Political State And Civil Society In The Perspective Of Marxist Philosophy Of Law Criticism

Academic group is vexed all the time to the problems concerning the essence of modern state and civil society and the connection between them. There have been conflicts between contract theory and utilitarianism. John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich August Hayek had argued with each other about welfare state and free market. There are some hated debates about liberalism and socialism between Robert Nozick and Gerald Allan Cohen. Some of these theorists defend Marx for his socialism, the others defend against him for the same reason. However, these conflicting theories about state and society neglect the nature of Marx’s critique of politics and society. Marx criticized the essence of modern state and civil society for the former being an authoritative system and latter being a capitalistic productive and communicative system. The purpose of this paper is to clarify Marx’s radical critique of modern state and civil society and to point out the limitations of various political and social theories.The introduction of this paper sorts out the academic history of the problem about the divisive life in modern state and civil society. This problem started from the transition of political legitimacy from political theology to social contract in the modern western world. Contractual society was expressed as economical society by the classical economists. And then, Hegel differentiated the civil society from the state. As a sphere of substantial unity, the state overcomes the formal universality in the civil society in Hegel’s theory, but Marx argued that people were still living a divisive life in the state discussed by Hegel.The first chapter discusses the reason of Marx’s critique of the philosophy of right. When Marx studied law in Berlin University, he tried to construct a kind of system of the philosophy of right which is based on the framework of Kant’s philosophy of right, combining the principle of Fichte’s philosophy of metaphysics of right and the Roman law from Savigny, but he was confronted with the collision between the thing ought to be and the thing in the reality. Under the influence of the young Hegelians, Marx argued against Christian theology on the ground of the philosophy of self-consciousness in his doctoral dissertation. Be affected to Hegel’s theory of interaction agent, Marx defended against the Prussian autocratic government on the ground of a rational freedom government based on the will of the people during the period of the Rheinische Zeitung. Marx proposed that the law and freedom should be everlasting which challenged by the stubborn private interests.The second chapter expounds Marx’s critique of Hegel’s protestant state which is the promise of the unities of private interest in the civil society and universal interest in the state. Marx argued that Hegel did not solve the antinomy of external necessity and inherent objectiveness in the civil society and the state. Marx’s critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right is divided into two dimensions, one of which is about the essence of rational theology in Hegel’s philosophy of right, the other of which is about the constitutional monarchy. Marx insisted that Hegel did not reconcile the modern state and secular society, nor did he reconcile the individual and community. Marx indicated the basic position of civil society and stood on radical democracy.Exemplified by the Jewish problem, the third chapter speaks of the inclination of the totalitarianism in the political liberation movement of the bourgeoisie. Marx avoided being charged as a totalitarian for his apperception to the progress of the constitution in French and American. Even though noting his, Marx revealed that there was still real disparity in the liberalism countries such as French and American where announced the indiscrimination in politics, because the political liberation can’t guarantee the principle of justice and freedom meanwhile. The political liberation movement presented a kind of paradox, the root of which was thought to be in the Jewish spirit in the civil society by Marx. Marx thought that the abstract political man stemmed from the abstract economic man who was individualism and fetishism of money.The forth chapter follows the trail of Marx’s seeking for the reason of the inequality in private property. Marx criticized the liberalism classical economists such as Adam Smith and James Mill. Marx pointed out that the classical economist did not solve the poverty condition in the civil society, but put the civil society in a difficult position of overproduction, falling tendency of the average rate of profit and periodic commercial crisis for the reason of the alienation of man’s ownership of things. Owing to this, the world is split into two classes that are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Marx stated briefly that the essence of the contrast between the haves and the have-not lied in the contrast between the capital and the labor, which was in alienate condition. Marx affirmed that human species lived a kind of real life in the process of production, and he transferred the life of human species from political field to economic and social field.The fifth chapter discusses Marx’s critique of Hegel’s dialectics, which protect Marx’s critique of politics and economics from political liberalism and economical positivism. On one hand, Marx criticized Hegel’s dialectics for not affecting things in the reality when it overcome things inwardly, thus taking the form of uncritical idealism and positivism, on the other hand, Marx absorbed the active aspect of Hegel’s dialectics, that was the negativity as the promotional and creative principle, thus taking the form of criticalness and revolutionary in realistically reasonable state.Based on historical materialism, the sixth chapter elaborates on the Marx’s analysis of the source of the divisive life in the modern state and civil society. Marx analyzed the essence of modern state and civil society and analyzed the relation between modern state and civil society, solving the divisive life in the modern state and civil society recurring to communism, which is neither the ideal Utopia nor the fatalism of historical determinism, but the free developed association which is established by the proletarian revolution.