Marx can be seen one of a few radical thinkers in the history of political thought to challenge
liberalism for failing to live up to its cherished ideals of freedom and equality. In capitalist
society, the ‘equal’ rights of capitalists collide with the ‘equal’ rights of labourers, leading to a
protracted class struggle that determines the length of the working day, and I would add, the
future of right. Marx submits:
There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of
the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history
of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the
result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and
collective labour, i.e., the working-class.39
So far I have only considered Marx’s remarks on the limited and contradictory nature of
bourgeois rights under capitalist production. It remains to be shown, however, that Marx did not
envision the abolition of right and rights under communism. Before going any further, I will like
to entertain two powerful objections against my interpretation. The first objection, articulated by
37
Karl Marx. Grundrisse, Trans. Martin Nicolaus, 247.
Carol Gould. Marx’s Social Ontology (Cambridge: MIT, 1978), 149-150.
39
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 235.
38
16
such thinkers as John Rawls and Allen Buchanan40, holds that Marx thought that the
achievement of material abundance and the fulfillment of human needs would lead to the
withering away of right and rights. The second objection, shared by Evgeny Pashukanis, Allen
Wood, and Steven Lukes, maintains that the negation of the commodity form and the end of
class antagonisms will lead to the abolition of right altogether rather than its reestablishment on a
new basis.
The withering away of right and rights is based upon the assumption that there would be
no need for standards of right or rights-claims among social individuals as soon as material
abundance is achieved and human needs are satisfied under communism. John Rawls, following
David Hume, notes that the circumstances of justice arise whenever a society is defined by
material scarcity and the presence of conflict between individuals.41 If communism is viewed as
a society of material abundance, where labour has become life’s prime want, then on this view,
communism is a society that that has transcended the need for justice and right. It is true that
Marx thinks that the unprecedented development of productive forces under associated
production would extend the length of leisure time. Consider, for instance, his prediction of
greater disposable labour time in the Grundrisse:
Once they have done so [once the associated producers appropriate the means of
production following a period of social revolution]—and disposable time thereby ceases
to have an antithetical existence—then, on one side, necessary labour time will be
measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the
power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now
calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the
developed power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any
way, labour time, but rather disposable time.42
40
See Allen Buchanan. Marx and Justice: The Radical Critique of Liberalism (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield,
1982).
41
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Rev. Ed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 110-111.
42
Karl Marx, “Grundrisse”, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker, (New York: Norton, 1978), 287.
17
Nevertheless, Marx still sees the realm of freedom as being constrained by the realm of necessity
(economically-necessary labour) under communism; and if this is the case, then standards of
right and justice will continue to prevail in communist society, though in an altered form. Marx
states the following in Capital Vol.III:
Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and
reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and
under all possible modes of production [my emphasis]. With his development this realm
of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of
production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist
in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with
Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the
blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under
conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature [my emphasis]. But it
nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of
human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can
blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its basis [my emphasis]. The shortening
of the working day is its basic prerequisite.43
The important implication is that the realm of freedom and the scope of human needs will
still be bound by the realm of necessity, even with the automation of the most mundane forms of
production. Moreover, Marx did not think that improvements in technology—alone—could
facilitate the transition to communism. He also presupposed a qualitative transformation in social
relations, including a corresponding transformation in the standard of right. If it were simply a
matter of achieving abundance, why would Marx concern himself with the realm of necessity
and “achieving [economically necessary labour] with the least expenditure of energy and under
conditions most favourable to, and worthy of...human nature”? What standard is used to assess
the conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, human nature? After all, Marx is appealing
here to some standard of Recht that he thinks will be favourable to, and worthy of, human nature.
Marx does not think such a standard can be achieved under the capitalist mode of production—
43
Karl Marx Capital Vol. III, ed Friedrich Engels. (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 920.
18
with its class antagonisms—but could potentially be achieved under the communist mode of
production. To be sure, Marx would oppose the idea of pre-political or natural rights, just as he
would oppose eternal concepts of justice because they represent abstractions that are detached
from the historical specificity of social relations. However, the virtue of Marx’s materialistic
theory of history is that it enables him to claim in Capital that slavery and conquest are unjust
according bourgeois standards of right without succumbing to relativism because capitalism is
recognized as an advance over slavery and feudalism, just as communism is recognized as an
advance over capitalism. To put things into perspective, communist society would view the
exploitation of workers as unjust, whereas capitalist society views the same practice as a
legitimate way of life.
When discussing Marx’s scattered remarks about the future communist society, liberal
commentators such as John Rawls and Allen Buchanan point out that communism is predicated
upon unlimited benevolence and spontaneous cooperation among human beings. 44 To the extent
that Rawls sees communism as a society beyond justice, he hints that communism typifies a
society of saints.45 It is worth noting that this depiction of communism was first levelled against
Marx and Engels by Max Stirner, who claimed that communism presupposed universal altruism
and self-sacrifice. Marx and Engels took Stirner’s challenge seriously, and they refuted him by
historicizing the conditions for the free development of individuals, which they argued would not
be based on universal love or on egoism:
Within communist society, the only society in which the genuine and free development of
individuals ceases to be a mere phrase [my emphasis], this development is determined
precisely by the connection of individuals, a connection which consists partly in the
economic prerequisites and partly in the necessary solidarity of the free development of
all, and, finally, in the universal character of the activity of individuals on the basis of the
44
Allen Buchanan. Marx and Justice: The Radical Critique of Liberalism (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield,
1982),84-85.
45
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Rev. Ed, 112.
19
existing productive forces. Here, therefore, the matter concerns individuals at a definite
historical stage of development and by no means merely individuals chosen at random,
even disregarding the indispensable communist revolution, which itself is a general
condition for their free development. The individuals’ consciousness of their mutual
relations will, of course, likewise become something quite different, and, therefore, will
no more be the ‘principle of love’ or dévoûment, than it will be egoism...[my emphasis].46
Rawls may have conceived of communist society as a society of universal benevolence and
sainthood, but Marx anticipated this charge and disagreed.
If communist society is still defined by some standard of right, then the corresponding
rights of social individuals will differ in content from exclusionary rights of the capitalist era.
The associated producers would now 1) have a right to own the means of production in common,
2) have a share in the social product, 3) have a right to participate in the administration of
collective affairs, and 4) have the universal right to develop freely and without hindrance. To
argue, as Marx does, in the Critique of the Gotha Program that “right can never be higher than
the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby”47, is not to
conclude that right becomes irrelevant or superfluous, as some would have it. Right assumes a
form under communism that could not have been achieved under the “narrow horizons” of
bourgeois right and the capitalist mode of production that gave rise to it.48
I now confront the objection that the abolition of the commodity form and the end of
class antagonisms will lead to the abolition of right and rights altogether. Here, Hegel’s influence
on Marx’s dialectical method is crucial for understanding the future of right beyond bourgeois
right. The concept of Aufhebung is especially relevant in this context. Hegel defines Aufhebung
in his Science of Logic to describe a simultaneous historical process of negation, preservation,
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. “The German Ideology”. Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 207-208.
47
Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program”. The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker, (New York: Norton,
1978), 531.
48
Ibid.
46
20
and supercession. Hegel points out in his Science of Logic that “ To sublate’ has a twofold
meaning in the [German] language: on the one hand it means to preserve, to maintain, and
equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to…Thus what is sublated is at the same
time preserved; it has only lost its immediacy but is not on that account annihilated [my
emphasis]”.49 To the extent that Aufhebung is a dialectical concept, it demonstrates how the
rudimentary and contradictory character of self-consciousness is negated while its positive
development is retained and vindicated. One is reminded of Hegel’s suggestion in the Preface to
the Philosophy of Right that “the great thing is to apprehend in the show of the temporal and
transient the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present”.50 Hegel
demonstrates how this process unfolds in the Philosophy of Right from abstract right to morality
and from morality to ethical life, where right is vindicated and given objective validity in the
context of a modern ethical state.51 Marx follows a similar line of argument, except that he
theorizes that the irreconcilable contradictions of the capitalist mode of production and its
standard of right will be superseded by another form of right in the context of associated
production, where a new standard will inform relations between social individuals. For Hegel,
the abstract rights-bearers become citizens of the law-governed state, whose rights and duties
coalesce. For Marx, “in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class
antagonisms”, [there shall be] an association, in which the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of all”52, which is to say that each individual has to
acknowledge the other’s right to develop freely and without hindrance in the context of
community. What does this passage reveal if not the reconstitution of right on another basis?
49
Hegel, G.W.F. Science of Logic. Trans. A.V. Miller. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), § 185, 107.
G.W.F Hegel, Preface, Philosophy of Right, Trans T.M Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 10.
51
Hegel’s remarks in §155 of the Philosophy of Right are particularly instructive in this regard.
52
Karl Marx, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker, (New York:
Norton, 1978) , 491.
50
21
If we think back to Marx’s critical appraisal of bourgeois right in “On the Jewish
Question” and in Capital, Marx recognizes that bourgeois right is a necessary and progressive
step in the struggle for human emancipation, even if it is not the final or most adequate form of
emancipation. After all, what is the prevailing political-economic context of bourgeois right
according to Marx? Human beings confront each other in antagonistic manner and they live a
double-life, as free and equal citizens of the liberal state and as warring egotists of civil society
who are at once unequal and unfree. In On the Jewish Question, this contradiction is revealed by
the fact that bourgeois right “leads every man to see in other men, not the realization, but rather
the limitation of his own liberty”.53 The bourgeois form of right is therefore falsified by its
content under capitalism because the majority of individuals are subject to inequality and
unfreedom by virtue of class domination, exploitative relations of production, and a broader
process of misrecognition. It is a great misfortune, then, that most commentators have failed to
grasp the immanent nature of Marx’s critique of bourgeois right and the extent to which the
transcendence of bourgeois right in communist society does not imply the abolition of right and
rights.
The failure to understand Marx’s critique of bourgeois right stems from his critical
comments about bourgeois right but also from a misapprehension of the Hegelian meaning of
transcendence in Marx’s work. The prevailing explanation for the transcendence of right and
rights in communist society presupposes nothing more than abolition. The problem with this
reading is that it ignores the nuanced meaning of Aufhebung as a simultaneous process of
negation, preservation, and supersession. This interpretation also overlooks the significance of
bourgeois society and bourgeois right as a necessary precursor to the development of the future
communist society. In the Critique of the Gotha Program Marx reiterates that “What we have to
53
Ibid, 142.
22
deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the
contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically,
morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose
womb it emerges”.54 Marx conveys a similar, albeit more general point in the Eighteenth
Brumaire, where he asserts that “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as
they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under
circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead
generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”.55
It is important to note that bourgeois right is in principle still preserved in the earliest
stages of communist society.56 Marx sees bourgeois right as being preserved in the early stages
of communism because the exchange of equivalents that follows the revolutionary
transformation of capitalist society still overlooks significant empirical differences between
individuals, who possess different abilities and needs. Individuals are still viewed in an abstract
and one-sided manner, which is why bourgeois right constitutes a defective standard of right.
Marx predicted that the form and content of right would be transformed in later stages with the
general economic and cultural development of society.57 To be sure, this outlook assumes that
the productive forces of society are sufficiently developed to enable the free development of
individuals and the realization of their needs. However, the extent to which these needs are
realized will also depend on how the social individuals govern their interchange with nature and
with each other. After all, they will still need to determine how to produce and distribute the
social surplus.
Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program”, 529.
Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, 595.
56
Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program”, 530.
57
Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program”, 531.
54
55
23
As far as questions of distribution are concerned, liberal and Marxist commentators have
often pointed to Marx’s dismissal of distributive justice as “obsolete verbal rubbish” in the
Critique of the Gotha Program.58 However, Marx is not dismissing standards of right or
distributive justice per se; rather, he is dismissing the tendency among bourgeois economists and
‘vulgar socialists’ to detach questions of distributive justice from the organization of production.
Marx argues in the very next paragraph of the Critique that “if the material conditions of
production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a
distribution of the means of consumption different from the present [capitalist] one.”59 The latter
is further evidence that a different standard of distribution will prevail in communist society.
Marx theorized that “in the higher phase of communist society”, the growth of society’s
productive forces and the cultural transformation brought about by this development will make it
make it possible for “the narrow horizons of bourgeois right [to be] crossed in its entirety and
society inscribe upon its banner: From each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs.”60
Although the argument has been made countless times that Marx only has scorn for
bourgeois right, it is a mistake to conclude that Marx thought that the historical achievements of
bourgeois right would be annihilated under communism. The mutual recognition of free and
equal persons is not negated under communism and neither are the rights that secure the free
development of individuals in their concrete unity and difference. It would be even more
troubling to conclude that Marx’s critique of bourgeois rights presupposed the absolute negation
58
Ibid
Ibid, 531-532. This passage follows the logic of Marx’s rhetorical question on p.528 of the Critique of the Gotha
Program, where he inquires whether “economic relations [are] regulated by legal conceptions or do not, on the
contrary, legal relations arise from economic ones?” Marx’s materialistic theory of history holds that the mode of
production gives rise to different standards of right and relations between individuals rather than the reverse.
60
Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program”, The Marx-Engels Reader, 531.
59
24
of rights. Abolishing elementary formal rights would mean reverting to pre-capitalist social
relations, where the direct domination of the master, lord, or despot actively inhibits the free
development of individuals. The execution of Evgeny Pashukanis at the behest of such a tyrant
attests to the dangers of rejecting the most elementary bourgeois rights that Marx took for
granted in any modern society. Marx did not wish to return to the ruins of the past; rather, he saw
elements of the past being preserved in a transcended or revolutionized form. If you are still not
convinced of this point, consider what Marx and Engels have to say on the future of ‘individual
property’61 and the family62 in communist society. It appears that ‘individual property’ is
preserved, that private relations between individuals are not obliterated, and that Recht is not
expunged in communist society.
The implication of Marx’s argument is that right is not abolished in communist society;
on the contrary, it takes on a more adequate foundation that could not have been achieved under
capitalism. Communist society negates the exploitative relations of production that characterized
capitalist society. However, communism preserves the rights of social individuals by creating the
substantive conditions for their free development and its social or objective validation. Carol
Gould provides a fruitful analysis of the historical transformation of social relations as described
by Marx in the Grundrisse. Gould notes that all pre-capitalist social-economic formations were
characterized by direct forms of domination, while individual relations were embedded in
As far as the future of personal or individual property is concerned, Marx writes: “The capitalist mode of
production...produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded
on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own
negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him
individual property based on the acquisitions of the capitalist era [my emphasis]”. See Karl Marx Capital Vol. I, ed
Friedrich Engels. (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 763.
62
The future of the family and of private relations between the sexes is nicely captured by Engels’ assertion that
communist society “will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only
the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene”. See Friedrich Engels. “Principles of
Communism”. The Communist Manifesto After 100 Years, Trans. Paul Sweezy. (New York: Modern Reader
Paperbacks, 1968), 80.
61
25
community. Capitalist society, on the other hand, is characterized by legal relations between
formally free and equal individuals that are disaggregated from community. Communist society
negates the domination and unfreedom that characterizes the preceding political-economic
formations by preserving the right of persons, while also creating the substantive conditions for
the free development of social individuals. Gould notes:
we may yet see that in Marx’s projection, the third stage stands in the dialectical relation
of negation and transcendence to the first two stages. Thus in Marx’s account the internal
relations of the first stage may be regarded as negated by the external relations of the
second, but in the second these external relations have the formal aspect of equality,
whereas in the first they are relations of inequality and hierarchy of stations, duties, and
personal attributes. In the third stage Marx projects that internal relations may again be
established, but now with a realization of the formal equality of the second stage as a real
or substantive equality. Or again, the unfree social individuals in the organic communities
of the first stage give way to formally or abstractly free individuals who are social only
externally (that is, relating only through law or market relations). In the third stage Marx
anticipates the reestablishment of a community of social individuals, but now as
concretely free. Furthermore, in Marx’s projection of this third stage, the individuals are
characterized by the universality and differentiations that the second capitalist stage
introduces into social life.63
Social validation presupposes a sphere where individual self-assertion is recognized,
protected and given its due. To be sure, this process longer takes place among atomistic
individuals but among social individuals as far as Marx is concerned. The idea of social
validation leads me to another concept that Marx appropriated from Hegel, namely, the mutual
recognition of end status. Mutual or intersubjective recognition implies that an individual’s
freedom or moral worth is validated only when it is given reciprocal acknowledgement or
confirmation by another agent of freedom. It is true—as Axel Honneth and others have
demonstrated—that Marx’s most explicit remarks on recognition can be found in his Comments
on James Mill, where recognition is intricately tied to the process of associated and un-alienated
63
Carol Gould. Marx’s Social Ontology , 21-2.
26
production.64 Honneth concludes that Marx replaced his earlier Hegelian-inspired formulation of
recognition with a utilitarian, interest-based, and economist theory that no longer emphasized the
struggle for recognition as such.65 It is regrettable that Honneth does not take up Marx’s and
Engels’ assertion in the Communist Manifesto that “in place of the old bourgeois society, with its
classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which free development of each
is the condition for the free development of all”.66
The recognition of the unhindered
development of each individual is the precondition for the free development of all individuals.
Needless to say, Marx did not think that genuine relations of mutual recognition could be
achieved under capitalism.
Far from envisioning the abolition of right and rights in communist society, Marx’s
dialectical analysis points instead to the possibility of transcending the narrow horizons of
bourgeois right by securing an equal right for each individual to develop freely and without
hindrance, and for this right to be recognized and protected by all. Without this recognition, the
free development of each remains an abstract and indeterminate thought rather than a concrete
reality. The virtue of Marx’s radical critique of liberalism consists in his painstaking
demonstration that liberalism cannot live up to its ideals of free and equal citizenship, and that
individual freedom has not been given its rightful due. The urgent task of socialist theorists today
is to reconstruct Marx’s radical critique of liberalism and make explicit what is left implicit and
underdeveloped in Marx’s work, that is, the future of right beyond the ‘narrow horizons’ of
liberalism and bourgeois right. The tragic lesson of Evgeny Pashukanis’ career was that he leapt
into the abstract future without rooting himself in concrete history and dialectics when they
mattered most. Marx leaves the future open so that it can be determined by human being as they
64
Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, trans. Joel Anderson (New York: Polity, 1995), 149-150.
Ibid.
66
Karl Marx, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, The Marx-Engels Reader, 491.
65
27
struggle to transform their circumstances and themselves by inheriting the legacies of the past
while paving while paving the path to a more emancipatory future. The benefit of historical
hindsight should accompany the critical foresight that right and rights cannot wither away if one
is to remain committed to the idea that the free development of each is the condition for the free
development of all.
28
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