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19 Law & Soc'y Rev. 39 (1985)
The Place of Law in the Marxian Structure-Superstructure Archetype

handle is hein.journals/lwsocrw19 and id is 41 raw text is: THE PLACE OF LAW IN THE MARXIAN STRUCTURE-SUPERSTRUCTURE ARCHETYPE ALAN STONE* Law occupies a critical place in a Marxist theory of society. Yet Marx and Engels did not provide a coherent and detailed discussion of law. Subsequent writers in the Marxist tradition have either developed simplistic versions of the unsustainable thesis that the capitalist class dominates the legal apparatus in a capitalist society, or they have virtually abandoned Marxism as a framework for analysis of the law. This paper examines leading texts of Marx and Engels and employs them to provide the outlines of a plausible Marxist theory of law that can embrace the rich complexity of legal activity in a modern capitalist society. I. INTRODUCTION Law was clearly a subject of interest for Marx and Engels, as an excellent collection of their writings on the subject attests (Cain and Hunt, 1979). Yet while they devoted considerable attention to particular laws that were the focus of intense political debates (such as the English 1834 Poor Law Amendment and the Corn Laws) and mentioned law in discussions of the structure (or base) superstructure dichotomy, they provide no comprehensive discussion of law within the context of historical materialism. The legal system is only addressed as part of more general analyses of the movement of history and the economy's interface with society (Marx, 1911; Marx and Engels, 1976). Their statements are often only a few sentences long and raise more questions than they answer. Nevertheless, many writers within the Marxian tradition have sought to construct a coherent theory of law's place within the capitalist system. Renner (1949) made the first major attempt in 1904, but the theorist whose work is widely held to be the most brilliant and imaginative was Pashukanis (1978), * I want to thank Richard Lempert, the Law & Society Review's anonymous reviewers, my colleagues Bob Carp and Tom Dumm, Josh Cohen (M.I.T.) and, especially, Joel Rogers (Rutgers) for their invaluable criticisms and suggestions. LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Volume 19, Number 1 (1985)

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