What is the source of the Marxist Claim that Law is instrumental.

[CarMarks]

Hey guys, I am writing a dissertation at the moment on Marxism and Law. I was wondering which author/text claimed that Law is instrumental and what are some good texts to look at on Marxism and law(and state) related to the bias and oppressiveness of law?

[MarxSchmarx]

To be honest I only skimmed it, but there is a chapter in Dennis Patterson's "Companion to Philosophy of the Law and Legal Theory" titled "Marxist Approaches to the Law" or some such that summarizes many of the main themes and scholars in this field. I'd bet that following a few citations around you'll get yourself your answer. If you are writing a dissertation on it I'm sure you can get it at your library.

[mikelepore]

If you're asking about Marx and Engels, rather than secondary sources, it's not found in one main book, but many citations into the literature, such as these:

"In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap." --- Engels, introduction to Marx's _The Civil War in France_

"The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power, properly so called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in class society." --- Marx, _The Poverty of Philosophy_

"The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff." --- Marx and Engels, _Manifesto of the Communist Party_

[Zanthorus]

I reccomend e-mailing Mike Macnair of the CPGB. He's a law teacher at St Hugh's college in Oxfor. He's written some interesting things on the nature of the legal system in the past. If you google his name you can find his address.