Materialist dialectics and constitutional form

The purpose of this paper is to develop the foundations of a critical dialectical research method for constitutional theory. To achieve this purpose, we will ground this research on the philosophy of internal relations and the contemporary theory of historical materialism. As a starting point, we argue that the object under study in the social (and legal) sciences cannot be conceived as an isolated and static thing. On the contrary, the object is always an aspect of the interconnected and dynamic whole. We will also claim that dialectics is very useful when studying the legal phenomenon and particularly constitutional issues, because it allows us to become aware of the fact that the “legal form” cannot be isolated from the general social formation. Finally, using abstraction, we will try to identify a set of elements that will allow us to conceive the constitution as a political category that echoes the capitalist social formation.