Revisiting Marx's Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality and Rights Igor Shoikhedbrod, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 256

Abstract

In this work of interpretive political theory, Shoikhedbrod contends that Marx’s critique of liberalism has been misunderstood by supporters and detractors alike. In what Shoikhedbrod calls the “orthodox” interpretation, Marx dismisses rights and legality as such. Challenging this orthodoxy, Shoikhedbrod argues that Marx’s critique of liberalism is supported by a theory of communist right and law. Furthermore, Marx’s critique remains relevant in contemporary capitalism with its deepening inequalities. First, Shoikhedbrod offers a “reconstruction” of Marx’s critique of liberal rights and law. This terminology suggests that the materials are there, but they are fragments scattered across Marx’s various works, including newspaper articles and trial defence speeches. For Marx, liberal rights are formal, atomized, and depoliticized, because of the class domination and exploitation inherent to private ownership of the means of production. Nevertheless, Marx acknowledges the historical significance of these rights and believes that their progress beyond unequal feudal privileges will continue through the eventual transcendence of capitalism. Rights and legality will not wither away in communism. Using Hegel’s concept of aufhebung, or “sublation,” Shoikhedbrod argues that, for Marx, the freedom and equality achieved by liberal rights can be preserved while the private property that limits them can be negated. This raises freedom and equality to a higher form in which these rights are more consistently applied. This is why Marx asserts that, in communism, “the freedom of each is the condition of the freedom of all.” Second, Shoikhedbrod brings this reconstructed Marx to bear on contemporary theory and practice. Global financial capitalism has provoked renewed attention to inequality, precariousness and global justice. Shoikhedbrod engages with four thinkers who, amid these developments, have foregrounded egalitarian concerns: John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser. All four thinkers are concerned with the ways in which the formal equalities found in right and law can be undermined by substantive social inequalities. Furthermore, all four have revisited Marx’s critique as part of their own engagement with liberalism. Shoikhedbrod contends that the reconstructed Marx can correct or supplement the shortcomings in each of their theories of liberalism. For example, Rawls’s theory of property-owning democracy could not ensure as full an expression of freedom and equality as the economic democracy of Marx’s associated production. Third, Shoikhedbrod reconsiders the relation between Marxism and the rule of law by interpreting a number of Marx’s scattered assertions about legality and constitutionalism. Shoikhedbrod argues that there are good textual grounds for rebutting the theory, exemplified by the Soviet legal scholar Evgeny Pashukanis, that class domination and state coercion are inherent to all forms of law. Shoikhedbrod contends that since communism would end class conflict but not conflict as such, the rights of individuals must still be guaranteed. Therefore, contrary to Pashukanis’ theory, the rule of law cannot be replaced by mere