ABSTRACT
T o understand the M arxist attitude towards Law , we must start by distinguishing between Society and State after the manner inherited from Hegel and the classical liberal theorists. “ Bourgeois society 55 (to use the definition o f M arx and Hegel) is the entity o f those social relations which men enter uncon sciously and in the delusion that they are acting on their own free individual decisions, though the latter are objectively determined by the laws o f political economy. State, on the other hand, implies compulsion exercised consciously for the sake o f enforcing certain rules. O f these two fundamental fields o f human life, Hegel insists that the State is “ the realisa tion o f m o ra lity55 and, indeed, the supreme aim o f human civilisation, in strongest contrast to the liberal cheorists, for whom the State is at best a necessary evil, or rather an unreason able police force interfering with the normal interplay o f the laws o f free competition. But both o f them agree in assuming that there is a fundamental distinction between Society and State. In this, M arx was at one with them, but he rejected their belief that the relations between these two fields were, for good or for evil respectively, dominated by the interference o f the State in Society.
