Marx and Engels on the Law
June 30, 2025
Introduction
In a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, lower court judges were disabused of any notion they could hold President Trump’s administration to any meaningful legal standard.
As a corollary, those who rely upon “the law” to anchor any meaningful steps against Trump’s progress to a fully formed fascist state are woefully mistaken. Both till now, and even more so hereafter – viewing the ‘law’ as the main bulwark to fascism, retards an effective counter-Trump force.
The only effective force is to develop a mass United Front with the working class and its representatives. One that can move from defence against Trump and the decaying capitalist class – towards a socialist offensive.
Viewing the law as an entity standing somehow above society and economic forces – as almost an eternal force – is clearly naïve. This article aims to briefly summarise the general Marxist view of the law. We have benefited from a source that we can unequivocally recommend:
Cain, Maureen E, and Hunt, Alan; “Marx and Engels on law”; London ; New York 1979; also to be found at Internet Archive here.
The views of Marx and Engels on the origins of civil law.
For Marxist-Leninists the law in society is mediated by the state. In bourgeois society, Marx and Engels argued that it was made to appear as if the laws are based on a “free will” choice by members of society. But this, they argued, was an “illusion”. It developed “simultaneously” as private property emerged out of the “natural community”. This stage of society was termed by them as an early and “primitive communism”.
In their early joint work “The German Ideology” (written 1845-1846); – they were already clear about the origins. They viewed the development of what they termed “Civil Law” as being “simultaneous” with the development of “private property”:
“Since the State is the form in which the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests, and in which the whole civil society of an epoch is epitomised, it follows that the State mediates in the formation of all common institutions and that the institutions receive a political form. Hence the illusion that law is based on the will, and indeed on the will divorced from its real basis — on free will. Similarly, justice is, in its turn, reduced to the actual laws. Civil law develops simultaneously with private property out of the disintegration of the natural community.”
Marx and Engels; “A Critique of The German Ideology”; Chapter 1; Moscow 1968 from Volume 5 Collected Works; also at: MIA
Civil law in Europe grew with and accompanied the Roman development of private property in a slave owning society. But later, during the erosion of feudal society by capitalism, civil law was further developed. Under the bourgeoisie with capitalist society, the law took on the illusion or appearance of resulting from “the general will”. Rather, it was in reality, the “will” of the ruling class:
“With the Romans, the development of private property and civil law had no further industrial and commercial consequences, because their whole mode of production did not alter. (Usury!)
With modern peoples, where the feudal community was disintegrated by industry and trade, there began with the rise of private property and civil law a new phase, which was capable of further development… the highly developed Roman civil law was immediately adopted again and raised, to authority… In civil law, the existing property relationships are declared to be the result of the general will… This juridical illusion… reduces law to the mere will…”
Marx and Engels; “A Critique of The German Ideology”: (written 1845-1846); Progress Publishers, 1968 from Chapter 1; at: MIA
Members of the legal profession are like politicians, according to Marx and Engels. In that they participate in developing “mysterious forces” that separate the legal expressions away from their “real relations”. The lawyers and the politicians “are dependent on the cult of these (mysterious) concepts“:
“The hitherto existing production relations of individuals are bound also to be expressed as political and legal relations. (See above a) Within the division of labour these relations are bound to acquire an independent existence over against the individuals. All relations can be expressed in language only in the form of concepts. That these general ideas and concepts are looked upon as mysterious forces is the necessary result of the fact that the real relations, of which they are the expression, have acquired independent existence. Besides this meaning in everyday consciousness, these general ideas are further elaborated and given a special significance by politicians and lawyers, who, as a result of the division of labour, are dependent on the cult of these concepts, and who see in them, and not in the relations of production, the true basis of all real property relations.“
Marx and Engels; “A Critique of The German Ideology”; (written 1845-1846); in section “Economic Dependence of the State on the Bourgeoisie” Chapter Three: Saint Max”; Volume 5 Collected Works p. 365; a version at: MIA
Perhaps most famously and certainly more succinctly, Marx described the relationship between law and economic forces in a society as follows:
“The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarised as follows.
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”
Karl Marx 1859; “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”: CW Volume 29; Moscow, 1977, p. 261; a version at: MIA Critique
The concision with which this is put has prompted some to reject it on the grounds of an alleged “determinism”. We will deal with this spurious charge in a future article.
Here we note that there are several other places in the work of Marx and Engels, where this perspective is given. Here we cite from a later work of 1972 by Engels. This is a reiteration, but in simpler language, of the view jointly put in “The German Ideology”:
“At a certain, very primitive stage of the development of society, the need arises to co-ordinate under a common regulation the daily recurring acts of production, distribution and exchange of products, to see to it that the individual subordinates himself to the common conditions of production and exchange. This regulation, which is at first custom, soon becomes law. With law, organs necessarily arise which are entrusted with its maintenance – public authority, the state. With further social development, law develops into a more or less comprehensive legal system. The more complicated this legal system becomes, the more its terminology becomes removed from that in which the usual economic conditions of the life of society are expressed. It appears as an independent element which derives the justification for its existence and the reason for its further development not out of the existing economic conditions, but out of its own inner logic, or, if you like, out of “the concept of will.” People forget the derivation of their legal system from their economic conditions of life, just as they have forgotten their own derivation from the animal world. With the development of the legal system into a complicated and comprehensive whole the necessity arises for a new social division of labor; an order of professional jurists develops and with these legal science comes into being. In its further development this science compares the legal systems of various peoples and various times, not as the expression of the given economic relationships, but as systems which find their justification in themselves. The comparison assumes something common to them all, and this the jurists find by summing up that which is more or less common to all these legal systems as natural law. However, the standard which is taken to determine what is natural law and what is not, is precisely the most abstract expression of law itself, namely, justice. From this point on, therefore, the development of law for the jurists, and for those who believe them uncritically, is nothing more than the striving to bring human conditions, so far as they are expressed in legal terms, into closer and closer conformity with the ideal of justice, eternal justice. And this justice is never anything but the ideologized, glorified expression of the existing economic relations, at times from the conservative side, at times from the revolutionary side.”
Frederick Engels; “The Housing Question” 1872; in section “Part Three
Supplement on Proudhon and the Housing Question”; CW Volume 23; or at MIA Housing Question
Engels much later clarified that the law in bourgeois society took pains to not “look glaringly inconsistent”, or appear as the “blunt, unmitigated, unadulterated expression of the domination of a class”:
“In a modern state, law must not only correspond to the general economic position and be its expression, but must also be an expression which is consistent in itself, and which does not, owing to inner contradictions, look glaringly inconsistent. And in order to achieve this, the faithful reflection of economic conditions is more and more infringed upon. All the more so the more rarely it happens that a code of law is the blunt, unmitigated, unadulterated expression of the domination of a class – this in itself would already offend the “conception of justice.” Even in the Code Napoleon the pure logical conception of justice held by the revolutionary bourgeoisie of 1792-96 is already adulterated in many ways, and in so far as it is embodied there has daily to undergo all sorts of attenuation owing to the rising power of the proletariat.”
Engels to Conrad Schmidt In Berlin; London, October 27, 1890; From Marx and Engels Correspondence;” International Publishers (1968); at MIA Conrad Schmidt
Nevertheless, the edifice constructed in the law is “repeatedly breached” by changes made necessary by “further economic development”:
“to a great extent the course of the “development of law” only consists: first in the attempt to do away with the contradictions arising from the direct translation of economic relations into legal principles, and to establish a harmonious system of law, and then in the repeated breaches made in this system by the influence and pressure of further economic development, which involves it in further contradictions (I am only speaking here of civil law for the moment).”
Engels to Conrad Schmidt In Berlin; London, October 27, 1890; From Marx and Engels Correspondence;” International Publishers (1968); at MIA 2 Conrad Schmidt
Engels made several clarifications in the presentation of the relations between base and superstructure in his famous late letters.
But he remained clear – that for both himself and for Marx and Engels, there remained a “determining basis of the history of society” – which was the “economic relations”:
“Following is the reply to your two questions:
1. The economic conditions, which we consider as the determinative basis in the history of society, we understand to be the manner in which men in a given society produce their means of subsistence and the ways in which they effect the exchange of products among themselves (this as long as division of labour exists). The entire technique of production and transportation is here included. According to our conception this technique determines the mode of exchange, of distribution of products, and –after the disintegration of the tribal system – the division of society into classes, the conditions of master and slave, of State, of politics, law, etc. Further, among the economic conditions under which these phenomena obtain, must be included the geographical environment, and also the actual remains of former phases of economic evolution which often persisted by force of tradition, inertia, or because of circumstances which surrounds that form of society. Even if, as you say, technique largely depends on the conditions of science, yet, in a greater measure, does the latter depend on the conditions of and the need for technique. If society is in the need of the development of a certain technique, this helps science more than ten universities. The science of hydrostatics was the sole result of the need that Italy felt in the 16th and 17th centuries of controlling the course of her torrents in the mountains. We began to understand the science of electricity only when we discovered its practical application. In Germany, however, they have become accustomed to treat the history of science as though it had fallen out of the sky.
2. We hold, that in the final analysis, economic conditions constitute the determinative factor in historical evolution. Here, therefore, we must hold in view two points:
(A.). That the political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc. evolutions are based on the economic evolution. They all re-act upon each other and upon the economic basis. It does not mean that the economic factor is the sole active cause and all the others merely passive effects. But the whole situation presents a mutual interaction among the various forces on the basis of economic necessity, which latter force ultimately prevails.”
Frederick Engels 1894; Letter to Borgius; London 25 January 1894; In Marx Engels Selected Correspondence Moscow 1968; p. 441; MIA Borgius
Conclusions
Following from observations such as these, Marxist-Leninists consider law as a part of the superstructure of a society – whose base is the economic structure.
Several fashionable positions taken in the last 50-odd years have complicated the view of the relationship of economy to legal apparatus. These include the berating of Frederick Engels as being somehow a lesser partner, perhaps less intelligent, etc., as compared to Marx.
These injected complications are at least in part meant to throw aspersions against the alleged ‘simplicisms’ of Stalin. The alleged distortions of Stalin on the relationship of the economic base of a society, and its super-structural ideology are at the heart of a repudiation of historical materialism.
However, there is no essential difference between what we have seen being described by Marx, or Engels – and what is expressed below:
“According to Marxism-Leninism, the base of society:
“is the economic structure of society at the given stage of its development… Every base has its own corresponding superstructure”.
Josef V. Stalin: ‘Concerning Marxism in Linguistics’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Tirana; 1979; p. 505
while the superstructure of society
“…is the political, legal, religious, artistic, philosophical views of society and the political, legal and other institutions corresponding to them”.
Josef V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 505
MLRG.online June 30, 2025
See also:
Marxism and Law: The Struggle Over Jurisprudence in the Soviet Union by W. B. Bland” 2000; republished 2024; at March 2024.
