Response to Paul Gray's review of Revisiting Marx's Critique of Liberalism

Abstract

E. P. Thompson, who argues for the historical significance of struggles for rights and laws. Shoikhedbrod, using his interpretation of Marx’s critique of liberalism, provides a more systematic account of the importance of constitutionalism and the rule of law in constraining arbitrary power, providing essential space for contestation in egalitarian struggles, and forming crucial preconditions for the communism that will achieve right and legality in a higher form. The clear strength of Shoikhedbrod’s work is his engagement with the legal and juridical aspects of these debates. He offers an important corrective to the dismissive attitude found in some schools of Marxism. Shoikhedbrod also provides persuasive arguments for the enduring importance of rights, whatever the form of the society. If there is a limitation to the book, it is that Shoikhedbrod describes as “orthodox” the interpretation that Marx ultimately dismisses right and legality. This discounts the variety of disagreements between commentators and the different schools of thought in the long-running debates about Marx and justice. For example, Marx asserts, “As far as right is concerned, we with many others have stressed the opposition of communism to right, both political and private, as also in its most general form as the rights of man.” Shoikhedbrod contends that this assertion, like other similar assertions by Marx, has often been “taken out of context.” But Shoikhedbrod does not provide enough contextual evidence to refute common-sense interpretations of this passage as Marx’s plain disavowal of rights as such. (Admittedly, there are other passages where Marx does seem to affirm some notion of rights.) This book is unlikely to persuade many of the commentators who think that Marx regards his critique of capitalism, as well as his theory of communism, as beyond appeals to justice, though Shoikhedbrod might convince some of them that Marxism needs a robust theory of rights and, indeed, that Marx provides some resources for such a theory. Shoikhedbrod offers a spirited critique of liberalism and a good case for why no theory or practice, whether communist or otherwise, can dispense with rights and legality. Although Habermas once called himself “the last Marxist,” Shoikhedbrod’s book shows that, in our age of rising global inequality, this is not the last we have heard from Marx.