Abstract

This thesis explores Karl Marx's analysis of economic freedom in the context of nineteenth century commercial law and to jurisprudence. Certain of Marx's remarks on legal theory and the law are examined both as claims about the will theory of law in various forms and as claims about statements which might be found in case reports of the time, whether those statements were factual statements or rules of law. The works of G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Freidrich, Savigny, and John Locke are briefly examined on the subjects of the will as the foundation of property and contract. An analysis of the will theory of law as comprising two separate theories about the relationship of will and law is developed. The thesis concludes that Marx's description and analysis are flawed and that his criticism of economic freedom under capitalism is unsound in part because his description of the contemporaneous ideology distorts that ideology