Chowdhury on Toward a Historical Materialist Account of British Constitutional Change

Tanzil Chowdhury, Queen Mary University of London, School of Law, is publishing Toward a Historical Materialist Account of British Constitutional Changee in the International Journal of Constitutional Law. Here is the abstract.

This paper argues that British constitutional reforms are the historically specific expression of the mediation of significant antagonisms between social forces and shifts in the modalities of capitalism, the aim of which is to ensure the conditions for commodity exchange and capital accumulation. While most conventional theories of constitutional reform recognise the heteronomous nature of law reform as responding to extra-legal or economic forces, this paper, drawing on a renascent Marxist turn in legal studies, examines how historical materialist accounts might help to inform understandings of constitutional development. Outlining but ultimately rejecting an economistic orthodox Marxist reading of law, this paper instead conceptualises constitutions as a 'moment' in the contradictory totality of capitalist social relations;. Arguing that reforms to the British constitution are often preceded by significant social antagonisms, the paper attempts to explain constitutional reforms as the capitalist states mediation of such antagonisms to secure the future conditions for capital accumulation, offering a reappraisal of the lead up to and creation of the Parliament Act 1911 as an example.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.