In capitalism, social relations of production exert outsized force on all other domains, distorting and warping relations of reproduction, protection, and meaning-making without fully annihilating their internal capacity to structure relations in their distinct domains. This approach to understanding society, in which social relations are taken as the basic unit of analysis, helps clarify the place of “the state” in capitalism, the role of law in legitimating capitalism, and the relationship between culture, technology, and politics under capitalism.

Any program of transformative change must reckon with the fact that capitalists have largely succeeded in de-legitimizing existing institutions, including the state itself.

How much autonomy does politics have from the prevailing economic order? And what role does culture play in shaping politics? Answers to these questions will help determine law’s potential role in advancing democratic efforts to shape the terms of common life.

Where do profits come from? And how does law legitimate capitalism? To make progress on these questions, we must dig deeper into the nature of capital and the idea of the legal form.

Understanding law’s role in producing the imperatives of capitalism and the relative power of those who occupy different roles in production allows us to identify reforms capable of transforming the structure of those relations.