Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T07:10:30.324Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Marxist Theories of Law Past and Present: A Meditation Occasioned by the 25th Anniversary of Law, Labor, and Ideology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

Nate Holdren  and
Eric Tucker
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Capitalist society seems particularly disorderly of late, a disorder contributing to the beginnings of what we hope will be a renewal of Marxist legal scholarship. This essay reviews some key developments in Marxist analysis of law from the 1970s to the present. Over all, our essay traces a back and forth between Marxists’ emphasis on theoretical inquiry on the one hand and empirical and historical work inquiry on the other. We argue that Christopher Tomlins’s 1993 book, Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic, remains salient for thinking about ways to combine Marxist theoretic and historical work to understand the role of law in capitalist social formations and that Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi’s recent book Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory offers complementary resources for a renewal in Marxist legal thought. We conclude that further development of Marxist legal thought will require a mix of both empirical and theoretical innovations, and we identify political questions that Marxists will need to address.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 1142 - 1169
Copyright
© 2020 American Bar Foundation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors are listed alphabetically and contributed equally.

This essay originated in a session organized by Nate Holdren at the American Society of Legal History meeting in 2018 to mark the 25th anniversary of the publication of Christopher Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic (1993). The authors would like to thank Barbara Welke for encouraging them to turn the conference panel into an essay, and to thank Sachia Longo, Umut Özsu, and Christopher Tomlins for their comments on earlier drafts.

References

REFERENCES

Althusser, Louis. “Contradiction and Overdetermination.” Translated and published in For Marx, 87–128. New York: Vintage Books, 1969.Google Scholar
Althusser, Louis. On the Reproduction of Capitalism. Translated by Goshgarian, G. M.. New York: Verso, 2014.Google Scholar
Anderson, Elizabeth. Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don’t Talk About It). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Arthur, C. J. “Toward a Materialist Theory of Law.” Critique 7, no. 1 (1977): 31–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balbus, Isaac. “Commodity Form and Legal Form: An Essay on the Relative Autonomy of Law.” Law & Society Review 11, no. 3 (1977): 571–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Befort, Stephen F., and Budd, John H.. Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives: Bringing Workplace Law and Public Policy into Focus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhattacharya, Tithi, ed. Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. London: Pluto Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanc, Eric. Red State Revolt. New York: Verso, 2019.Google Scholar
Burns, Joe. How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America: Reviving the Strike. Brooklyn, NY: Ig Publishing, 2011.Google Scholar
Cain, Maureen, and Hunt, Alan. Marx and Engels on Law. London: Academic Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Collins, Hugh. Marxism and Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engels, Friedrich to Conrad Schmidt. October 27, 1890a. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htm.Google Scholar
Engels, Friedrich to Joseph Bloch. September 21, 1890b. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm.Google Scholar
Estlund, Cynthia. Regoverning the Workplace: From Self-Regulation to Co-Regulation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, and Silbey, Susan. The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Andrew. “The Legal Theory We Need Now.” Socialist Review 40/41 (1978): 147–87.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy, and Jaeggi, Rahel. Capitalism: A Conversation. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Forbath, William. Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Garcia, Ruben J. Marginal Workers: How Legal Fault Lines Divide Workers and Leave Them Without Protection. New York: New York University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Glasbeek, Harry. Capitalism: A Crime Story. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2018.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert. “Critical Legal Histories.” Stanford Law Review 36 (1984): 57–125.Google Scholar
Greene, Jonathan. “‘Whatever It Takes’: Poor People’s Organizing, OCAP, and Social Struggle.” Studies in Political Economy 75 (2005): 5–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harring, Sidney L., and Barry R. Strutt. “Lumber, Law, and Social Change: The Legal History of Willard Hurst.” American Bar Foundation Research Journal 10, no. 1 (Winter 1985): 123–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David. A Companion to Marx’s Capital. London: Verso, 2010.Google Scholar
Hay, Douglas, et al. Albion’s Fatal Tree. New York: Pantheon, 1975.Google Scholar
Head, Michael. Evgeny Pashukanis: A Critical Reappraisal. Oxford: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
Heinrich, Michael. Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital. Translated by Locascio, Alexander. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Heitmann, Lars. “‘Society as ‘Totality’: On the Negative-Dialectical Presentation of Capitalist Socialization.” In The SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. Edited by Best, Beverley, Bonefeld, Werner and O’Kane, Chris, 589–606. London: Sage, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holdren, Nate. Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in The Progressive Era. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holt, Wythe. “The New American Labor Law History.” Labor History 30 (1989): 275–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Alan. “The Ideology of Law.” Law and Society Review 19, no. 1 (1985): 11–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Alan. “The Critique of Law: What is ‘Critical’ About Critical Legal Theory.” Journal of Law and Society 14, no. 1 (Spring, 1987): 5–19.Google Scholar
Hunt, Alan. Explorations in Law and Society. New York: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Huws, Ursula. Labor in the Global Digital Economy: The Cybertariat Comes of Age. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Jeffries, Fiona. “Getting to $15 and Fairness.” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. July 1, 2018. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/getting-15-and-fairness.Google Scholar
Juravich, Tom. “Constituting Challenges in Differing Arenas of Power: Worker Centers, the Fight for $15, and Union Organizing.” Labor Studies Journal 43, no. 2 (2018): 104–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kairys, David, ed. The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Duncan. “The Structure of Blackstone’s Commentaries.” Buffalo Law Review 38 (1979): 205–382.Google Scholar
Kessler, Sarah. Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Khachaturian, Rafael. “Poulantzas and the Juridical Constitution of the Subject.” Verso. November 2017. https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3473-poulantzas-and-the-juridical-constitution-of-the-subject.Google Scholar
Klare, Karl. “Law-Making as Praxis.” Telos 40 (Summer 1979): 123–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2014.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 4th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewchuk, Wayne, Clarke, Marlea, and de Wolff, Alice. Working Without Commitments: The Health Effects of Precarious Employment. Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Luxembourg, Rosa. Reform or Revolution. Written in 1900. Published online by Marxists.org . 1999. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/.Google Scholar
Marks, Susan. “False Contingency.” Current Legal Problems 62 (2009): 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marx, Karl. Capital, Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy. London: Penguin, 1976.Google Scholar
McNally, David. “Intersections and Dialectics: Critical Reconstructions in Social Reproduction Theory.” In Social Reproduction Theory. Edited by Bhattacharya, Tithi, 94–111. London: Pluto Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meiksins-Wood, Ellen. Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle. Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Mitrani, Sam. The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850–1894. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013.Google Scholar
O’Connell, Paul, and Özsu, Umut. The Elgar Research Handbook on Law and Marxism. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Özsu, Umut. “Grabbing Land Legally: A Marxist Analysis.” Leiden Journal of International Law 32, no. 2 (2019): 215–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özsu, Umut. “The Necessity of Contingency: Method and Marxism in International Law.” In Situating Contingency: How International Law Could Have Been. Edited by Heller, Kevin Jon and Venzke, Ingo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Parfitt, Rose. The Process of International Legal Reproduction: Inequality, Historiography, Resistance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, Bryan D. Descent into Discourse. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Pashukanis, Evgeny B. Law and Marxism: A General Theory. Edited by Arthur, Chris. London: Ink Links, 1978.Google Scholar
Pearson, Chad. Reform or Repression: Organizing America’s Anti-Union Movement. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Picketty, Thomas. Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polyani, Karl. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos. “The State, Social Movements, Party: Interview with Nicos Poulantzas (1979)”. Interview by Dialectiques, Fall 1979. Republished by Viewpoint. December 18, 2017. https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/12/18/state-social-movements-party-interview-nicos-poulantzas-1979.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos. “Marxist Examination of the Contemporary State and Law and the Questions of the ‘Alternative.’” In The Poulantzas Reader. Edited by Martin, James, 25–46. London: Verso, 2008.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos. State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso, 2014.Google Scholar
Rasulov, Akbar. “CLS and Marxism: A History of an Affair.” Transnational Legal Theory 5, no. 4 (2014): 622–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodgers, Daniel. Age of Fracture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, Stephanie. “Social Unionism in Hard Times: Union-Community Coalition Politics in the CAW Windsor’s Manufacturing Matters Campaign.” Labour/Le Travail 68 (Fall 2011): 79–116 Google Scholar
Sewell, William H Jr. “A Strange Career: The Historical Study of Economic Life.” History and Theory 49 (2010): 146–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silbey, Susan. “After Legal Consciousness.” Ann. Rev. Law & Soc. Sci. 1 (2005): 323–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slinn, Sara. “Structuring Reality So That the Law Will Follow: British Columbia Teachers’ Quest for Collective Bargaining Rights.” Labour/Le Travail 68 (2011): 35–77.Google Scholar
Stone, Alan. “The Place of Law in the Marxian Structure-Superstructure Archetype.” Law and Society Review 19, no. 1 (1985): 39–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, Katherine V.W. From Widgets to Digits: Employment Regulation for the Changing Workplace. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suwandi, Intan. Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “Reality Has Endorsed Bernie Sanders.” The New Yorker. March 30, 2020. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/reality-has-endorsed-bernie-sanders#intcid=recommendations_default-popular_338b5002-6942-46de-868e-cb1a5aa1529c_popular4-1.Google Scholar
Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. Hammondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1968.Google Scholar
Tomlins, Christopher. The State and the Unions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Tomlins, Christopher. Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomlins, Christopher. “How Who Rides Whom. Recent ‘New’ Histories of American Labour Law and What They May Signify.” Social History 20, no. 1 (1995): 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomlins, Christopher. “What Is Left of the Law and Society Paradigm after Critique? Revisiting Gordon’s ‘Critical Legal Histories.’” Law & Social Inquiry 37 (2012): 155–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomlins, Christopher. “The State, the Unions, and the Critical Synthesis in Labor Law History: A 25-Year Retrospect.” Labor History 54, no. 2 (2013): 208–21.Google Scholar
Tomlins, Christopher. “Marxist Legal History.” The Oxford Handbook of Legal History. Edited by Tomlins, Christopher and Dubber, Markus D.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark. “A Marxist Theory of American Law.” Marxist Perspectives 1, no. 1 (1978).Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark. “Marxism as Metaphor.” Cornell Law Review 68 (1983a): 281–90.Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark. “Is There a Marxist Theory of Law?” Marxism: Nomos XXVI. Edited by Pennock, J. Ronald and Chapman, John W.. New York: NYU Press, 1983b.Google Scholar
Tucker, Eric. Administering Danger in Workplace. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, Eric. “‘That Indefinite Zone of Toleration’: Criminal Conspiracy and Trade Unions in Ontario, 1837–1877.” Labour/Le Travail 27 (1991): 15–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, Eric. “Review of ‘Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement.’” Labour/Le Travail 30 (1992a): 310–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, Eric. “Review of ‘Getting Justice and Getting Even.’” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 7, no. 1 (1992b): 265–67.Google Scholar
Tucker, Eric. “On Writing Labour Law History: A Reconnaissance.” International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations 33, no. 1 (2017): 39–58.Google Scholar
Tucker, Eric. “BC Teachers’ Federation v. British Columbia: The Supreme Court Takes a School Holiday.” Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations 73, no. 3 (2018): 603–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S. BLS). “Annual Work Stoppages Involving 1000 or More Workers.” Data from 1947–2018. Accessed January 8, 2020. https://www.bls.gov/web/wkstp/annual-listing.htm.Google Scholar
Vosko, Leah, ed. Precarious Employment. Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Wallace, Rob, Liebman, Alex, Chaves, Luis Fernando, and Wallace, Rodrick. “COVID-19 and the Circuits of Capital.” Monthly Review. April 1, 2020. https://monthlyreview.org/author/luisfernandochaves/.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weil, David. The Fissured Workplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s “Drew Fraser” entry. Last modified February 18, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Fraser.Google Scholar
Woodiwiss, Anthony. Rights v. Conspiracy: A Sociological Essay on the History of Labour Law in the United States. New York: Berg Publishers, 1990.Google Scholar
Wright, Erik Olin. Understanding Class. London: Verso, 2015.Google Scholar
Wright, Erik Olin.. How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century. New York: Verso, 2019.Google Scholar