Marxism and Law

•       Marxism and Law

•       By

•       Femi Aborisade

•       Broad Outline

•       Introduction:

–   Clarifying the topic: Marxist jurisprudence or economic determinism?

–   What has Marxism got to do with jurisprudence: an answer from Adaramola’s (2008) definition of Jurisprudence

–   The Man, Karl Marx

•        Basic Outlines of Marxism:

–   Dialectical Materialism,

–   Historical Materialism and

–   The theory of Surplus Value - Marxist Economics

–   Economic determinism: The base and the superstructure

–   The Marxist theory of the state

•       Socialist Legalism

•       An appraisal of Marxism’s contribution to jurisprudence

 

•      Clarifying the topic: Marxist jurisprudence or economic determinism?

•       The Marxist conceptualisation of the nature, content, features and roles of law in society has been termed Economic Realism, Economic Approach or Economic Determinism by various scholars. However, in this paper, the term ‘Marxist Jurisprudence’ has been adopted so that we can lay bare an outline of the thoughts of Marx and Marxists on the nature of law in society. This is because Engels, a life long political friend and collaborator of Marx, had cause to engage in polemics against those who tended to reduce their intellectual contributions to ‘economic determinism’.

 

•      Clarifying the topic: Marxist jurisprudence or economic determinism?

•       According to Engels:

•       “According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase”.
[Engels, Letter to J Bloch (1890)

•       The above explanation means that while the economic element is considered a fundamental determining factor in historical development, it is not the only determining factor.

•       In fact, as we shall see, there is nothing deterministic or fatalistic about Marxism – the nature, contents and direction of historical developments depend not only on the economy, but also on the momentum and potency of the class struggle.

•       I therefore will propose we regard the topic of discussion as Marxist jurisprudence rather than Dias’s (2005:395 ) “economic approach” or  Adaramola’s (2008: 287) “economic realism” .

–  
What has Marxism got to do with jurisprudence: an answer from Adaramola’s (2008)definition of Jurisprudence

•       Adaramola (2008: 2) emphatically states that “I describe jurisprudence as the ...scientific investigation and systematic analysis, synthesis and presentation of certain abstract, general and theoretical ideas about law and legal systems, carried out with a view to discovering those ultimate truths and principles (if any) that are common to human societies, which might possibly lead to replacing and reforming those principles or improving upon their functioning...”

•       
What has Marxism got to do with jurisprudence?: an answer from Adaramola’s (2008) definition of Jurisprudence

•       Adaramola (2008: 5) also asserts with authority that:

•       “Thus jurisprudence may be seen as the halfway house between philosophy and political theory ... Like philosophy and political theory, it attempts to answer the question “what is the purpose of life”? In other words, what are the ultimate truths, values and purpose of human life in society?”

•       If we accept Adaramola’s definition of jurisprudence as the meaning of meanings and the essence of human life, as I do, then, Marxism and Marxists seek to offer some perspectives on the essence of human life, the possible direction(s) the world could be heading and the fundamental character of the struggles and crises in our world. 

–
The Man, Karl Marx

•       Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) was a German revolutionary socialist.

•       He read law, history and philosophy at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin and later obtained Ph.D in Greek Philosophy.

•       He was proficient in French, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Scandinavian, Russian and English.

•       When he died in 1883, only eleven mourners were present at his grave.

 

•       Karl Marx: The Millennium’s Greatest Thinker

•       But in 1999, the BBC News online poll results declared him the greatest thinker of the millennium, coming ahead of giant intellectuals like Einstein, Newton, and Charles Darwin.

•       Similarly, as documented by the (pro-capitalist) Economist magazine, British public opinion at the end of the millennium (10 years after the collapse of Soviet Union and Eastern Europe’s ‘socialism’) resoundingly favoured Marx as the “millennium’s greatest thinker” (followed by

•       Einstein, Newton, and Darwin).

 

•       Karl Marx: The Millennium’s Greatest Thinker

•       The polls by the  BBC News online and the British Economist show the importance and continuing relevance of the man who propounded the theory now named after him as ‘Marxism’.

•       The declaration of Marx as the greatest thinker of the Millennium appears to be a fulfilment of the prediction made at his grave by Frederick Engels: ‘...his name and work will endure through the ages’

•       What was Marx’s Motivation in Life?

•       It is considered appropriate to first examine what motivated Marx before we can adequately appreciate his ideas, life and struggles.

•       The quality of mind of Karl Marx could be deduced from two Letters he wrote to his father in 1837. In those letters, he showed that he could only derive meaning and personal happiness from life by working for the happiness of the greatest number of people and making the rich to ‘shed hot tears’:

•       “If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people” (Marx, Letter to His Father (1837).

•       What was Marx’s Motivation in Life?

•       In another letter, he stated:

•       “History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy” ((Marx, Letter to His Father (1837).

 

•       What was Marx’s Motivation in Life?

•       ‘Both Marx and especially his wife Jenny suffered at the hands of bailiffs and money-lenders. Lack of adequate food and poor housing inevitably affected their own health. But Marx's determination to overthrow capitalism never wavered. 'Marx was, before all else, revolutionary', declared Engels at Marx's graveside: 'His real mission in life was to contribute in one way or another to the overthrow of capitalist society. Fighting was his element' (http://www.socialismtoday.org/44/marx.html

 

•       Basic Outlines of Marxism

•       Marxism is composed of three main component parts:

–   Dialectical Materialism,

–   Historical Materialism and

–   The theory of Surplus Value - Marxist Economics.

 

•       The Concept of materialism

•       The concept of materialism is best understood when it is compared and contrasted with Idealism.

•       However, it is important to appreciate that materialism and idealism have nothing whatsoever in common with their everyday usage, where materialism is associated with material greed and swindling  and idealism with laudable ideals and virtue, as against vice.

 

•       The Concept of materialism

•       Materialism is the philosophical outlook which explains that:

•       there is only one material world.  There is neither Heaven nor Hell. The universe is not the creation of any supernatural being and that it is in the process of constant flux.

•       Human beings are a part of nature, and evolved from lower forms of life, whose origins sprung from a lifeless planet some 3.6 billion or so years ago.

•       With the evolution of life, at a certain stage, came the development of animals with a nervous system, and eventually human beings with a large brain.

•       The Concept of materialism

•       With humans emerged human thought and human consciousness.

•       For materialists, there is no consciousness apart from the living brain, which is part of a material body. Thinking is the product of the brain, which is the organ of thought. The human brain alone is capable of producing general ideas, i.e. thinking.

•       Matter has always existed eternally, and still exists - independently of human mind and human beings.

•       Things existed long before any awareness of them arose or could have arisen on the part of living organisms.

•       Ideas are simply a reflection of reality - the independent material world in which we live. 

•       For example, things reflected in a mirror do not depend on the reflection for their existence.

•       "All ideas are taken from experience; they are reflections - true or distorted - of reality," states Engels. Marx also puts the same idea differently: "Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life."

 

•       Idealism

•       On the other hand, philosophical idealism states that the material world is not real but is simply the reflection of the world of ideas.

•       Though there are different forms of idealism, they all essentially explain that ideas are primary and matter, if it exists at all, secondary.

•       Dialectical Materialism

•       The philosophy of Marxism is however, materialism not idealism.

•       The philosophy of Marxism is indeed, not just materialism, it is dialectical materialism.

•       The word, ‘dialectic’ is derived from the Greek word, ‘dialegein’, meaning ‘to argue’.

•       It has been used to draw out the limits and contradictions in formal logic (A is A), (A is not B), etc

•       Formal logic involves simple relationships between truth values. For example, it assumes something cannot be both true and not true.

•       Dialectic

•       The dialectical method does not follow a simple yes or no format.

•       Rather, it involves a pendulum-like ‘thesis’-’antithesis’-’synthesis’ form:

•       Thus, for example, in the Marxian dialectical formulation, the thesis refers to the existing capitalist class inequality (i.e. existing material conditions of deprivations).

•       The antithesis refers to class revolt which the existing deprivations under capitalism produce.

•       The synthesis refers to the new economic system (socialism/communism) which is the necessary product of the revolt of the working class under capitalism.

•        

•       Dialectic

•       Dialectic is based on two main assumptions:

•       1.            All things are contradictory in themselves

•       2.            Contradiction is the basis or source of all movement and life. Only in so far as a thing contains contradiction can it move.

•       Therefore reality is change. Everything in life is subject to change. Nothing remains in a particular state permanently. What is permanent in life is change. 

•       Basic Laws of dialectic

•       These include:

•       The law of quantity into quality (and vice versa)

•       The unity of Opposites

•       The Negation of the Negation

 

•       The law of transformation of quantity into quality (and vice versa)

•       A series of changes in the quantity of temperature of water leads to a change in its quality.

•       In other words, water getting colder and colder changes its state [quality] to ice.

•       Similarly, gradual changes in the consciousness of workers could lead to an explosion in the class struggle.

 

•       The unity of Opposites

•       The unity of opposites is best illustrated by the functioning of the capitalist system- capitalism requires a capitalist class and a working class.

•       The world we live in is full of examples of contradictions or unity of opposites: right-duty, cold-heat, light-darkness, Capital-Labour, birth-death, riches-poverty, positive-negative, boom-slump, thinking-being, finite-infinite, repulsion-attraction, left-right, above-below, evolution-revolution, chance-necessity, sale-purchase, cause-effect, necessity-accident, constants-variables, and so on.

•       Beneath the apparent opposition in each set above is an underlying unity – neither the one nor the other has the truth.  The truth is in their movement.

 

•       The Negation of the Negation

•       An acorn, in becoming an oak, has itself ceased to be. The oak is different from the acorn – the oak is not the acorn – the oak is the negation of the acorn. 

•        Implicit within the acorn is the potential to become an oak. 

•       The acorn contains within itself its own negation and is thus contradictory.  It is only this contradiction that allows it to grow. 

•       Similarly, the general pattern of historical development is not one of a straight line - each social mode of production is a negation of the mode preceding it.

 

 

•       Dialectic: Hegel and Marx

•       Though Hegel was an idealist, he was however the first to comprehensively present the general laws of dialectics.

•       Being an idealist, he held that all phenomena of nature and the stages of human history were merely aspects of what he called Absolute Spirit , i.e. ‘God’.

•       In Hegel’s philosophical scheme, God, in the first stage, represented unity of opposites, which in the second stage gave rise to His negation, Nature, while the third stage was the unification of God and Nature through the development of human consciousness and understanding.

•       Marx took everything valuable in Hegel’s dialectics and developed it further on the basis of dialectical materialism., removing God from the scheme.

 

•       Dialectic: Hegel and Marx

•       Thus, Marx differentiates his dialectics from Hegel’s, as follows:

•       ‘My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. .... With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell’ (Marx, Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital (1873).

 

•       Two main camps of philosophers

•       Based on Marx’s differentiation of his dialectic from hegel’s, Engels explains that:

•       ‘The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being. ...
The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed world creation in some form or other — and among the philosophers, Hegel, for example, this creation often becomes still more intricate and impossible than in Christianity — comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism.

Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach & the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886)

 

•       Historical materialism

•       Marx used the term ‘historical materialism’ to capture the human-social activity involved in ‘the production of material life itself’ in the various historical modes of production which humanity has experienced at different times in various societies through the dialectical processes of ‘thesis’-’antithesis’-’synthesis’.

•       Historical materialism: Modes of production in human history

•       Marxists identify the occurrence of five (5) main modes of production in human history:

•       12000BC – 5000BC: Primitive communal

•       5000BC – 500AD: Slavonic mode of production

•       500AD – 1750s: Feudalistic mode

•       1750s – 1917: Capitalist mode of production

•       1917 – 1989/91: Socialist mode of production

–   1917 – 1923: Socialist mode of production

–   1924/28– 1989/91: Deformed Workers State/State                                                       capitalism

 

•       Historical materialism

•       It should be appreciated that for Marx, dialectical materialism means that historical change (i.e., material/economic change) is the result of conscious human activity emerging from and

•       acting on the socially experienced contradictions of historically conditioned (i.e.human-made) economic forces and relations in order to produce a new form of social existence – i.e. the thesis-antithesis-synthesis process.

•       Historical materialism

•       Marxism teaches that the history of mankind is nothing but the history of man’s activity to produce the means of existence – i. e. the essence of man in life.

•       “History does nothing, it ‘possesses no immense wealth’, it ‘wages no battles’. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; ‘history’ is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims” (Marx, The Holy Family, Chapter 6 (1846).

 

•       Historical materialism

•       In Marx’s evolutionary and dialectical view, a communist society will arise as a negation of capitalism. Under a communist society, each person would be required to contribute to the everyday material and social goods production on the basis of their diverse and multifaceted abilities and in turn, they shall take from the public wealth, according to their need – from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.

•       In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, there shall be an association [a community] in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

•       Historical materialism

•       Marx’s vision of communism, therefore, entails the emancipation, not only of the working class, but of all people; it would represent “universal human emancipation”.

•       Whereas all previous historical movements were movements of minorities in the interests of minorities, the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority.

•       It would produce a communal society wherein each person would have rights and responsibilities toward the maintenance of shared material and social existence.

•       Transformation from one production mode to another is never peaceful nor fatalistic/deterministic

•       "Economic production and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch; ... consequently (ever since the dissolution of the primitive communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social development; ... this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time for ever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggles...." (Engels' Preface to the German Edition of the Communist Manifesto.)

 

•       The theory of Surplus Value - Marxist Economics

•       Marx shows how capitalism is an exploitative system through the theory of surplus value.

•       The theory of surplus value can be understood by first understanding what Marx terms ‘the commodification of labour’

•       Commodification is a term which refers to buying and selling of products or services on the basis of the use-value embedded in the product/service to produce profit.

•       In the same way an investor would buy, say, raw materials to produce goods for profit, so also employers of labour would engage workers to the extent of possessing the ability to work and produce beyond the wages or salaries paid.

•       The theory of Surplus Value - Marxist Economics

•       Marx explains that  while payment  for the labour power (ability to work) of the worker is “measured by the clock,” payment for raw material inputs into production process is “measured by the scales”... “Labour power is, therefore a commodity which its possessor, the wage worker, sells to capital”.

 

•       Surplus value and “Free” worker under capitalism

•       Marx dismisses the notion that the worker under capitalism is ‘free’, in terms of freedom to choose which employer to work for compared to a slave under slavery or to the serf under feudalism:

•       “The slave [in ancient Rome], together with his labor power, is sold once and for all to his owner. He is a commodity which can pass from the hand of one owner to that of another. He is himself a commodity, but the labor power is not his commodity. The serf [in medieval/feudal times] sells only a part of his labor power. He does not receive a wage from the owner of the land; rather, the owner of the land receives a tribute from him … The free laborer, on the other hand, sells himself and indeed sells himself piecemeal … The worker belongs neither to an owner nor to the land, but eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his daily life belong to him who buys them”

 

 

•       Surplus value and “Free” worker under capitalism

•       Though it may appear on the surface that the movement of labor is done freely,  in reality, the worker is in fact coerced by capitalism.

•       Marx explains the coercion:

•       “The worker leaves the capitalist to whom he hires himself whenever he likes, and the capitalist discharges him whenever he thinks fit, as soon as he no longer gets any profit out of him, or not the anticipated profit. But the worker, whose sole source of livelihood is the sale of his labor power, cannot leave the whole class of purchasers, that is, the capitalist class, without renouncing his existence. He belongs not to this or that capitalist but to the capitalist class, and, moreover, it is his business to dispose of himself, that is, to find a purchaser within this capitalist class”.

•       Surplus Value and Indirect Forced Labour

•       Based on the foregoing analysis of the nature of the worker’s freedom, for Marx, capitalism is wage slavery.

•       While “direct forced labour” occurred under slavery, “indirect forced labour” takes place under capitalism. 

•       Under capitalism, labour contracts are therefore perceived as coercive.

•       Surplus value defined

•       Marx defines surplus value as the difference between a worker’s exchange value (i.e. worker’s wages or the market value of a

•       worker’s labour) and his use-value

•       Marx’s Definition of Surplus Value

•       “The daily cost of maintaining [labor] and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different things. The former [the cost of maintaining labor, i.e. the subsistence and reproduction of the worker] determines the exchange value of the labour-power, the latter [the living labor that it can call into action] is its use-value … Therefore, the value of labour power, and the value which that labour-power creates in the labour process are two entirely different magnitudes, and this difference of the two values was what the capitalist had in view, when he was purchasing the labour power …”

•       Marx definition of Surplus value

•        “...What really influenced him was the specific use-value which this commodity possesses of being a source not only of value, but of more value than it has itself. This is the special service that the capitalist expects from labour power, and in this transaction he acts in accordance with the ‘eternal laws’ of the exchange of commodities. The seller of labour-power, like the seller of any other commodity, realizes [acquires] its exchange value, and parts with its use-value. He cannot take the one without giving the other. The use value of labour-power (labor) … belongs just as little to its seller, as the use-value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer who has sold it. (Cap 215–216)

 

•       Surplus value and Exploitative Labour Contracts

•       For Cohen (Dean and Professor of Law, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella) this transfer of value from workers to capitalists constitutes exploitation, because greater value is exchanged for lesser value. Cohen has stated this argument in this

•       way:

•       (1) Labour and labour alone creates value.

•       (2) The labourer receives the value of his labour power.

•       (3) The value of the product is greater than the value of his

•       labour power.

•       (4) The labourer receives less value than he creates.

•       (5) The capitalist receives the remaining value.

•       (6) The labourer is exploited by the capitalist.

•          (COHEN, G.A. (1988 ). Are Disadvantaged Workers Who Take Hazardous Jobs Forced to

•          Take Hazardous Jobs?, in HISTORY, LABOUR, AND FREEDOM: THEMES FROM MARX 239, 241-

•          42, cited in PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LABOR LAW . SPECTOR, H.,).

•       Economic determinism: The base and the superstructure (1)

•       Marxism contends that the system of ownership of the means of production (i.e. the economic system) is the base or foundation of any society and that the superstructure (the political subsystem, the legal subsystem, etc) takes its character, in the final analysis, ultimately, from the mode of production.

•       In other words, a particular legal system will tend to support the existing particular economic system.

•       For example, the laws in a capitalist society will serve, in the main, the interests of capital owners,

•       even though mechanisms would be put in place to present the judicial system as if it serves all classes equally.

•       Economic determinism :The Limits of the Law (2)

•       In general, the outcomes of cases taken to industrial courts under capitalism tend to reflect a system that benefits employers and puts the workers at a disadvantage: cost of litigation, the long duration it takes to resolve trade disputes, the tendency for various legal doctrines having the effect of tilting proceedings in favour of employers, the doctrine of the right of employer to hire and fire; limitations in awards for unlawful termination or unfair dismissal, etc

•        “Legislation, whether political or civil, never does more than proclaim, express in words, the will of economic relations” (Marx, cited in Cain, Maureen, and Alan Hunt, 1979, Marx and Engels on Law (Academic Press).

•       Therefore, just as employers as a class have economic advantage in capitalist society so too they have the tacit backing of the legal system.

 

•       Economic determinism : Law as capitalist ideology (3)

•       An ideology is a way of making sense of reality or interpreting ereality, a philosophical world outlook.

•       The ruling class ensures that laws are perceived to be generally neutral and fair in order to encourage workers to initiate actions in the law courts, even though they are more likely to be settled in unjust ways.

•       In a letter written in 1890, Engels made the obvious point that if justice really did favour the employer in every single case it would cease to be attractive to the poor.

•       Frederick Engels also explains how the English legal system does not benefit workers:

•       “English law is either common law, in other words, unwritten law such as existed at the time when statutes were first gathered and later collated by legal authorities—on the most important points this law is naturally uncertain and ambiguous—or else it is statute law, which consists of an infinite number of individual acts of parliament gathered over 500 years, which contradict each other and represent not a “state of law”, but a state of complete lawlessness” (Frederick Engels (1844) in “The English Constitution”, Vorwärts, 18 September 1844,  available at
www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/condition-england/ch02.htm)

 

•       Economic determinism : Some evidences on the class character of Law in capitalist society (4)

•       In general, common law is a tradition which:

•       (a) Tends to protect property rights.

•       (b) In particular, encourages contractual disputes to be settled primarily on the basis of the terms actually contained within a contract (rather than by reference to, say, general values of fairness or reasonableness).

•       (c) Offers to the litigant in a civil dispute, or the defendant in a criminal case, a high level of fairness in procedure (but not necessarily in substance).

•       (David Renton, Tribunals and tribulations in International Socialism, Issue: 124 (http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=594&issue=124, Posted: 1 October 09, accessed on 20/08/10)

•       Below, we attempt to substantiate each of the above listed three characteristics of common law.

 

 

•       Economic determinism : Common law as protector of property rights (5)

•       David Renton explains that in the UK, until parliament created environmental standards, which occurred over the past 30 years, there was no common law right for a person to bring a claim for losses arising from environmental harm.

•       The only equivalent right was a right of property holders to bring claims over “nuisance”, i.e. when a property owner’s personal right in a property was diminished by environmental damage.

•       Also, there is the common law assumption that environmental damage is not actionable where the property damaged belongs to the poor.

•       Hence, the legal maxim in the UK: “What would be a nuisance in Belgrave Square would not necessarily be so in Bermondsey”

•       Economic determinism : Common law as protector of property rights (6)

•       There is also the common law principle which opposes reinstatement of employees under contractual agreement as opposed to unemployment with statutory flavour.

•       This principle is derived from the tradition of respecting the property rights of the employer,  within common law, to manage his property.

•       The common legal position is that you cannot force a willing employee on an unwilling employer.

•         Economic determinism : Settlement of contractual disputes on basis of contractual terms rather than by reference to general values of fairness or reasonableness (7)

•       Example 1: in Printing and Numerical Registering Co v Sampson, (LR 19 Eq. 462 (1875), Lord Jessel, held that:

•       “Contracts when entered into voluntarily shall be held sacred”

•       Example 2: In a most recent decision of the House of Lords, made as recently as 2003, Lord Hobhouse reiterated the same principle:

•       “When the parties have deliberately put their agreement into writing, it is conclusively presumed…that they intend the writing to form a full and final statement of their intentions, and one which should be placed beyond the reach of future controversy, bad faith or treacherous memory… This rule is one of the great strengths of English commercial law and is one of the main reasons for the international success of English law in preference to laxer systems which do not provide the same certainty” (Shogun Finance Limited v Hudson (FC) [2003] UKHL 62.

•       Economic determinism : Unequal bargaining power (8)

•       It could be argued that just as a willing employee cannot be forced on an unwilling employer, so also a willing employer cannot be forced on an unwilling employee.

•       Thus, the concept of CB is based on the assumption of equal bargaining power between the employer and the worker.

•       But in reality,  the vast majority of workers have no power to negotiate the terms of their employment contract, a situation which constantly puts them at a disadvantage.

•       Should a contract stipulate that an employer could transfer an employee anywhere else, the worker will get little or no satisfaction from the court if  he refuses to relocate.

•       There is a standard judicial answer along the line of: “But you signed the contract, didn’t you” (See White v Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd [1991] IRLR 331, EAT.

•       Economic determinism : Unequal bargaining power (9)

•       In most cases, workers tend to accept any terms and conditions of work no matter how unfavourable, particularly in the context of prolonged economic crisis involving widespread unemployment.

•       Marx argues, as we saw earlier, that whereas the employer may do away with one worker and employ another, the worker can only leave one capitalist employer for another; he cannot escape the capitalist class as a whole without renouncing his own existence.

 

•       Economic determinism : Unequal bargaining power  - CB is based on acceptance of status quo (9 (i)

•       Fox (1973: 219) aptly explains that

•       CB concept demands of workers to accept the system of wage slavery and not to oppose it.

•       Processes of negotiation therefore are on the principle which do not offset inbuilt inequality. “...Thus the discussion (at CB) may be about marginal adjustments in hierarchical rewards but not (questioning) the principle of hierarchical rewards” (Fox, A. (1973). Industrial Relations: A critique of Pluralist Ideology, in Child, J. (ed.). Man and Organisation. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd).

•       Economic determinism : Unequal bargaining power  - CB is based on acceptance of status quo(9(ii)

•       Fox’s explanation finds credence in the determination of what constitutes “trade disputes” over which CB could take place or over which trade unions could declare strike action

•       S. 47, Trade Disputes Act (TDA) defines trade disputes as ‘any dispute between employers and workers or between workers and workers which is connected with the employment or non-employment, or the terms of employment and physical conditions of work of any person’.

•       Thus, wider social issues such as government policies that are considered anti-people or anti-poor (e.g. perennial increases in the domestic prices of petroleum products) do not constitute trade disputes over which trade unions could ‘lawfully’ demand for CB or take strike action, speaking strictly within the law.

•       Economic determinism : Unequal bargaining power  - CB is based on acceptance of status quo(9(iii)

 

•       Indeed, the Trade Disputes Act (1976) effectively bans strikes - strikes cannot be embarked upon until established procedure for CB has been exhausted (See S. 17(1). After the procedure has been exhausted, the awards by the NIC is final and binding on all parties! (See S. 13 (2).

•       It should be recognized that though there is no single ILO Convention or Recommendation that recognises the right to strike, the implied ban on strike as shown in Ss. 17 and 13 of TDA, is a breach of ILO’s Convention No. 151 of 1957 which proclaims that ‘the machinery for settling disputes shall not limit in any way whatsoever, the right to strike’.

•       Economic determinism : Unequal bargaining power  - CB is based on acceptance of status quo(9(iv)

•       We talk here of implied ban on strike because even the TDA in S. 41 (1) provides that ‘without prejudice to S. 17 of this Act’, any worker who intends to cease work, ‘whether alone or in combination with others’, should give ‘at least fifteen days’ notice of his intention to do so’.

 

•       Economic determinism : Unequal bargaining power  - the illusion that unions maintain power balance(9(v)

•       Some scholars have also criticised Marxism for maintaining that the workers constitute a weaker party in CB processes. They argue that while workers as individuals are marginalized, workers as collectives when they unite in trade unions constitute effective check on employers excesses.

•       Fox (1973), a radical but non-Marxist scholar, had long ago dismissed the illusion of power balance between employers and unions. 

 

•       Economic determinism : Unequal bargaining power  - the illusion that unions maintain power balance(9(vi)

•       He explains that while it cannot be disputed that the union checks the exploitation of the workers by the employers, there is no such thing as equality of power. This is because the employers’ class has behind it the support of the state apparatus of coercion – the regular police, the secret police, the judiciary, the army, the civil service bureaucracy – which can be used at various times, in various ways, to covertly or overtly, by force or by persuasion, bend the workers towards the position required by the employer.

 

•       Economic determinism : Unequal bargaining power  - the illusion that unions maintain power balance(9(vii)

•       According to Fox (1973):

•       ...capital can, as it were, fight with one hand behind its back and still achieve in most situations a verdict that it finds tolerable. Only if labour were to challenge an essential prop of the structure (as in a general strike which has poses imminent danger for continuity of a regime) would capital need to bring into play anything approching its full strength, thus destroying at once the illusion of a power balance...’(Fox, 1973: 211).

•       Economic determinism : Unequal bargaining power  - the illusion that unions maintain power balance(9(viii)

•       In the Nigerian industrial relations praxis, we have witnessed such periods when the State dissolved executive committees of the NLC, PENGASSAN and NUPENG and incarcerated their leaders (e. g. KoKori and Dabibi in 1994) for years. In other cases, unionists such as Gogo Chu Nzeribe, the General Secretary of the Post and Telegraph Workers union was arrested in 1967, detained and turtured to death.

•       The occasional demonstration of such monstrous faces of the state (the true face of the state in capitalist societies) helps to constrain and condition how unions and their leaders think and act, in the bid to avoid the pains of state repression.  

 

•       Marxist Theory of the State

•       The main theoretical postulations of Marxism on the concept of the State are as follows:

•             The State (under capitalism)  is the executive committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie

•             Rationale for the emergence of the State: A Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms

•             Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc

•             The State: an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class

•             The "Withering Away" of the State

•             In the event of successful revolution, 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes’

 

•      
The State (under capitalism)  is the executive committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie

•       For Karl Marx, the State is nothing but the executive Committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie (available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007)

•       Law, under capitalism, is therefore targeted at facilitating the exploitation and oppression of the working class. 

•        The state as a product and manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms

•       Lenin, in The State and Revolution, relying heavily on the work of Engels (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State) explains that

•       ‘The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable’.

•       Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc

•       Another key proposition is that the ‘special bodies of armed men, prisons, standing army and police etc’ constitute the ‘chief’ essence of the state:

•       In the words of Lenin, the state is:

•       ‘...a power which arose from society but places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc., at their command ...

•       ...A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power’.

 

•       The State: an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class

•       Quoting Engels, Lenin asserts that: The State is an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class:

•       "Because the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but because it arose, at the same time, in the midst of the conflict of these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class...."

•       The State: an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class

•       ‘...The ancient and feudal states were organs for the exploitation of the slaves and serfs; likewise, "the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage-labor by capital’.

•       However, it is recognized that

•       ‘By way of exception, periods occur in which the warring classes balance each other so nearly that the state power as ostensible mediator acquires, for the moment, a certain degree of independence of both....’

•       The "Withering Away" of the State

•       Engel's postulates the eventual "withering away" of the state, as follows:

•       "The proletariat seizes state power and turns the means of production into state property to begin with.’

•       ‘Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor).

 

•       The "Withering Away" of the State

•       Engels continues: ‘As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state.

•       ‘State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not 'abolished'. It withers away’.

 

•       Lesson from the Paris Commune of March 1871

•       In the ‘last preface’ to the then new German edition of the Communist Manifesto, dated June 24, 1872. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, stated that the programme of the Communist Manifesto "has in some details become out-of-date", and they explained:

•       "... One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'...."

 

•      Lesson from the Paris Commune of March 1871: need to smash capitalist state

•       On April 12, 1871, i.e., just at the time of the Commune, Marx wrote to Kugelmann:

•       "If you look up the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will find that I declare that the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it [Marx's italics - the original is zerbrechen], and this is the precondition for every real people's revolution on the Continent. And this is what our heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting." (Quoted in The State by Lenin (available at http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm)

 

•       The Transition from Capitalism to Communism: need for a workers’ State – Dictatorship of the working class

•        Consistent with the Marxist theory of the State, Marxists recognize that in the event of successful revolution by the working class and the poor, the state shall be necessary to implement the socialist economy, state ownership of the means of production by expropriating the capitalists through abolition of private ownership of the means of production:

•       Lenin in ‘The State and Revolution’ quoted Marx:

•       "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

 

•       Socialist Legalism

•       This section is concerned with an assessment of the attempt to practically implement the theoretical ideas of Marxism in Soviet Union – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

•       We’ll therefore have to examine the contributions of:

•       Lenin (22 April 1870 - 21 January 1924)

•       Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953), and

•       Trotsky (7 November 1879 – 20 August 1940)

•       Lenin (22 April 1870 - 21 January 1924)

•       Under the leadership of Lenin, the Bolshevik party led the workers and peasants of Russia to seize power in October 1917 – the first successful political seizure of ordinary people in world history.

•        The Workers state under Lenin used the dictatorship of the working class to expropriate and suppress the capitalists in order to transform  private ownership of the commanding heights of the economy into state ownership.

•       Lenin

•       The new Constitution, the Constitution Sovietique de 10 Juillet 1918 in its Division I, Chapitre II sets out the objectives of the Constitution to include, to:

•       ‘remove any exploitation of man by man, to abolish the division of society into classes, to crush without mercy all exploiters, to realize the socialist organization of society and to ensure the triumph of Socialism in all countries’.

•       Also, Articles 13 – 16 are devoted ‘to assure workers (note the exclusionary principle) the true freedom of conscience, of expression, of assembly, of association’

•       Lenin

•       It should be noted however that under Lenin, what operated was called ‘War Communism’.

•       What operated in reality was the rule of force, in order to break the resistance of capitalists. This should be located within the following context:

 

•       No class gives up its rights without a fight. Immediately after the revolution, as should be expected, capitalist forces within Russia waged war against the revolution. They were supported by 13 imperialist armies, listed below. This lasted 1917 -1919. However, elements of resistance continued up until 1923.

•      
Numbers of foreign soldiers who occupied various regions of Russia:

•       50,000 Czechoslovaks (along the Trans-Siberian railway)

•       28,000 Japanese, later increased to 70,000 (in the Vladivostok region and north)

•       24,000 Greeks (in the Crimea)

•       40,000 British (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)

•       13,000 Americans (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)

•       12,000 French and French colonial (mostly in the Arkhangelsk and Odessa regions)

•       12,000 Poles (mostly in Crimea and Ukraine)

•       4,000 Canadians (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)

•       4,000 Serbs (in the Arkhangelsk region)

•       4,000 Romanians (in the Arkhangelsk region)

•       2,500 Italians (in the Arkhangelsk region and Siberia)

•       2,000 Chinese (in the Vladivostok region)

•       150 Australians (mostly in the Arkhangelsk regions

•       (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War

 

 

•       Lenin

•       However, in order to show the commitment to abolish inequality, the October 1917 Revolution was governed by the following principles:

•       1.            All officials, managers, etc to be regularly elected by the workers, peasants and soldiers, as the case may be, with the right of immediate recall.

•       2.            All officials to receive the same wages as a skilled worker (Lenin lived by example in this respect).

•       3.            No permanent bureaucracy. Popular participation in all administrative duties. The direct control and management of society by workers’ assembles – the Soviets. Indeed, the word ‘Soviet’ means ‘committee’ system.

•        4.           The principle of not having a standing army but an armed people. Though in the context of capitalist resistance, this could not be immediately actualised.

•       Stalin

•       Stalin took over the leadership of the Bolshevik party and of government, after Lenin.

•       In place of the programme of socialism in all countries, internationally which was given constitutional backing in 1918, Stalin’s era declared a program of ‘socialism in one country’.

•       This in practice meant conceding to imperialism to control Western Europe while Soviet Union should control Eastern Europe – a class collaborationist policy, which influenced Russia’s foreign policy of ‘peaceful co-existence’ with imperialism and the development of two-stage theory for developing countries.

•       Stalin

•       Instead of eliminating privileges among government officials, a bureaucracy developed whose living standards were at a variance with ordinary workers.

•       By 1936, as noted in an electronic paper titled ‘Socialist Legalism in the Early USSR: A formal Rule of Law State?’, available at (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1268555), the Constitution was already ‘more liberal regarding property ownership as part of the plan to develop the USSR economically’.

•       Ss. 10 and 11 of the Constitution de 1936 accommodated ‘the rights of citizens to personal property’ and the ‘right to inherit personal property’, respectively.   

 

•       Stalin

•       Those who cried out that the direction of the economy and society under Stalin was against the spirit of the October 1917 Revolution were attacked in various forms – layoffs from work, removal from party positions, imprisonment, murder, compulsory sending of critics on exile, etc.

•        The crimes committed by Stalin made many to associate socialism with monstrosity.

•        

•       Stalin

•       Though ‘No precise figures exist, official KGB figures for 1937–1938 claim that under 700,000 were executed and that at the beginning of the 1940s there were about 3.6 million in labour camps and prisons. Stephen Wheatcroft and R. W. Davies have calculated that the total number of excess deaths from 1927 to 1938 may have amounted to some ten million persons, 8.5 million killed between 1927 and 1936 and about 1 to 1.5 million between 1937 and 1938’ (Source: http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/stalin-joseph ).

•       Trotsky

•       Leon Trotsky was one of those murdered by a Stalin’s agent(Ramon Mercader) while in exile in Mexico City on 20th August 1940 - for insisting that the October 1917 revolution had been betrayed by Stalin’s policies.

•       Being a leading figure in the 1917 Revolution, he had the  authority to lead the opposition to Stalin’s counterrevolutionary policies.

•       In November, 1917, Vladimir Lenin appointed Trotsky as the people's commissar for foreign affairs

•       In January 1918 , the Soviet government ordered the formation of the Red Army of Workers and Peasants in place of the old Russian army.  Trotsky, as Commissar of War, was appointed its leader.

•       Trotsky, it was, who successfully led the Russian army to defeat the imperialists’ invasion of Russia (1917 -1923) in their bid to crush the revolution.

•       Trotsky’s ‘The Russian Revolution Betrayed’ 

•       After Lenin, it was Trotsky who personified the defence of genuine Marxist ideas against distortions in theory and practice by Stalin and supporters of Stalin’s ideas, called Stalinists.

•       In his numerous publications, e.g. The Russian Revolution Betrayed (1937), Trotsky characterized Soviet Union as a deformed workers state, and not a workers or socialist state.

•       In the dialectical Marxist reasoning, other Marxist scholars such as Tony Cliff had characterized Soviet union under Stalin and post Stalin as ‘state capitalism’ rather than ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ state, even before the eventual practical collapse in 1989/91 under  Perestroika - a political movement within the Communist Party of Soviet Union widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

•       The literal meaning of Perestroika is "restructuring", referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system.

•       Trotsky: Theory of Permanent Revolution

 

•       One of the theories for which Trotsky is well known is the theory of permanent revolution.

•       This theory posits that there is a relationship between the struggle for  socialism and the struggle for democratic rights under capitalism.

•       That since workers do not fight for abstract ideas in someone else’s head, the fight for transitional demands (i.e. democratic rights) could serve as the basis for mobilising the masses on social problems of every-day-life and in the process leading to mass action strong enough to smash capitalism.

•       The theory encourages fighting for reforms without necessarily becoming reformists.

 

•       Trotsky: The theory of ‘United Fronts’

•       Another theory Trotsky has bequeathed to the world revolutionary movement is the theory of United Front.

•       This theory is based on the workers feel for unity against the attacks and brutality of capitalism.

•       The theory thus encourages revolutionary working class individuals and organisations forming umbrella organisations or Fronts with working class elements who are not revolutionaries.

•       The United Front theory is in direct opposition to the theory of Popular Fronts advocated by Stalin, which rationalises that workers and their organisations should collaborate with ‘progressive’ sections of the bourgeoisie, in the two-stage theory of revolution – first, struggle to establish bourgeois democracy before raising the socialist program. 

•       The theory of Popular Frontism has been interpreted by Trotskyites to mean class collaborationism, which tends to produce counterrevolutionary results.

•      An Assessment of Marxism: Marx’s Own assessment of his contributions (1)

•       In the midst of deliberate distortion by scholars, cynical opponents and exaggerations by ardent supporters (who might want to attribute to him more than his due) Karl Marx had to assess his own intellectual contributions at different times.

•       In one instance, he posited that all he did was to ‘develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles’ thereby showing the world what it is really fighting for unconsciously (Marx, Letter from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher to Ruge (1843). 

 

•       Marx’s Own assessment of his contributions (2)

•       Marx also offered a less broad assessment of his works. In his words:

•       ‘And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove:
(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production,
(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
(3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society’ (Marx, Letter to Weydemeyer (1852)

 

•       (3) An Assessment of Marxism-  Marxism: A Utopia?

•       Some non-Marxist scholars perceive Marxism as a Utopia (Adaramola, 2008:291).

•       While it is undeniably true that up till today, Marx’s prediction “that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat” has really not been sustainably fulfilled,

•       it must be recognized that the world has witnessed the realisation of the predictions, at least twice:

•       For the first time in the history of humanity, ordinary working class people seized power in Paris in March 1871 in what was known as the Paris Commune. It lasted barely two months.

•       The second time was in Russia, in October 1917.

•       (4) An Assessment of Marxism

•       Also, in the course of the 2^nd World War, the Russian revolution led to the transformation and recreation of Eastern Europe in the image of Stalinist Russia, i.e. along ‘socialist lines’.

•        

•       (5) Rapid Advancement

•       In spite of the weaknesses of Stalinist Russia (after Lenin), as noted by Adaramola (2008: 292), the centrally planned economy ‘succeeded in revolutionising and accelerating the progress of erstwhile capitalist but backward societies or countries such as Russia and China, thereby enabling them to dramatically catch up with the advanced nations of the world in science and technology’

•        6(i) An Assessment of Marxism: counterrevolutionary reversal of Russia and other Eastern Europe into capitalism also proves the potency of Marxist dialectics

•       But the Paris Commune and the Bolshevik-led Revolution in Russia, as well as the Stalinist ‘socialist’ regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed for different reasons.

•       However, the counterrevolutionary reversal of Russia and other Eastern Europe into capitalism also proves the potency of Marxist dialectics - As Hegel puts it, everything which exists, exists of necessity. But, equally, everything which exists is doomed to perish, to be transformed into something else. Thus what is "necessary" in one time and place becomes "unnecessary" in another. Everything begets its opposite, which is destined to overcome and negate it. This is true of individual living things as much as societies and nature generally.

•        

•       6(ii) An Assessment of Marxism: Potency of Marxist dialectics

•       Lenin also explains that dialectics is the teaching which shows how opposites can be identical or become identical or transformed into one another and that it is necessary for the human mind to grasp opposites not as dead, rigid, but living, conditional and mobile.

•       Thus it is not only possible for a new system to negate a preceding one, it is also possible for an old system to negate a new one, i.e. revolutionary-counterrevolutionary relationships or what Adaramola (2008: 294)rightly calls continuity and discontinuity. This is what explains the degeneration of Soviet Union and former Eastern Europe into the capitalist world sphere.

•       6(iii) An Assessment of Marxism: Potency of Marxist dialectics (Marxism is not deterministic nor fatalistic)

•       The counterrevolutionary development in Russia and Eastern Europe tends to confirm that there is nothing fatalistic or deterministic about Marxism - a critical factor determining the direction of social change is the class struggle, the struggle between social forces, between oppressive forces and the forces of  resistance, between those who seek to take society forward in the interest of the majority and those who seek to maintain the status-quo, in the interest of the minority.

 

•        An Assessment of Marxism: Relevance of Marxism (7(i)

•       The declaration of Marx as the greatest thinker of the Millennium by pro-capitalist British Economist appears to be a confirmation of the relevance of the ideas of Marxism.

•       The ILO has estimated that only 2% of world GDP is sufficient to abolish poverty in the face of the earth.

•       In the context of the paradox of chronic poverty in the midst of plenty, as reflected in the current world economic crises, the collapse of the banks and stock market in Nigeria and elsewhere, perhaps the world working class needs to respond to the clarion call by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto.

•       An Assessment of Marxism: Relevance of Marxism - Clarion Call by Marx and Engels (7(ii)

•       The last words of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto constitute a clarion call to world revolution, on the basis that: A new world of abundance, a world of freedom and justice “can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions... The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!”, so declared Marx and Engels.

•       Thanks for your attention!

•       Thank you!!

 

•       Thank you!!!

 

•       Thank you!!!!