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законодательном и организационном уровне) легитимность государственной власти постоянно ставиться под сомнение.
С одной стороны можно приветствовать принятие столь важного закона, с другой, конечно общественные контролеры будут наделены определёнными полномочиями законодательно, но будут ли их «сигналы» услышаны властью. Ответ на этот вопрос покажет практика.
Использованные источники:
1. Проблемы местного самоуправления [Электронный ресурс]Общественный контроль в органах государственной власти и местного самоуправления : основные составляющие и пути их усовершенствования. Режим доступа: http://www.samoupravlenie.ru/60-02.php
2. Центр научной политической мысли и идеологии (Центр Сулашкина) [Электронный ресурс] Общественный контроль в России. Режим доступа: http://rusrand.ru/actuals/obschestvennyj-kontrol-v-rossii
3. Кому нужны наблюдатели на выборах [Электронный ресурс]/ И. Борисов Режим доступа: http://www.cikrf.ru/about/library/journal/2012/n4/Borisov.pdf
Шлыкова М.А. студент 3 курса НИУ ВШЭ Россия, г. Пермь MARXISM. CLASS THEORY OF KARL MARX.
Research paper made by Shlykova Mariia
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels created a science which was later called as Marxism. In this pqper I am going to tell you about the main aspects of the work of Marx, class theory, give a definition of "class" and, finally, consider Marxism in terms of religion and law.
Marxism: classes and formations
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov) developed the ideas of Marx and Engels, therefore, he is also a theoretician of Marxism. The basic definition of class, called a Marxist definition, and resulting from Marx' works, was given by Lenin.
Classes are large groups of people differing by their place in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, according to methods of making and dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose. Classes are defined as groups of people, one of which can appropriate the labor of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite economic system.
All scientists who study the development of society, are divided into two
different (similar but slightly different) approaches to this development :
1. Civilizational approach: social history - the history of successive civilizations. Civilization is considered here as a stage of social development on a plurality of different signs: culture, economy, politics, ideas , etc. (and here in this approach there are many different classifications: by the time period, by place: Eastern, European, Western, etc).
2. According to our subject we are interested in a different approach: Formational - from the concept of socioeconomic formation - the stage of social development, characterized by a certain stage of development of the productive forces and the corresponding stage of the historical type of economic relations of production. Here the main criteria is economic relations: the productive forces and productive relations).
There are 5 socioeconomic formations:
1. Primitive society (this is a classless society)
2. Slave-owning society
3. Feudal society
4. Capitalist society
5. Communist society (also classless).
USSR in 1917 - 1991 used to "build" the first step of Communism -Socialism.
The abovementioned classes are:
-Slave-owning society - slaveholders and slaves.
-Feudal society - landowners and serfs.
-Capitalist society - capitalists and wage workers.
The main feature of the division into classes is the relation to the means of production. The slaveholder has a slave (basic mean of production) and personal freedom. The slave does not have neither means of production nor freedom.The landowner has the land (mean of production) - and the dependent serf does not have it.The capitalist has means of production - capital (plant, factory, money) and the wage worker has only his own workers' hands, so he is hiring by the capitalist and sells his labor).
Marx' definition of "class"
Where did the classes come from?
They appear at the dawn of humanity. In ancient times people ate what they have caught or plucked from the tree, no more no less. Then instruments of labor with metal elements came instead of stone instruments, therefore, productivity increased, so it was possible to create kind of stocks for surpluses. Who was keeping these surpluses? Who distributed them? Perhaps it was the first elders. With the development of the economy the surpluses also grew more, so, then exchange erose,
then - trade. So this is how inequality appeared. And after that classes appeared: class of exploiters and class of exploited.
According to Marxism to maintain the domination of one class over another some mechanism is needed. State becomes this mechanism (army, taxes, power, laws, etc.) - this is the main idea of class inequality theory.
Marx's class theory rests on the premise that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." According to this view, ever since human society emerged from its primitive and relatively undifferentiated state it has remained fundamentally divided between classes who clash in the pursuit of class interests. In the world of capitalism, for example, the nuclear cell of the capitalist system, the factory, is the prime locus of antagonism between classes--between exploiters and exploited, between buyers and sellers of labor power--rather than of functional collaboration. Class interests and the confrontations of power that they bring in their wake are to Marx the central determinant of social and historical process.
Marx's analysis continually centers on how the relationships between men are shaped by their relative positions in regard to the means of production, that is, by their differential access to scarce resources and scarce power. He notes that unequal access need not at all times and under all conditions lead to active class struggle. But he considered it axiomatic that the potential for class conflict is inherent in every differentiated society, since such a society systematically generates conflicts of interest between persons and groups differentially located within the social structure, and, more particularly, in relation to the means of production. Marx was concerned with the ways in which specific positions in the social structure tended to shape the social experiences of their incumbents and to predispose them to actions oriented to improve their collective fate.
The classical economists picture the economic system of a market economy as one in which each man, working in his own interest and solely concerned with the maximization of his own gains, nevertheless contributes to the interests and the harmony of the whole. Differing sharply, Marx contended, as Raymond Aron has put it, that "each man, working in his own interest, contributes both to the necessary functioning and to the final destruction of the regime."
In contrast to the utilitarians who conceive of self-interest as a regulator of a harmonious society, Marx sees individual self-interest among capitalists as destructive of their class interest in general, and as leading to the ultimate self-destruction of capitalism. The very fact that each capitalist acts rationally in his own self-interest leads to ever deepening economic crises and hence to the destruction of the interests common to all.
The conditions of work and the roles of workers dispose them to solidarity and to overcoming their initial competitiveness in favor of combined action for their collective class interests.
Capitalists, however, being constrained by competition on the market, are in a structural positions that does not allow them to arrive at a consistent assertion of common interests. The market and the competitive mode of production that is characteristic of capitalism tend to separate individual producers. Marx granted that capitalists also found it possible to transcend their immediate self-interests, but he thought this possible primarily in the political and ideological spheres rather than in the economic. Capitalists, divided by the economic competition among themselves, evolved a justifying ideology and a political system of domination that served their collective interests. "The State is the form in which the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests." "The ideas of the ruling class are. . .the ruling ideas."
Political power and ideology thus seem to serve the same functions for capitalists that class consciousness serves for the working class. But the symmetry is only apparent. To Marx, the economic sphere was always the finally decisive realm within which the bourgeoisie was always the victim of the competitiveness inherent in its mode of economic existence. It can evolve a consciousness, but it is always a "false consciousness," that is, a consciousness that does not transcend its being rooted in an economically competitive mode of production. Hence neither the bourgeoisie as a class, nor the bourgeois state, nor the bourgeois ideology can serve truly to transcend the self-interest enjoined by the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois reign is doomed when economic conditions are ripe and when a working class united by solidarity, aware of its common interests and energized by an appropriate system of ideas, confronts its disunited antagonists. Once workers became aware that they are alienated from the process of production, the dusk of the capitalist era has set in.
Marxism and religion
In order to understand more clear Marxism, it is necessary to explore its religious dimensions. In many respects Marxism is no less religious or dogmatic than the traditional religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. As a matter of fact, Marxism contains in itself a complete worldview that includes an explanation of the origin of the universe and an eschatological theory concerning the final destiny of humankind.
Theologically, Marxism declares that God does not, cannot, and must not exist. Instead, Marxism is based on the conviction that history is constantly evolving towards a certain direction and that the proletariat is the redemptive force of humanity. Thus Marx declared: "History is the judge, its executioner the proletariat." (1)
Since Marx believed he had discovered the secret of perfecting the human condition, politics became for him a form of secular religion, whereby the ideal of human salvation would be accomplished by the proletariat's revolutionary actions in history. History was interpreted progressively by Marx, moving by means of social struggle. He believed that the final stage of human evolution actually transcends class struggle, when the eschatological consummation of global communism is at last achieved. (2) Comparing such Marxist eschatology with that contained in the Bible in the Book of Revelation, David Koyzis comments:
"Much as the scriptures teaches the ultimate victory of Jesus Christ over his enemies and the reign of the righteous over the new earth in the kingdom of God, so also does Marxism promises an eschatological consummation of human history. This does not, of course, mean that there is not a battle to be waged or work to be done. Indeed, there is much of both. But in fighting for the classless society, the proletariat does so fully confident that it is fighting not against history but with it."(3)
If the god of Marxism is to be understood as an evolutionary process towards communism, then its devil is constituted by the reactionary forces that either deny or hinder this progressive ideology. These reactionaries are destined to receive their final destruction in the fires of global revolution.(4) Thus in the opinion of Leonardo Boff, a leading contributor to Marxist-oriented liberation theology in Latin America, one day the world will face a "final apocalyptic confrontation of the forces of good [communists] and evil [anti-communists], and then the blessed millennium. "(5) The violent suppression of those anti-communist reactionaries, he says, will represent the advent of "God's Kingdom on Earth, and the advent of a new society of a socialistic type". (6)
Eschatological Marxism regards the advent of communist utopia as an end in itself. As such, communism is an ideal to be achieved at any social cost. To achieve communism, therefore, any means can be justified, including violence and deceit. (7) After all, under the communist paradise there will be no more social injustice, and everybody will be treated equally. The sum of violent actions by radical Marxists is alleged to actually be a good thing, because this may potentially accelerate the advent of the great socialistic utopia. In other words, anything that a person does to advance such a noble ideal is never to be regarded as objectively wrong or even unethical. As a result, Green explains: Marxism and law
Marx's ideas about law were expressed mainly in the Communist Manifesto, which he published in collaboration with his friend Friedrich Engels in 1848. In that paper Marx contends that "law, morality, religion, are so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests." Then he goes on to
criticise the whole tradition of government under the rule of law as nothing more than a mere expression of "bourgeois" aspirations:
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all; a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of existence of your class. The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property—this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you." (8)
The main objective of classical Marxist jurisprudence is not to promote human rights or to support the separation of governmental powers, nor even equality before the law, but to criticize these very ideals of the rule of law and to reveal its putative structures of socio-economic domination. Thus in his Principles of Communism, Engels described such values as individual rights and equality before the law as fraudulent masks worn by the bourgeoisie for economic supremacy and exploitation. In fact, all the most cherished values of democratic societies were denounced by Engels as merely being ideological tools for legitimizing an exploitive system that would serve only the dominant economic group.(9)
With this idea in mind, Marx argued that basic human rights are not fixed but rather are constantly evolving according to the progressive stages of class warfare. In On the Jewish Question, Marx explained that in his opinion, the so-called rights of man are "simply the rights of a member of civil society, that is, of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community." He saw liberty as not founded upon the relations between free and responsible individual citizens, but "rather upon the separation of man from man. It is the right of such separation."(10) For him, its practical application was the right to property. "If power is taken on the basis of right", commented Marx and Engels in The German Ideology,
" ... then right, law, etc., are merely the symptoms of other relations upon which state power rests. The material life of individuals ... their mode of production and form of interest which eventually determine each other ... this is the real basis of the State ... . The individuals who rule in these conditions, besides having to constitute their power in the form of the State, have to give their will ... a universal expression as the will of the State, as law."(11)
Marx believed that laws are the product of class oppression, and that laws would have to disappear with the advent of communism. Marxist ideas are closely associated with despotic communist regimes, since these regimes have claimed Marxism as their official ideology. Unfortunately, the Marxist dream of a lawless society has led only to gross inequality and class-oriented genocidal policies. In fact,
Marxist regimes have been far more efficient in the art of killing millions of individuals than in the art of producing any concrete or perceived form of social justice.
But it appears that Marxism is still very much alive, and that it has deeply influenced a direct line of contemporary legal thinkers, who have adopted some of its ideas or picked up some aspects of this radical theory. Indeed, Marxist theory overlaps with much of the current work within critical theories of law, such as radical feminism and race legal theory. This may be regarded as a dangerous development, since history empirically demonstrates—rather conclusively—that whenever Marxist legal theory is applied, at least two of its most dreadful characteristics invariably appear, namely, judicial partiality and political arbitrariness.
Bibliography
1. Cited in Johnson, P., The Intellectuals, Harper Perennial, New York, p. 55, 1988.
2. Koyzis, D.T., Political Visions & Illusions, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill, p. 174, 2003.
3. Koyzis, ref. 2, p. 172.
4. Morris, H.M. and Clark, M.E., The Bible has the Answer, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, p. 340-341, 2005
5. Boff, L., Salvation and Liberation, Dove, Melbourne, p. 106, 1984.
6. Boff, ref. 5, p. 116.
7. Green, M., I Believe in Satan"s Downfall, Hodder & Soutghton, London, pp. 159161, 1988.
8. Karl, M., Critique of the Gotha Programme; cited in Cain, M. and Hunt, A., Marx andEngels on Law, Academic Press, London p. 163, 1979.
9. Bottomore, ref. 21, pp. 24-26.
10. Marx and Engels, Collected Words, vv. 90, 329; cited in Kelly, ref 22, p. 329.
11. Harriman, E.A., Enemy property in America, The American Journal of International Law I:202, 1924; cited in Pashukanis, E.B., Law and Marxism: A General Theory, Pluto Press, London, p. 130, 1989.
Russian books:
-Биография Карла Маркса (Karl Marx)
-К.Маркс. "Капитал", М "Политиздат",1984 (Capital by K. Marx) -Работа К. Маркса и Ф. Энгельса "Манифест Коммунистической партии"
