3.3 Karl Marx (1818–1883): Dialectical Materialism, Class Struggle,Surplus Value, State and Law

(Marx opens two courses of yours — Jurisprudence Unit 3.5 and Sociology Unit 3.3.2 have hissociology of law; here are his political economy and theory of the state, compactly.)A. Dialectical materialism (the method):1. From Hegel: the dialectic — reality as process, contradiction, and resolution (thesis–antithesis– synthesis — the schoolbook formula); history moves through conflict of opposites.2. Marx's inversion: the dialectic is not of ideas but of matter — the economic base (forces of production + relations of production) determines the superstructure (law, politics, religion, ideology — "consciousness does not determine life; life determines consciousness" paraphrased). Each mode of production (primitive-communal → slave → feudal → capitalist → socialist, in the classic sequence) carries the contradictions that break it: at maturity, the relations of production fetter the forces; epochal change follows.B. Class struggle (the engine): "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (Communist Manifesto, 1848, with Engels) — freeman/slave, patrician/plebeian, lord/serf, and now bourgeoisie/proletariat: capital's own accumulation concentrates and organises the working class until it seizes political power (dictatorship of the proletariat as transition), socialises the means of production, abolishes classes — and the state withers away.C. Surplus value (the exploitation theorem — the Capital I (1867) core):1. Labour-power is a commodity: its value = the socially necessary labour to reproduce the worker (wages =…