TITLE:
Timeliness of the Reification of Marx as an Instrument for the Analysis of Legal and Social Relations
AUTHORS:
Martonio Mont’Alverne Barreto Lima, Walquíria Gertrudes Domingues Leão Rego
KEYWORDS:
Karl Marx, Law, Verdinglichung, Reification, Social Relations, Legal Relations
JOURNAL NAME:
Beijing Law Review,
Vol.15 No.3,
September
25,
2024
ABSTRACT: This article seeks to investigate Karl Marx’s reflection on the reification of social relations in the economic and political development of the capitalist system remains timeliness and useful. From the notion of reification—Verdinglichung—established in Book III of The Capital, it is an attempt to reinsert the subject in the current sociological-legal debate; a debate being developed in many places of the world. We consider the concept of reification as a concept-diagnosis, or at least an indispensable element of diagnosis of a historical epoch. This is due to the fact that such debate deals with a phenomenon linked to forms of consciousness and a set of social practices inspired by them that may single out a certain historical time. This thematic field has been abandoned by the social and legal sciences for years, at least since the 1980s. However, we emphasize that this theme was central to the German, Austrian, and Latin American debate in the 1920s and 1930s. Thus, the article originates from this historical need to propose a revised version of the reification concept, updated for modern times, giving Law a valuable ontological tool to explain its phenomenal forms of modernity.