Civil Society, Private Property and the Statist State: On Marxist Criticisms of the Philosophy of Law

Abstract

This article aims to perform a comparative analysis focused on the conception of civil society in Hegel's Philosophy of Right and the following Marxist criticism regarding this subject. Civil society, understood as the locus of formal universality, is grounded on three fundamental elements: the realization of Abstract Right mainly through contractual relations; the satisfaction of the so-called system of needs; an internal organization ordered by the notion of estates - the latter, however, encompassing not only a social aspect but also a political one. Thus, according to the Hegelian proposition, civil society gains a political dimension through a representative function in the administration of law (participation in the legislative power). In view of such formulations, we will then explore the Marxist criticism presented in the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right not only focusing on the political assignment of civil society (formed by estates as its organizational model), but we will also address his general critique on the very status of private property. From this theoretical confrontation, our goal is to demonstrate the distance between these two authors concerning their opposite views about the social constitution and the organization of political power.