Beyond political theology: Marx's materialist theorization of democracy and constituent power

This article recovers and develops Marx's highly original materialist theorization of democracy and constituent power in Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of State. Through close textual analysis and theoretical recontextualization, I reconstruct Marx's development and deployment of these concepts as a central part of his critique of political theology, that is, the idea of the state as a sovereign subject transcending and exercising absolute power over society. Marx conceptualized democracy as the social basis of all constitutional forms of the state, which simultaneously revealed the inherent possibility of overthrowing it and capitalism in order to institute a continuous and collective non-sovereign form of self-determination described as 'true democracy.'