Law and capitalism are co-constitutive. Commodities, property, and the wage relation are all legally constructed. The relations and conditions of production are also elaborated through law, as Marx described in Chapter 10 of Capital. The critique of capitalism and the articulation of socialism are both improved by recognizing that law is a social relation.

Twenty-first century Marxism evinces a renewed interest in the mutuality between law and political economy, such as the constitutionalization of austerity budgeting in EU countries and the embedding of neoliberal rationality in international law; the production and management of surplus populations through the criminalization of poverty; the constitution of subjectivity and reproduction of hierarchy through the legal construction of race, gender, and sexuality; and more.

Lenin and the Materialist Critique of Law
—Camila Vergara

Criminal Courts as Sites of Struggle: Notes Toward a Foucauldian Investigation of Contested Criminalization
—Sam Menefee-Libey

Critical Legal Encounters with Marx
—Rob Hunter

Moderated by David Kaib.