Having analysed the material role of the capitalist state then, the next year, Marx in his work On the Jewish Question, gave his classic analysis of the false ideology of the “liberal democratic” capitalist state. Marx demonstrated, via analysis of the position of Jews in Germany, the difference between the “official” and “formal” claims of liberal/parliamentary democracy and reality. He demonstrated that removal of formal and legal restrictions on Jews in Germany did not lead to their real equality. It is this analysis which directly relates to the difference between the real human rights of Chinese women and Indian women already considered - although Marx, dealing with an urgent political issue of his period, analysed it regarding the position of Jews in Germany.
Marx designated the difference between what he termed “political emancipation” and “human emancipation” – between purely formal equality and rights in politics and the fundamental inequality and lack of rights in the real world. This so classically sets out the reality of Western parliamentary democracy that it is worth quoting in detail – any other words would simply summarise an analysis that could not be put more clearly.
Marx put it regarding the difference between formal and real human freedom, and the real “rule of the people” that in parliamentary/liberal democracy: “man liberates himself from a restriction… in an abstract and restricted manner”. This is while liberal/parliamentary democracy proclaimed “equality” this was a fiction in the real world in which human beings lived.
Marx put it regarding the purely formal statements of capitalist/parliamentary democracy: “The state abolishes, in its own way, distinctions of birth, social rank, education, occupation, when it declares that birth, social rank, education, occupation, are non-political distinctions, when it proclaims, without regard to these distinction, that every member of the nation is an equal participant in national sovereignty.” But in reality, none of these real distinctions was removed: “Nevertheless, the state allows private property, education, occupation, to act in their way – i.e., as private property, as education, as occupation, and to exert the influence of their special nature. Far from abolishing these real distinctions, the state only exists on the presupposition of their existence.”