| Sumario: | This article examines Marxist legal theory by closely analyzing Karl Marx’s engagement with law, rights, and the state, primarily through his seminal work *Capital*, as well as his earlier writings and later Marxist interpretations. It highlights three key contexts in *Capital*: the legal subject as a commodified labor-power entering contractual relations; class struggles over the working day and labor protections shaped by legal reforms; and the role of law and state coercion in the process of “primitive accumulation,” whereby pre-capitalist property relations were violently transformed to enable capitalism. The article contrasts differing Marxist approaches to law, including Evgeny Pashukanis’ “commodity-form” theory emphasizing law’s formal relation to capitalist exchange, and Nicos Poulantzas’ view of law and the state as arenas of class struggle with relative autonomy and constitutive power. It also critically engages with Katharina Pistor’s “constitutive thesis” that law creates capital and wealth, arguing that Marx and Engels recognized law’s significant but dialectically mediated role within capitalism’s socio-economic base and superstructure. Finally, the article situates Marx’s vision of a transitional workers’ state leading to communism, where law and the state would eventually become obsolete, underscoring the enduring relevance of Marxist critique for understanding law’s complex role in capitalist societies.
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