Citation
Anand, P. (2026). Western Political Thought: A Critical Study from a Marxist Framework. International Journal of Research, 12(12), 683–688. https://doi.org/10.26643/rb.v118i8.7507
Prem Anand
MA, UGC NET (Political science)
Sahebganj Sonarpatti Chowk, Chapra, Saran, Bihar, 841301
Abstract
Western political thought constitutes a vast intellectual tradition spanning from ancient Greece to contemporary liberal and post-liberal theory. It is commonly presented as a progressive unfolding of rational ideas concerning justice, the state, sovereignty, citizenship, liberty, and democracy. However, from a Marxist standpoint, political thought is not an autonomous realm of abstract reasoning but a historically conditioned superstructural formation shaped by material relations of production and class struggle. This paper offers a detailed and critical examination of Western political thought through the framework of Marxism, drawing upon the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and extending the analysis through later Marxist thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, and Ralph Miliband.
The paper argues that Western political theory has functioned historically as an ideological expression of dominant class interests corresponding to successive modes of production—slave society, feudalism, mercantilism, and capitalism—while also containing internal contradictions that give rise to emancipatory possibilities. By situating canonical thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G W F Hegel, and modern liberal theorists within their socio-economic contexts, this study demonstrates how political ideas both reflect and reproduce relations of domination.
Keywords: Western Political Thought, Marxist Framework, Historical Materialism, Dialectical Materialism, Class Struggle, Base and Superstructure, Ideology Bourgeois Democracy, Hegemony.
Introduction: Re-reading the Canon through Historical Materialism
The conventional historiography of Western political thought presents it as a continuous conversation about justice and the good polity. From the polis to the modern nation-state, political philosophy is often depicted as a rational inquiry into normative principles. Marxism, however, challenges the autonomy of ideas. According to Marx’s theory of historical materialism, articulated most clearly in The German Ideology and the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. The economic base—constituted by productive forces and relations of production—shapes the superstructure, including political institutions and ideologies.
This framework does not imply crude economic determinism. Rather, it emphasizes dialectical interaction between base and superstructure. Political ideas emerge within definite historical conditions and serve, consciously or unconsciously, to legitimize or contest prevailing social relations. The history of political thought is thus inseparable from the history of class struggle.
Marx’s famous claim in The Communist Manifesto that the state is “but a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie” encapsulates the critical orientation of Marxist political theory. Political institutions are not neutral mediators but instruments embedded in class structures. Later Marxists refined this claim by analyzing the relative autonomy of the state and the role of ideology in securing consent.
Ancient Greek Political Thought: Philosophy within a Slave Mode of Production
The origins of Western political thought lie in classical Greece. The works of Plato and Aristotle are foundational to the canon. Yet their philosophies were produced within a slave-based economy in which a minority of citizens depended upon the labor of slaves and women excluded from political life.
In The Republic, Plato constructs an ideal state organized around a tripartite class structure. Justice consists in each class performing its designated function. From a Marxist perspective, this organic model of hierarchy mirrors the structural stability desired by the Athenian aristocracy during a period of crisis. Plato’s hostility to democracy reflects elite anxiety about popular rule. Although Plato criticizes wealth accumulation among the guardian class, he does not challenge the fundamental division between those who labor and those who rule.
Aristotle’s Politics offers a more empirical analysis of constitutions and defends the concept of citizenship. However, Aristotle’s justification of “natural slavery” exemplifies ideological rationalization. By presenting slavery as rooted in nature rather than economic necessity, Aristotle naturalizes a relation of exploitation fundamental to the ancient mode of production.
A Marxist analysis thus reveals that classical political philosophy, while intellectually profound, remains embedded in the social relations of slave society. The exclusionary definition of citizenship corresponds directly to the economic structure. Political participation is possible only because surplus is extracted from slaves.
Medieval Political Thought: Feudal Hierarchy and Divine Legitimacy
Medieval political thought developed within the feudal mode of production, characterized by land-based hierarchy and obligations between lords and serfs. Political authority was intertwined with religious authority. Thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas articulated a vision of political order grounded in divine will.
Feudal society’s material base consisted of agrarian production and localized power. Political thought reinforced this structure by presenting hierarchy as natural and ordained by God. The doctrine of the divine right of kings sanctified monarchical power. The Church functioned as an ideological institution legitimizing the feudal order.
From a Marxist viewpoint, medieval political theology obscured material exploitation by translating social hierarchy into spiritual necessity. Yet contradictions within feudalism—growth of commerce, urbanization, and monetary exchange—generated new social forces. The rising bourgeoisie would soon demand political theories suited to emerging capitalist relations.
Early Modern Thought: Social Contract and Bourgeois Revolution
The early modern period witnessed the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Political theory during this era reflects the needs of a rising bourgeois class. Social contract theory, articulated by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, conceptualizes political authority as derived from individual consent rather than divine ordination.
Hobbes’s Leviathan defends absolute sovereignty to prevent civil war. Although Hobbes emphasizes security over liberty, his theory presupposes individuals as possessive and competitive, reflecting emergent market relations.
Locke provides the clearest ideological expression of bourgeois interests. His theory of property, grounded in labor-mixing, justifies private accumulation. By framing property as a natural right, Locke legitimizes capitalist ownership relations. Marx later critiques this conception in Capital, demonstrating that under capitalism, labor does not create property for the worker but surplus value for the capitalist.
Rousseau complicates this narrative. In The Social Contract and Discourse on Inequality, he criticizes private property as the origin of inequality. Marx admired Rousseau’s democratic impulse but argued that Rousseau’s solution remained within the framework of political, not economic, emancipation.
German Idealism and Marx’s Materialist Turn
The culmination of classical German philosophy in Hegel profoundly influenced Marx. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right conceptualizes the state as the realization of ethical freedom. Civil society mediates particular interests, while the state embodies universality.
Marx’s early Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right rejects Hegel’s idealism. Marx argues that Hegel mystifies the state by treating it as the source rather than the product of social relations. For Marx, civil society, structured by property relations, determines political forms.
Marx’s shift from philosophy to political economy marks a decisive methodological break. In Capital, he analyzes the commodity form, surplus value, and the dynamics of accumulation. Political institutions are understood as mechanisms for reproducing capitalist relations. Liberal rights guarantee equality in exchange but conceal exploitation in production.
Marx distinguishes between political emancipation and human emancipation in On the Jewish Question. Liberal rights create formal equality while preserving material inequality. True emancipation requires abolition of class relations.
Marxist Theories of the State in the Twentieth Century
Twentieth-century Marxists developed more sophisticated theories of the state. Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks introduce the concept of hegemony, emphasizing cultural and ideological leadership. The bourgeoisie maintains dominance not only through coercion but through consent, shaping common sense and civil society institutions.
Althusser advances the theory of ideological state apparatuses, arguing that institutions such as schools, churches, and media reproduce capitalist relations by interpellating individuals as subjects.
Miliband and Poulantzas debated the nature of state power. Miliband emphasized the instrumental control of the state by elites, while Poulantzas argued that the state’s structure ensures capitalist dominance even without direct personal control. These debates refine Marx’s original claim about the state’s class character.
Liberal Democracy and Neoliberalism
Modern liberal democracy, celebrated for universal suffrage and constitutional rights, coexists with vast economic inequality. Marxists argue that political equality does not eliminate class domination. Electoral competition occurs within parameters defined by capital accumulation.
In the late twentieth century, neoliberalism emerged as a dominant ideology associated with thinkers such as Hayek and Friedman. It promotes deregulation, privatization, and market supremacy. From a Marxist perspective, neoliberalism represents a response to the crisis of Fordist capitalism and the decline of profit rates. It reasserts capitalist class power by dismantling welfare institutions and labor protections.
Contemporary Western political thought often emphasizes identity, recognition, and multiculturalism. While important, Marxists caution that these frameworks may overlook the structural logic of capital. Critical theorists continue to analyze globalization, imperialism, and financialization as extensions of capitalist accumulation.
Conclusion
A Marxist critical study of Western political thought demonstrates that political ideas are historically situated within specific modes of production. From ancient slavery to modern capitalism, dominant political theories have tended to legitimize prevailing class relations while presenting themselves as universal reason.
Yet the tradition also contains resources for critique. Democratic aspirations, egalitarian impulses, and revolutionary movements have emerged from within Western political discourse. Marxism does not reject this tradition wholesale but reinterprets it through the lens of class struggle and historical materialism.
Ultimately, Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach remains instructive: philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it. A Marxist framework transforms the study of Western political thought from a purely intellectual exercise into a critical engagement with the material conditions that shape human freedom.
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