3.3.2 Karl Marx (1818–1883)

• Base theory: history is the history of class conflict; the economic base (forces + relations of production) shapes the superstructure (law, state, religion, ideology). In the classic formulation of the Communist Manifesto (with Engels): the ruling ideas of an age are the ideas of its ruling class — and law belongs among those ideas.• Law's double role: (i) an instrument of class power — protecting property and contract as the ruling class needs; (ii) an ideology — presenting that order as natural, universal and just.• Nuance (credit for knowing it): Engels later conceded law's "relative autonomy" — it must maintain general order and internal consistency even for the ruling class, and can occasionally rule against it.• Application to Nepal: land tenure history reads Marx in stone — birta and jagir law secured a rentier aristocracy; land-reform and birta-abolition legislation (1950s–1964) re-wrote property's social base; today's debate — whether labour law and remittance-era contract law serve capital or the worker — is the same question.• Critique: understates law's genuine protective achievements (the Dalit-rights and violence- against-women statutes are not plausibly mere class instruments) and the rule of law as an achievement in itself.