Authors: Kuper & Kuper
Summary: This entry treats the distinctive perspective of Marx's theories, historical materialism. Marx contended that the economic structure of society, constituted by its relations of production, is the real foundation of society. It is the base upon which rises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. Marx's materialist conception assigns explanatory primacy to the development of productive forces--envisioning, for instance, the emergence of capitalism as a response to a particular level and arrangement of productive forces. How an economy determines legal and political forms will tend to be relatively direct, while its influence over other social realms, culture, and consciousness itself is more attenuated and nuanced. Law in particular is needed to sanction the existing order and to protect it from mere chance and arbitrariness.
According to Marx's theories, particular modes of production entail particular forms of social organization. People, that is, stand as classes in certain relations to the forces and products of production; in any given mode of production these relations will be of characteristic sorts. Thus, class position determines the characteristic consciousness or world view of its members. This world view is an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought, and views of life. The differing material interests of classes divide them and lead to their struggle. Marx argued that the material progress brought by capitalism eliminates both the feasibility of, and the rationale for, class rule--but, paradoxically, capitalism requires the maintenance of class divisions. He consequently saw capitalism as containing the seeds of its own destruction. Finally, since the state is the main vehicle by which a class secures its rule, it will wither away in post-capitalist (post-class) society.