Marxist Theory Of Natural Law Essay

Natural law is defined as “the permanent underlying basis of all law. The philosophers of ancient Greece, where the idea of natural law originated, consisted that there was a kind of perfect justice given to man by nature and that man’s laws should conform to this as closely as possible. Theories of natural law have been an important part of jurisprudence throughout legal history. Natural law is distinguished from positive law, which is the body of law imposed by the state. Natural law is both anterior and superior to positive law.” Natural law holds that morality and the law are connected and is not what is enacted in statute. For

This involves a materialistic view of social life in which law and the state are accorded a subordinate position as part of the superstructure, as opposed to the fundamental economic infrastructure, of society” . Marxism is deemed as a system of sociology and a key political doctrine. The economic system was the superior system and everything else including religion and ethics were interoperated as ‘supernatural’ . Within Marxism, morality is considered to be an ideology and is only “relative to a particular mode of production and articular class interests” . Despite this, Marxist writings are weighted very much on morals and include an abundance of moral judgements. However, Marx and Engels claim that they ‘do not preach morality at all’. Furthermore, Marx insists that there is no history to morality and therefore cannot be credited. It can be inferred that Marx (and in turn later Marxists) rejected the idea of morality despite it appearing within the doctrine of fundamental human goods. As Marxism does not, technically, include any moral principles within its theory it would be unfair to classify it as morally neutral. Despite this, it could be argued that it is morally neutral as it doesn’t favour any moral standings above others because it doesn’t include