Karl Marx on Political Obligation

Read that carefully, because students overstate it. The claim is not that every judge is dishonest or that every statute was written by a capitalist. It is structural: a body of law which treats parties as formally equal will systematically favour whoever is substantively stronger, and it will do so through its ordinary, honest and impartial application.

3. The sense of obligation is itself produced

"The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class." The belief that one owes obedience is not, on this account, an independent moral discovery. It is part of the superstructure, taught by schools, courts, religion and custom, and it is one of the cheapest instruments of rule, because a population that believes it ought to obey costs far less to govern than one that must be compelled.

Gramsci's later term for this is hegemony, and it is the Marxist counterpart of the third face of power from chapter 20.

4. So the duty disappears with the classes

Because the state exists to hold one class down, the end of classes removes its function. Engels states the sequence precisely: once there is no social class to be held in subjection, nothing remains to be repressed, a special repressive force is no longer necessary, state interference becomes superfluous in one domain after another and then "dies out of itself", the government of persons being replaced by the administration of things. And he insists on the word: "The State is not 'abolished'. It dies out."

Between the two conditions the Manifesto contemplates a transitional stage in which the proletariat organises itself as the ruling class and uses state power to sweep away the old conditions of production. In that stage obedience is demanded, and by an authority claiming exactly the general duty Marx denied to its predecessor. That tension is the theory's largest practical difficulty and is dealt with below.

What follows for a citizen, in practice

Marx wrote very little that is directly practical about whether to obey a particular law, and an honest answer says so rather than inventing a rule. Three things can be said, and they are enough for an examination.

There is no general duty of obedience, because there is no neutral authority to owe it to.

There may be excellent reasons to comply in a particular case: prudence, the avoidance of pointless harm, and the fact that many laws, such as those about traffic or contagious disease, serve everybody. Compliance for those reasons is not political obligation; it is judgment.

The important question is different. For Marx the useful question is not whether to obey a law but what changing the law can and cannot achieve. On his account law reflects the underlying economic structure, so reforms that leave ownership untouched can improve conditions and cannot alter the relation that produced them. This is why Marxists have historically valued trade union rights and factory legislation while denying that such gains amount to emancipation.

The criticisms

It cannot account for law that helps the subordinate class. Factory Acts, minimum wages, rent control, workmen's compensation and social security were won and have real effects. The Marxist answer, that the state manages the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie and so concedes in order to preserve, is available, but it is capable of explaining any outcome whatever, which weakens it as an explanation.

It leaves the citizen without guidance. Denying a general duty says nothing about what to do on Tuesday. Every actual Marxist movement has had to develop rules about which laws to obey, and those rules are not derived from the theory.

The transitional state is the hardest problem. Where the theory was applied, the state that was supposed to wither grew, and it demanded obedience in the strongest terms any state has. Michels predicted exactly this, and the comparison chapter sets the two against each other.

Class is not the only determinant. In India the most consequential political divisions for decades have been caste, religion, language and region, none of which is reducible to ownership of the means of production, and each of which produces its own claims about obedience.

It underestimates constitutional gains. Universal suffrage, an independent judiciary and enforceable fundamental rights have delivered real protection to people who own nothing, without any change in the ownership of production. A theory that treats those as merely formal has difficulty explaining why the people they protect value them so highly.

A worked example

A factory is closed without notice and eight hundred workers lose their jobs. The closure complies with every legal requirement.

On the standard theories. A contract theorist asks whether the law was made by a body the workers can be taken to have authorised. A prescriptive theorist points to a settled legal order in which both employer and workers took their positions. Both conclude that the workers ought to comply while pursuing lawful remedies.

On Marx's account the questions are different. Who owns the plant? What happens to the value the workers produced? Why does a law which permits closure with compliance exist at all, and whose interest does it serve? The answer is that the legal permission to close is one of the powers ownership carries, and the law's role is to make its exercise orderly rather than to prevent it.

Where it bites hardest. Notice that the workers' most effective response, a strike, is itself regulated by law: notice periods, prohibited categories, and consequences for breach. On Marx's account this is the point exactly. The law does not forbid resistance; it channels it into forms the arrangement can absorb, and calls the channelled version lawful.

And where the criticism bites back. The workers may in fact obtain compensation, reinstatement or a settlement through the very machinery the theory describes as an instrument of the owning class. A student who can hold both of those facts in one answer has understood the topic.

Distinctions that carry marks

What Marx's view is NOT

It is not a claim that laws should be broken. He denies a general duty; he does not assert a general licence, and prudence often counsels compliance.

It is not the claim that judges are bribed. The claim is structural, about how impartial rules operate between unequal parties.

It is not anarchism. The anarchist wants the state abolished now; Engels says it cannot be abolished and will become unnecessary, and the transitional state is expressly contemplated.

It is not the same as his theory of power. Chapter 110 is about who rules and why; this chapter is about whether anybody owes them obedience. MU sets them separately and so do we.

Quick revision

1. Marx rejects the question rather than answering it: the state is not a neutral authority whose claim needs explaining, so the real question is whose interest obedience serves.
2. "The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."
3. "Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another."
4. "The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class." The sense of obligation is itself produced; Gramsci calls the mechanism hegemony.
5. Engels: the state "dies out of itself"; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things; "The State is not 'abolished'. It dies out."
6. In practice: no general duty; particular compliance may be prudent; and the useful question is what changing the law can and cannot achieve.
7. Criticisms: it explains any outcome and so explains none; it gives the citizen no guidance; the transitional state grew instead of withering; caste, religion and language are not reducible to class; and constitutional protections have delivered real gains to the propertyless.

Test yourself

1. Why is Marx's view different in kind from the other theories of political obligation? Because the others accept the question and supply a ground, whether divine appointment, agreement, force or long settlement, while Marx rejects the presupposition behind it. To ask what obliges me to obey the state assumes the state is a neutral body standing above society whose claim requires explanation; Marx denies that, holding it to be one part of society organised against another. The question therefore changes from why I must obey into whose interest my obeying serves.

2. Quote and explain the Manifesto's account of the state. That the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie, and that political power properly so called is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. The word committee denies that the state takes orders from individual capitalists, and the words common affairs and whole allow it to act against a particular owner or industry in order to preserve the system. It follows that obedience is not a relation between citizen and public authority but between a subordinate class and the organised power of a dominant one.

3. How does Marx explain the fact that people believe they ought to obey? As part of the superstructure. The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class, so the sense of obligation is not an independent moral discovery but something taught by schools, courts, religion and custom. It is also the cheapest instrument of rule available, since a population that believes it ought to obey costs far less to govern than one that must be compelled. Gramsci's later name for the whole mechanism is hegemony.

4. What does Engels say happens to the state, and why is the wording important? That once there is no social class to be held in subjection, nothing remains to be repressed, a special repressive force becomes unnecessary, state interference becomes superfluous in one domain after another and then dies out of itself, the government of persons being replaced by the administration of things. The wording matters because Engels expressly denies that the state is abolished and insists that it dies out, which separates Marxism from anarchism: the anarchist demands abolition now, and Engels says abolition is impossible and redundancy is what will happen.

5. Give three criticisms of Marx's account of obligation. That it can explain any outcome, since a law favouring workers is explained as a concession preserving the system, and a theory consistent with every result explains none. That the transitional state, which was to wither away, in fact grew wherever the theory was applied and demanded obedience in the strongest terms, which is what Michels predicted. And that in India the most consequential political divisions have been caste, religion, language and region, none reducible to ownership of the means of production, each generating its own claims about who owes obedience to whom.