7
"The Marxist Theory of
State and Law"*
Introductory Note
In the winter of 1929‑1930,
during the first Five Year Plan, the national economy of the U.S.S.R. underwent
dramatic and violent ruptures with the inauguration of forced collectivization
and rapid heavy industrialization. Concomitantly, it seemed, the Party insisted
on the reconstruction and realignment of the appropriate superstructures in
conformity with the effectuation of these new social relations of production.
In this spirit Pashukanis was no longer criticized but now overtly attacked in
the struggle on the "legal front". In common with important figures
in other intellectual disciplines, such as history, in late 1930 Pashukanis
undertook a major self‑criticism which was qualitatively different from
the incremental changes to his work that he had produced earlier. During the
following year, 1931, Pashukanis outlined this theoretical reconstruction in
his speech to the first conference of Marxist jurists, a speech entitled "Towards
a Marxist‑Leninist Theory of Law". The first results appeared a year
later in a collective volume The Doctrine
of State and Law.
Chapter I of this collective work
is translated below, "The Marxist Theory of State and Law", and was
written by Pashukanis himself It should be noted that this volume exemplifies
the formal transformations which occurred in Soviet legal scholarship during
this heated period. Earlier, Pashukanis and other jurists had authored their
own monographs;
* "Marksistskaia teoriia
gosudarstva i prava", pp. 9‑44 in E. B. Pashukanis (ed.), Uchenie o gosudarstve i prave (1932),
Partiinoe Izd., Moscow.
274 PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
the trend was now towards a
collective scholarship which promised to maximize individual safety. The source
of authority for much of the work that ensued increasingly became the many
expressions of Stalin's interpretation of Bolshevik history, class struggle and
revisionism, most notably his Problems of
Leninism. Last, but not least, the language and vocabulary of academic
discourse in the 1920s had been rich, open‑ended and diverse, and varied
tremendously with the personal preferences of the individual author; this gave
way to a standardized and simplified style of prose devoid of nuance and
ambiguity, and which was very much in keeping with the new theoretical content
which comprised official textbooks on the theory of state and law. The reader
will perhaps discover that "The Marxist Theory of State and Law" is a
text imbued with these tensions. Pashukanis' radical reconceptualization of the
unity of form and content, and of the ultimate primacy of the relations of
production, is without doubt to be preferred to his previous notions. But this
is a preference guided by the advantages of editorial hindsight, and we feel
that we cannot now distinguish between those reconceptualizations which
Pashukanis may actually have intended and those which were produced by the
external pressures of political opportunism.
"The Marxist Theory of State and Law"
CHAPTER
I
Socio‑economic Formations, State, and
Law
1. The doctrine of socio-economic formations as a basis for the Marxist
theory of state and law
The doctrine of state and law is
part of a broader whole, namely, the complex of sciences which study human
society. The development of these sciences is in turn determined by the history
of society itself, i.e. by the history of class struggle.
It has long since been noted that
the most powerful and fruitful catalysts which foster the study of social
phenomena are connected with revolutions. The English Revolution of the
seventeenth century gave birth to the basic directions of bourgeois social
thought, and forcibly advanced the scientific, i.e. materialist, understanding
of social phenomena.
It suffices to mention such a
work as Oceana‑by the English writer Harrington, and which appeared soon
after the English Revolution of the seventeenth century‑in which changes
in political structure are related to the changing distribution of landed
property. It suffices to mention the work of Barnave‑‑one of the
architects of the great French Revolution‑who in the same way sought
explanations of political struggle and the political order in property
relations. In studying bourgeois revolutions, French restorationist historians‑‑Guizot,
Mineaux and Thierry‑concluded that the leitmotif of these revolutions was
the class struggle between the third estate (i.e. the bourgeoisie) and the
privileged estates of feudalism and their monarch. This is why Marx, in his
well‑known letter to Weydemeyer, indicates that the theory of the class
struggle was known before him. "As far as I am concerned", he wrote,
276 PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
no credit is due
to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society, or the
struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the
historical development of this class struggle, and bourgeois economists the
economic anatomy of the classes.
What I did that
was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with
particular historical forms of struggle in the development of production ... ;
(2) that the class struggle inevitably leads to the dictatorship of the
proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition
to the abolition of all classes and the establishment of a classless society.1
[Section 2 omitted‑eds.]
3. The class type of state and
the form of government
The doctrine of socio‑economic
formations is particularly important to Marx's theory of state and law, because
it provides the basis for the precise and scientific delineation of the
different types of state and the different systems of law.
Bourgeois political and juridical
theorists attempt to establish a classification of political and legal forms
without scientific criteria; not from the class essence of the forms, but from
more or less external characteristics. Bourgeois theorists of the state,
assiduously avoiding the question of the class nature of the state, propose
every type of artificial and scholastic definition and conceptual distinction.
For instance, in the past, textbooks on the state divided the state into three
"elements": territory, population and power.
Some scholars go further. Kellen‑‑one of the most recent Swedish theorists of the state distinguishes five elements or phenomena of the state: territory, people, economy, society and, finally, the state as the formal legal subject of power. All these definitions and distinctions of elements, or aspects of the state, are no more than a scholastic game of empty concepts since the main point is absent: the division of society into classes, and class domination. Of course, the state cannot exist without population, or territory, or economy, or society. This is an incontrovertible truth. But, at the same time, it is true that all these "elements" existed at that stage of development when there was no state. Equally, classless communist society‑having territory, population and an economy‑will do
"THE MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW" 277
without the state since the
necessity of class suppression will disappear.
The feature of power, or coercive
power, also tells one exactly nothing. Lenin, in his polemic of the 1890s with
Struve asserted that: "he most incorrectly sees the distinguishing feature
of the state as coercive power. Coercive power exists in every human society‑both
in the tribal structure and in the family, but there was no state." And
further, Lenin concludes: "The distinguishing feature of the state is the
existence of a separate class of people in whose hands power is concentrated.
Obviously, no one could use the term 'State' in reference to a community in
which the 4 organization of order' is administered in turn by all of its members.2
Struve's position, according to
which the distinguishing feature of a state is coercive power, was not without
reason termed 6 'professorial" by Lenin. Every bourgeois science of the
state is full of conclusions on the essence of this coercive power. Disguising
the class character of the state, bourgeois scholars interpret this coercion in
a purely psychological sense. "For power and subordination", wrote
one of the Russian bourgeois jurists (Lazarevsky), "two elements are
necessary: the consciousness of those exercising power that they have the right
to obedience, and the consciousness of the subordinates that they must
obey."
From this, Lazarevsky and other
bourgeois jurists reached the following conclusion: state power is based upon
the general conviction of citizens that a specific state has the right to issue
its decrees and laws. Thus, the real fact‑concentration of the means of
force and coercion in the hands of a particular class‑is concealed and
masked by the ideology of the bourgeoisie. While the feudal landowning state
sanctified its power by the authority of religion, the bourgeoisie uses the
fetishes of statute and law. In connection with this, we also find the theory
of bourgeois jurists‑which now has been adopted in its entirety by the
Social Democrats whereby the state is viewed as an agency acting *in the
interests of the whole society. "If the source of state power derives from
class", wrote another of the bourgeois jurists (Magaziner), "then to
fulfil its tasks it must stand above the class struggle. Formally, it is the
arbiter of the class struggle, and even more than that: it develops the rules
of this struggle."
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PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
It is precisely this false theory
of the supra‑class nature of the state that is used for the justification
of the treacherous policy of the Social Democrats. In the name "of the
general interest", Social Democrats deprive the unemployed of their welfare
payments, help in reducing wages, and encourage shooting at workers'
demonstrations.
Not wishing to recognize the
basic fact, i.e. that states differ according to their class basis, bourgeois
theorists of the state concentrate all their attention on various forms of
government. But this difference by itself is worthless. Thus, for instance, in
ancient Greece and ancient Rome we have the most varied forms of government.
But all the transitions from monarchy to republic, from aristocracy to
democracy, which we observe there, do not destroy the basic fact that these
states, regardless of their different forms, were slave‑owning states.
The apparatus of coercion, however it was organized, belong to the slave‑owners
and assured their mastery over the slaves with the help of armed force, assured
the right of the slave‑owners to dispose of the labour and personality of
the slaves, to exploit them, to commit any desired act of violence against
them.
Distinguishing between the form
of rule and the class essence of the state is particularly important for the
correct strategy of the working class in its struggle with capitalism.
Proceeding from this distinction, we establish that to the extent that private
property and the power of capital remain untouchable, to this extent the
democratic form of government does not change the essence of the matter.
Democracy with the preservation of capitalist exploitation will always be
democracy for the minority, democracy for the propertied; it will always mean
the exploitation and subjugation of the great mass of the working people.
Therefore theorists of the Second International such as Kautsky, who contrast
"democracy" in general with "dictatorship", entirely refuse
to consider their class nature. They replace Marxism with vulgar legal
dogmatism, and act as the scholarly champions and lackeys of capitalism.
The different forms of rule had already arisen in slave‑owning society. Basically, they consist of the following types: the monarchic state with an hereditary head, and the republic where power is elective and where there are no offices which pass by inheritance. In addition, aristocracy, or the power of a minority (i.e. a state
"THE MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW"
279
where participation in the
administration of the state is limited by law to a definite and rather narrow
circle of privileged persons) is distinguished from democracy (or, literally,
the rule of the people), i.e. a state where by law all take part in deciding
public affairs either directly or through elected representatives. The
distinction between monarchy, aristocracy and democracy had already been
established by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the fourth century. All the
modern bourgeois theories of the state could add little to this classification.
Actually the significance of one
form or another can be gleaned only by taking into account the concrete
historical conditions under which it arose and existed, and only in the context
of the class nature of a specific state. Attempts to establish any general
abstract laws of the movement of state forms‑with which bourgeois
theorists of the state have often been occupied‑have nothing in common
with science.
In particular, the change of the
form of government depends on concrete historical conditions, on the condition
of the class struggle, and on how relationships are formed between the ruling
class and the subordinate class, and also within the ruling class itself
The forms of government may
change although the class nature of the state remains the same. France, in the
course of the nineteenth century, and after the revolution of 1830 until the
present time, was a constitutional monarchy, an empire and a republic, and the
rule of the bourgeois capitalist state was maintained in all three of these
forms. Conversely, the same form of government (for instance a democratic
republic) which was encountered in antiquity as one of the variations of the
slave‑owning state, is in our time one of the forms of capitalist
domination.
Therefore, in studying any state,
it is very important primarily to examine not its external form but its
internal class content, placing the concrete historical conditions of the class
struggle at the very basis of scrutiny.
The question of the relationship
betwen the class type of the state and the form of government is still very
little developed. In the bourgeois theory of the state this question not only
could not be developed, but could not even be correctly posed, because
bourgeois science always tries to disguise the class nature of all states, and
in particular the class nature of the capitalist state. Often therefore,
280 PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
bourgeois theorists of the state,
without analysis, conflate characteristics relating to the form of government
and characteristics relating to the class nature of the state.
As an example one may adduce the
classification which is proposed in one of the newest German encyclopaedias of
legal science.
The author [Kellreiter]
distinguishes: (a) absolutism and dictatorship, and considers that the basic
characteristic of these forms is that state powers are concentrated in the
hands of one person. As an example, he mentions the absolute monarchy of Louis
XIV in France, tsarist autocracy in Russia and the dictatorial power which was
invested by the procedure of extraordinary powers in the one person, for
instance the president of the German Republic on the basis of Art. 48 of the
Weimar Constitution; (b) constitutionalism, characterized by the separation of
powers, their independence and their checks and balances, thereby weakening the
pressure exerted by state power on the individual (examples: the German
Constitution before the 1918 revolution, and the U.S.A., where the President
and Congress have independent powers); (c) democracy, whose basic premise is
monism' of power and a denial in principle of the difference between power and
the subject of power (popular sovereignty, exemplified by the German Republic);
and (d) the class-corporative state and the Soviet system where as opposed to
formal democracy, the people appear not as an atomized mass of isolated
citizens but as a totality of organized and discrete collectives.3
This classification is very
typical of the confusion which bourgeois scholars consciously introduce 'into
the question of the state. Starting with the fact that the concept of dictatorship
is interpreted in the formal legal sense, deprived of all class content, the
bourgeois jurist deliberately avoids the question: the dictatorship of which class and directed against whom? He blurs the distinction
between the dictatorship of a small group of exploiters and the dictatorship of
the overwhelming majority of the working people; he distorts the concept of
dictatorship, for he cannot avoid defining it without a relevant law or
paragraph, while "the scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing
less than power resting directly upon force, unlimited by laws, and
unconstricted by absolute rules".4 Further it is sufficient to
indicate, for instance, that under the latter heading the author includes: (a)
a new type of state, never encountered before in history, where power belongs
to the proletariat; (b) the reactionary
THE MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW" 281
dreams of certain professors and
so‑called guild socialists, about the return to the corporations and
shops of the Middle Ages; and, finally (c) the fascist dictatorship of capital
which Mussolini exercises in Italy.
This respected scholar consciously
introduces confusion, consciously ignores the concrete historical conditions
under which the working people actually can exercise administration of the
state, acting as organized collectives. But such conditions are only the
proletarian revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
4. The class nature of law
Bourgeois science confuses the
question of the essence of law no less than the question of the state. Here,
Marxism‑Leninism opposes the diverse majority of bourgeois, petit
bourgeois and revisionist theories which, proceeding from the explanation of
the historical and class nature of law, consider the state as a phenomenon
essential to every human society. They thus transform law into a
suprahistorical category.
It is not surprising, therefore,
that bourgeois philosophy of law serves as the main source for introducing
confusion both into the concept of law and into the concept of state and
society.
The bourgeois
theory of the state is 90% the legal theory of the state. The unattractive
class essence of the state, most often and most eagerly, is hidden by clever
combinations of legal formalism, or else it is covered by a cloud of lofty
philosophical legal abstractions.
The exposure of the class
historical essence of law is not, therefore, an unimportant part of the Marxist‑Leninist
theory of society, of the state and of law.
The most widespread approach of bourgeois science to the solution of the question of the essence of law consists in the fact that it strives to embrace, through the concept of law, the existence of any consciously ordered human relationships, of any social rules, of any phenomenon of social authority or social power. Thus, bourgeois scholars easily transfer law to pre‑class society, find it in the pre‑state life of primitive tribes, and conclude that communism is unthinkable without law. They turn law as an empty abstraction into a universal concept devoid of historical content. Law, for bourgeois sociologists,
282 PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
becomes an empty form which is
unconnected with concrete reality, with the relationships of production, with
the antagonistic character of these relationships in class society, [and] with
the presence of the state as a particular apparatus of power in the hands of
the ruling class.
Representatives of idealist
philosophy of law go still further. They begin with "the idea of
law", which stands above social history as something eternal, immutable
and independent of space and time.
Here, for example, is the
conclusion of one of the most important representatives of the ideological neo‑Kantian
philosophy of law‑Stammler:
Through all the fates and deeds of
man there extends a single unitary idea, the idea of law. All languages have a
designation for this concept, and the direction of definitions and judgements
expressed by it amount, upon careful study, to one and the same meaning.
Having made this discovery, it
cost Stammler nothing "to prove" that regardless of the difference
between the "life and activity of nations" and "the objects of
legal consideration", we observe the unity of the legal idea and its equal
appearance and intervention.
This professorial rubbish is
presented without the least attempt at factual proof In actuality it would be
rather difficult to explain how this "unity of the legal idea and its
equal appearance" gave birth to the laws of the Twelve Tablets of slave‑owning
Rome, the serf customs of the Middle Ages, the declarations of rights of
capitalist democracies, and our Soviet Constitution.
But Stammler is not embarrassed
by the scantiness of factual argument. He deals just as simply with the proof
of the eternity of law. He begins from those legendary Cyclops described in the
Odyssey; even these mythical wonders were the fathers of families and,
according to Stammler, could not do without law. On the other hand, however,
while Stammler is ready to admit that the pigmy tribes of Africa and the
Eskimos did not know the state, he simply denies as deceptive all reports about
peoples not knowing law. Moreover, Stammler immediately replaces the concrete
historical consideration of the question with scholastic formal‑logical
tightrope walking, which among bourgeois professors is presented as a
methodological precision.
"THE MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW"
283
We present these conclusions, for
they typify the whole trend and, moreover, are most fashionable in the West.
Stammler proposes that the
concrete study of legal phenomena is entirely unable to provide anything in the
understanding of the essence of law. For if we assign any phenomenon to the
list of legal ones, this means that we already know that this is law and what
its characteristics are. The definition of law which precedes the facts
presupposes knowledge of what is law and what is not law. Accordingly, in the
opinion of Stammler, in considering the concept of law, it is necessary to
exclude all that is concrete and encountered in experience and to understand
"that the legal idea is a purely methodological means for the ordering of
spiritual life",
This conclusion, which confronts
one with its scholasticism, is nothing other than a Kantian ideological thesis
embodied in the context of Stammler's legal stupidity. It shows that the so‑called
forms of knowledge do not express the objective characteristics of matter, are
determined a priori, and precede all human experience and its necessary
conditions.
Having turned law into a
methodological idea, Stammler tries to locate it not in the material world
where everything is subordinate to the law of cause and effect, but in the area
of goals. Law, according to Stammler, is a definition which proceeds not from
the past (from cause to effect), but from the future (from goal to means).
Finally, adding that law deals not with the internal procedure of thoughts as
such, but with human interaction, Stammler gives this agonizing and thoroughly
scholastic definition:
The concept of law is a pure form
of thought. It methodically divides the endlessly differentiated material of
human desires apprehended by the senses, and defines it as an inviolable and independent
connecting will.
This professorial scholasticism
has the attractive feature for the bourgeoisie that verbal and formalistic
contrivances can hide the ugly reality of [their] exploiting society and
exploiting law.
If law is "a pure form of
thought", then it is possible to avoid the ugly fact that the capitalist
law of private property means the misery of unemployment, poverty and hunger
for the proletarian and his family; and that in defence of this law stand
police armed to the teeth, fascist bands, hangmen and prison guards; and that
this law signifies a whole system of coercion, humiliation and oppression in
colonies.
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PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
Such theories allow the
disguising of the fact that the class interest of the bourgeoisie lies at the
basis of bourgeois law. Instead of class law, philosophers such as Stammler
dream up abstractions, "pure forms", general human "ideas",
"whole and durable bonds of will"‑and other entirely shameless
things.
This philosophy of law is
calculated to blunt the revolutionary class consciousness of the proletariat,
and to reconcile it with bourgeois society and capitalist exploitation.
It is not without reason that the
social fascists speak out as such zealous exponents of neo‑Kantianism; it
is not without reason that Social Democratic theorists on questions of law
largely subscribe to neo‑Kantian philosophy and re‑hash the same
Stammler in different ways.
In our Soviet legal literature, a
rather wide dissemination has been achieved by bourgeois legal theories. In
particular, there have been attempts to spread the idealist teaching of
Stammler in the works of Pontovich and Popov‑Ladyzhensky. The criticism
and unmasking of this eructation is necessary for the purpose of eradicating
this bourgeois ideological infection.
Thus, we know that the state is
an historical phenomenon limited by the boundaries of class society. A state is
a machine for the maintenance of the domination of one class over another. It
is an organization of the ruling class, having at its disposal the most
powerful means of suppression and coercion. Until the appearance of classes the
state did not exist. In developed communism there will be no state.
In the same way as the state, law
is inseparably tied to the division of society into classes. Every law is the
law of the ruling class. The basis of law is the formulation and consolidation
of the relationship to the means of production, owing to which in exploitative
society, one part of the people can appropriate to itself the unpaid labour of
another.
The form of exploitation
determines the typical features of a legal system. In accordance with the three
basic socio‑economic formations of class society, we have three basic
types of legal superstructure: slave‑owning law, feudal law and bourgeois
law. This of course does not exclude concrete historical national differences
between each of the systems. For instance, English law is distinguished by many
peculiarities in comparison with French bour-
"THE MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW"
285
geois law as contained in the
Napoleonic Code. Likewise, we do not exclude the presence of survivals of the
past‑transitional or mixed forms‑which complicate the concrete
picture.
However, the essential and basic‑that
which provides the guiding theme for the study of different legal institutions‑is
the difference between the position of the slave, the position of the serf and
the position of the wage labourer. The relationship of exploitation is the
basic lynchpin, around which all other legal relationships and legal
institutions are arranged. From this it follows that the nature of property has
decisive significance for each system of law. According to Lenge, the brilliant
and cynical reactionary of the eighteenth century, the spirit of the laws is
property.
5. Law as an historical
phenomenon: definition of law
The appearance and withering away
of law, similar to the appearance and withering of the state, is connected with
two extremely important historical limitations. Law (and the state) appears
with the division of society into classes. Passing through a long path of
development, full of revolutionary leaps and qualitative changes, law and the
state will wither away under communism as a result of the disappearance of
classes and of all survivals of class society.
Nevertheless, certain authors,
who consider themselves Marxists, adopt the viewpoint that law exists in pre‑class
society, that in primitive communism we meet with legal forms and legal
relationships. Such a point of view is adopted for instance by Reisner. Reisner
gives the term "law" to a whole series of institutions and customs of
tribal society: marriage taboos and blood feud, customs regulating
relationships between tribes, and customs relating to the use of the means of
production belonging to a tribe. Law in this manner is transformed into an
eternal institution, inherent to all forms of human society. From here it is
just one step to the understanding of law as an eternal idea; and Reisner in
essence leans towards such an understanding.
This viewpoint of course
fundamentally contradicts Marxism. The customs of a society not knowing class
divisions, property inequality and exploitation, differ qualitatively from the
law and the statutes of class society. To categorize them together means to
introduce an unlikely confusion. Every attempt to avoid this qualita-
286 PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
tive difference inevitably leads
to scholasticism, to the purely external combination of phenomena of different
types, or to abstract idealist constructs 'in the Stammlerian spirit.
We should not be confused by the
fact that Engels, in The Origin of the
Family, Private Property and the State, uses the expression "the
eternal law"; or, that he cites, without particular qualification,
Morgan's description of the member of a tribal community as having "equality
of rights", and of a person violating tribal customs as having placed
himself "outside the law".
It is clear that the terms
"right" and "law" are used here not in their direct sense,
but by analogy. This does not mean, however, that in classless society we will
be dealing only with purely technical rules.
Such an argument was put forward by Stuchka in his dispute with Reisner. To
assign the customs and the norms of pre‑class society to the area of
technology would mean to give the concept of technology a very extended and
undefined sense. Marriage prohibitions, customs relating to the organization of
the tribe, the power of the elders, blood feud etc.‑all this of course is
not technology and not technical methods, but the customs and norms of social
order. The content and character of these customs corresponded of course to the
level of productive forces and the production relationships erected on it.
These social forms should be considered as a superstructure upon the economic
base. But the basic qualitative difference between this superstructure and the
political and legal superstructures of class society, consists in the absence
of property inequality, exploitation, and organized class coercion.
While Marxism strives to give a
concrete historical meaning to law, the characteristic feature of bourgeois
philosophers of law is, on the contrary, the conclusion that law in general is
outside classes, outside any particular socio‑economic formation. Instead
of deriving a concept of law from the study of historical facts, bourgeois
scholars are occupied with the concoction of theories and definitions from the
empty concept or even the word "law".
We already saw how Stammler, with
the help of scholastic contrivances, tries to show that concrete facts have no
significance for the definition of law. We, however, say the opposite. It is
impossible to give a general definition of law without knowing the law of slave‑owning,
feudal and capitalist societies. Only by studying the law of each of these
socio‑economic formations can we
"THE MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW"
287
identify those characteristics
which are in fact most general and most typical. In doing so we must not forget
Engels' warning to those who tend to exaggerate the significance of these
general definitions.
For example, in Chapter VI of the
first part of Anti‑Dühring, having
given a definition of life, Engels speaks of the inadequacy of all definitions
because they are necessarily limited to the most general and simplistic areas.
In the preface to Anti‑Dühring,
Engels formulated this thought still more clearly, indicating that
"the only real definition is the development of the essence of the matter,
and that is not a definition". However, Engels at once states that for
ordinary practical use, definitions which indicate the most general and
characteristic features of a category are very convenient. We cannot do without
them. It is also wrong to demand more from a definition than it can give; it is
wrong to forget the inevitability of its insufficiency.
These statements by Engels should
be kept in mind in approaching any general definition, including a definition
of law. It is necessary to remember that it does not replace, and cannot
replace, the study of all forms and aspects of law as a concrete historical
phenomenon. In identifying the most general and characteristic features we can
define law as the form of regulation and
consolidation of production relationships and also of other social
relationships of class society; law depends on the apparatus of state power
of the ruling class, and reflects the *interests of the latter.
This definition characterizes the
role and significance of law in class society. But it is nevertheless
incomplete. In contradistinction to all normative theories‑which are
limited to the external and formal side of law (norms, statutes, judicial
positions etc.)‑Marxist‑Leninist theory considers a law as a unity
of form and content. The legal superstructure comprises not only the totality
of norms and actions of agencies, but the unity of this formal side and its
content, i.e. of the social relationships which law reflects and at the same
time sanctions, formalizes and modifies. The character of formalization does
not depend on the "free will of the legislator"; it is defined by
economics, but on the other hand the legal superstructure, once having arisen,
exerts a reflexive effect upon the economy.
This definition stresses three
aspects of the matter. First is the class nature of law: every law is the law
of the ruling class. Attempts to
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PASHUKANIS:
SELECTED WRITINGS
consider law as a social
relationship which transcends class society, lead either to superficial
categorization of diverse phenomena, or to speculative idealistic constructs in
the spirit of the bourgeois philosophy of law. Second is the basic and
determinant significance of production relationships in the content that is
implemented by law. Class interests directly reflect their relationship to the
means of production. Property relationships occupy the prominent place in the
characterization of a specific legal order. Communist society, where classes
disappear, where labour becomes the primary want, where the effective principle
will be from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs:
this does not require law. The third aspect consists of the fact that the
functioning of a legal superstructure demands a coercive apparatus. When we say
that social relationships have assumed a legal expression, this means inter atia that they have been given a
coercive nature by the state power of the ruling class. Withering away of the
law can only occur simultaneously with the withering away of the state.
Relationships which have received
legal expression are qualitatively different from those relationships which
have not received this expression. The form of this expression may be
different, as was indicated by Engels;5 it may sometimes be good and
sometimes be bad. It may support the progressive development of these
relationships or, on the contrary, retard them. Everything depends on whether
power is in the hands of a revolutionary or a reactionary class. Here the real
significance of the legal superstructure appears. However, the degree of this
reality is a question of fact; it can be determined only by concrete study and
not by any a priori calculations.
Bourgeois jurists characteristically concentrate their attention on form, and
utterly ignore content. They turn their backs on life and actual history. As
Engels showed, "they consider public and private law as independent areas,
which have their own independent development and which must and may be
subjected to independent systematic elaboration by the consistent elimination
of all internal contradictions."6
Bourgeois jurists usually define
law as the totality of norms to which a state has given coercive power. This
view of law typifies so‑called legal positivism. The most consistent
representatives of this trend are the English jurists: of the earliest
Blackstone
"THE MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW" 289
(eighteenth century), and
thereafter Austin. In other European countries legal positivism also won itself
a dominant position in the nineteenth century, because the bourgeoisie either
gained state power or everywhere achieved sufficient influence in the state so
as not to fear the identification of law with statute. At the same time nothing
was better for legal professionals, for judges, [and] for defence counsel since
this definition fully satisfied their practical needs. If law in its entirety
was the complex of orders proceeding from the state, and consolidated by
sanction in the case of disobedience, then the task of jurisprudence was
defined with maximum clarity. The work of the jurist, according to the
positivists, did not consist in justifying law from some external point of view‑philosophers
were occupied with this; the task of the jurists did not include explaining
from where a norm emerged, and what determined its content‑this was the
task of political scientists and sociologists. The role of the jurist remained
the logical interpretation of particular legal provisions, the establishment of
an internal logical connection between them, combining them into larger
systematic units in legal institutions, and finally in this way the creation of
a system of law.
The definition of law as the
totality of norms is the starting point for supporting the so‑called
dogmatic method. This consists of using formal logical conclusions in order to
move from particular norms to more general concepts and back, proceeding from
general positions to propose the solution of concrete legal cases or disputes.
It is obvious that the practical part of this role developing especially
luxuriantly in the litigious circumstances of bourgeois society‑has
nothing in common with a scientific theory of law. Applications of so‑called
legal logic are not only theoretically fruitless, they are not only incapable
of revealing the essence of law and thus of showing its connection with other
phenomena‑with economics, with politics, with class struggle‑but
they are also harmful and impermissible in the practice of our Soviet courts
and other state institutions. We need decisions of cases, not formally, but in
their essence; the state of the working people, as distinct from the bourgeois
state, does not hide either its class character or its goal‑the
construction of socialism. Therefore, the application of norms of Soviet law
must not be based on certain formal logical considerations, but upon the
consideration of all the concrete features
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PASHUKANIS:
SELECTED WRITINGS
of the given case, of the class
essence of those relationships to which it becomes necessary to apply a general
norm, and of the general direction on of the policy of Soviet power at the
given moment. In the opposite case a result would be obtained which Lenin
defined as: "Correct in form, a mockery in substance."
The denial of formal legal logic
cultivated by the bourgeoisie does not mean a denial of revolutionary legality,
does not mean that judicial cases and questions of administration must be
decided chaotically in the Soviet state, systematically on the basis of the
random whims of individuals, or on the basis of local influences. The struggle
for revolutionary legality is a struggle on two fronts: against legal formalism
and the transfer to Soviet soil of bourgeois chicanery, and against those who
do not understand the organizational significance of Soviet decrees as one of
the methods of the uniform conduct of the policy of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
Thus, the law is the means of
formulating and consolidating the production relationships of class society and
the social relationships which are connected with them. In the legal
superstructure, these relationships appear as property relations and as
relations of domination and subordination. They appear, in particular, as
relations of an ideological nature, i.e. as relations which are formed in
connection with certain views and are supported by the conscious will of the
people.
We shall not touch upon the
question of the degree to which the legal ideology of the exploiting classes is
capable of correctly reflecting reality, and in what measure it inevitably
distorts it (representing the interest of the exploiting class as the social
interest in order, legality, freedom etc.). Here, we merely emphasize the fact
that without the work of legislators, judges, police and prison guards (in a
word, of the whole apparatus of the class state), law would become a fiction.
"Law is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing observation of
the norms of law" (Lenin).
The conscious will‑towards
the formulation and consolidation of production and other relationship s‑is
the will of the ruling class which finds its expression in custom, in law, in
the activity of the court and in administration. The legal superstructure
exists and functions because behind it stands an organization of the ruling
class, namely the apparatus of coercion and power in the form of the army, the
police, court bailiffs, prison guards and hangmen. This does not
"THE MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW" 291
mean that the ruling class has to
use physical force in every case. Much is achieved by simple threat, by the
knowledge of helplessness and of the futility of struggle, by economic
pressure, and finally by the fact that the working classes are in the
ideological captivity of the exploiters. It is sufficient to mention the
narcotic of the religious ideology of humility and meekness, or the
genuflection before the idol of bourgeois legality preached by the reformist.
But the ultimate argument for,
and the basis of, the legal order is always the means of physical force. Only
by depending on them could the slaveowner of antiquity or the modern capitalist
enjoy his right.
The attempts by certain bourgeois
jurists to separate law from the state, or to contrast "law" and
"force", are dictated by the attempt to hide and conceal the class
essence of law.
Often these proofs that law is
independent of the state bear a truly laughable character. Thus, for instance,
Stammler claims that he has proved this thesis relying on the fact that on a
dirigible which flies over the North Pole, i.e. outside the sphere of action of
any state power, the emergence of legal relationships is possible.
By such empty dogmatic chicanery
the scientific question of the relationship of state and law is decided. Can
one be surprised at Lenin's sharp reaction to Stammler when he says that:
"From stupid arguments, Stammler draws equally stupid conclusions."
The dependence of law on the
state, however, does not signify that the state creates the legal
superstructure by its arbitrary will. For the state itself, as Engels says, is
only a more or less complex reflection of the economic needs of the dominant
class in production.
The proletariat, having
overthrown the bourgeoisie and consolidated its dictatorship, had to create
Soviet law in conformity with the economy, in particular the existence of many
millions of small and very small peasant farms. After the victory of the
proletarian revolution the realization of socialism is not an instantaneous act
but a long process of construction under the conditions of acute class
struggle.
From the policy of limiting its
exploitative tendencies and the elimination of its front ranks, we moved to the
policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class by widespread collectivization. A
successful fulfilment of the first Five Year Plan; the creation of our own base
for the technical reconstruction of the whole national economy; the
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PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
transfer of the basic mass of the
peasantry to collectivization; these events enabled the basic task of the
second Five Year Plan to be:
the final liquidation of capitalist
elements and classes in general, the full elimination of the causes of class
differences and exploitation, the overcoming of the survivals of capitalism in
the economy and the consciousness of the people, the transformation of the
whole working population of the country into conscious and active builders of a
classless society.7
At each of these stages Soviet
law regulated and formulated production relationships differently.
Soviet law in each of the stages
was naturally different from the law of capitalist states. For law under the
proletarian dictatorship has always had the goal of protecting the interest of
"the working majority, the suppression of class elements hostile to the
proletariat, and the defence of socialist construction. Those individual Soviet
jurists who considered law as the totality of norms (i.e. externally and
formally) are not in a position to understand this. Finding identically
formulated norms in the system of bourgeois and Soviet law, these jurists began
to speak of the similarity between bourgeois and Soviet law, to search out
"general" institutions, and to trace the development of certain
"general" bases for bourgeois and Soviet law. This tendency was very
strong in the first years of NEP. The identification of Soviet with bourgeois
law derived from an understanding of NEP as a return to capitalism, which found
expression in the Marxist ranks.
If NEP, as the Zinoviev
opposition asserted at the XIVth Party Congress, is "capitalism which
holds the proletarian state on a chain", then Soviet law must be presented
as bourgeois law, in which certain limitations are introduced, to the extent in
the period of imperialism that the capitalist state also regulates and limits
the freedom of disposition of property, contractual freedom etc.
Such a distortion in the
description of NEP led directly to an alliance with bourgeois reformists in the
understanding of Soviet law.
In fact, NEP "is a special policy of the proletarian state intended to permit capitalism while the commanding heights are held by the proletarian state, intended for the struggle between the capitalist and socialist elements, intended for the growth of the role of the socialist elements at the expense of the capitalist elements, intended for the
"THE
MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW"
293
victory of the socialist elements
over the capitalist elements, intended for the elimination of classes and for
the construction of the foundation of a socialist economy."8
Soviet law as a special form of
policy followed by the proletariat and the proletarian state, was intended
precisely for the victory of socialism. As such, it is radically different from
bourgeois law despite the formal resemblance of individual statutes.
Juridicial formalism, which
conceives of nothing other than the norm and reduces law to the purely logical
operation of these norms, appears as a variety of reformism, as a Soviet
"juridical socialism". By confining themselves only to the norm and
the purely juridical (i.e. formal ideas and concepts), they ignored the socio‑economic
and political essence of the matter. As a result, these jurists arrive at the
conclusion that the transformation of property from an arbitrary and
unrestricted right into a "social function" (i.e. a tendency which is
"peculiar to the law of the advanced", that is, capitalist,
countries), finds its "fullest" expression in Soviet legislation.
Making this contention, the Jurists "forgot" such a trifle as the
October Revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It is not only important to
"read" the norm, but also to know what class, what state, and what
state apparatus is applying this norm.
6. Law and production
relationships
Production relationships form the
basis of society. It is necessary to begin with these relationships in order to
comprehend the complex picture presented by the history of mankind.
To search
for the basic characteristic of society and social relations in an area other
than production relationships means to deprive oneself of the possibility of a
scientific understanding of the laws of development of social formations.
However, it by no means follows from this that, according to Marx, only
relations of production and exchange are social relations. Such a concept is a
caricature of Marxism. The equation of social relations with production
relations in this case is understood purely mechanically. However, a number of
times Lenin noted that Marx's great service was that he did not limit himself
to the description of the economic "skeleton" of capitalist society,
but that:
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PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
in explaining
the construction and development of a definite social formation
"exclusively" by production relations, he nonetheless thoroughly and
constantly studied the superstructure corresponding to these production
relations, which clothed the skeleton with flesh and blood. The reason that Das Kapital had such enormous success
was that this book ("by a German economist") showed the capitalist
social formation as a living thing‑with its everyday aspects, with the
actual social phenomena essential to the production relations between
antagonistic classes, with the bourgeois political superstructure protecting
the domination of the capitalist class, with the bourgeois ideas of freedom,
equality etc., with bourgeois family relations.9
Stuchka looks differently at the
matter. In his opinion, Marx considered only
relations of production and exchange to be social relations. But this would
mean affirming that Marx limited himself to the "skeleton" alone, as
if having indicated the basic and eventually determinant in social life and
social relations he then passed by that which is derivative and requires
explanation. However, more than once Marx directly points out the existence of
social relationships which are not production relations but which merely derive
from them and correspond to them. Characterizing revolutionary proletarian
socialism in France in 1848, Marx wrote:
This socialism
is the proclamation of the permanence of the revolution, a proclamation of the class
dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessary transition toward the elimination of class differences
altogether, toward the elimination of all production relations upon which these
differences are based, toward the elimination of all social relationships
corresponding to these production relations, toward a revolution in the entire
world of ideas arising from these relationships.10
Nevertheless, Comrade Stuchka
firmly defends his understanding of the term "social relationships":
We proceed from
social relationships; I emphasize the word "social", for here my
critics are desperately confused. I thus selected the word "social"
and a whole chapter in my first book was dedicated to it only in the sense of
relations of production and exchange
(as Marx and every Marxist understands this).11
Proceeding from the equation of production and social relationships, Stuchka defined law as a "system (or order) of social
"THE MARXIST THEORY OF
STATE AND LAW"
295
relations corresponding to the
interests of the ruling class and protected by its organized force". In
this definition, as he himself indicated, there was room only for the law of
property and the law of obligations.
As earlier, so even now,
he wrote:
I consider basic law, law in general, to be civil law, understanding thereby the form of organization of social
relationships in the narrow and specific sense of the word (i.e. relations of
production and exchange). I consider that all the remaining areas of law are either of a subordinate or derivative
character, and that only bourgeois law (subjecting to its influence all the
remaining areas of law) created a legal state, or state law and criminal law, as
an equivalent norm for crime and punishment, not even mentioning
administrative, financial etc., and finally international law or even the law
of war.12
The positions outlined in this
excerpt contain a series of mistakes. There is no doubt that the formulation
and conformation of social relationships to the means of production is basic to
law. Proceeding from the economic basis, from different forms of exploitation,
we differentiate slaveowning, feudal and capitalist systems of law. But, in the
first place, it is 'incorrect to subsume the property relations of slaveowning
or feudal society under the concept of civil, i.e. bourgeois, law as "law
in general". In the second place, state law may not be equated with the so‑called
Rechtsstaat of the bourgeoisie. If
one takes this point of view then one must either deny the existence of a
distinctive feudal state law, or show that despite the existence of a Soviet
state we do have Soviet state law. At the same time, in other places in his
textbook, Stuchka proceeds from the existence of different class systems of
law: feudal, bourgeois, Soviet. Here he argues for a "general law"
which is equated with the civil law of bourgeois society. At the same time
state law is equated with the theory of bourgeois jurists of the so‑called
Rechtsstaat, and criminal law (i.e.
formalized class repression) with the ideology of equivalent retribution.
The basic question‑do
relationships exist that enter into the content of law, which are not, however,
relations of production and exchange?‑is avoided by Stuchka; he cites the
subsidiary, derivative etc. character of state, criminal etc. law. However, it
is clear that the
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PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
structure of family
relationships, the formalization of class domination in the state organization,
the formalization of class repression, all this is embraced by the different
branches of law (family, state and criminal).
The content of this legal intermediary
is the social and political relationships which, in the final analysis, are
reducible to the same production relationships, but by no means correspond to
them.
Stuchka's subsequent definition
of law suffers from the shortcoming that he limits the area of law merely to
production relations. This definition also introduces confusion because it
confuses law with economics. Proceeding from the indisputable position that not
all which is stated in a norm (in a statute) is realized in fact, Stuchka has made
the incorrect conclusion that law is indeed the very relation of production and
exchange. Stuchka has therefore declared Marx's teaching‑‑‑that
law is an ideological superstructure to be a tribute to the “volitional theory”
of the old jurists.
Whoever has
mastered the form of theorizing of Marx and Engels that capital, money etc.,
are social relationships, will at once understand my views on the system of
social relationships. This will be hardest of all for a jurist for whom law is
a purely technical and artificial superstructure, strangely enough, holding
sway over its base. Even Karl Marx gave a small tribute to this concept when he
spoke of law as an ideological superstructure. But Marx was raised on Roman law
and in general on the juridic concepts of the 1830s, considering it an
expression “of the general will”
(Volkswillen), and he was [therefore] accustomed to its terminology.13
In conducting the struggle with
the narrow, formal legal concept of law as a totality of norms, we cannot deny
the real existence of the legal superstructure, i.e. of relationships
formulated and consolidated by the conscious will of the ruling class. Only to
the extent that this process of formulation and consolidation proceeds may one
speak of law. To study law only as totality of norms means to follow the path
of formalism and dogmatism. But to study law only as relationships of
production and exchange means to confuse law with economics, to retard the
understanding of the reciprocal action of the legal superstructure and its
active role. At the same time as production relations are imposed on people
regardless of their will, legal relationships are impossible without the
participation of the conscious will of the ruling class. The teaching of Marx,
Engels and Lenin
“THE
MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW”
297
on law as an ideological
superstructure needs no correction. Law cannot be understood unless we consider
it as the basic form of the policy of the ruling class. In the later editions
of The Revolutionary Role of State and
Law, Stuchka supplemented his definition of law, developing the theory of
the so‑called three forms of law. The first, or in Stuchka's words, the
concrete form of law, is a legal relationship which corresponds to a production
relationship and, with it, constitutes the base [or] reality. On the contrary,
the two “abstract” forms‑statute and legal ideology as Stuchka expresses
it‑are the essence of “the manifest superstructure”.14
This approach is also incorrect
and non‑dialectical. A legal relationship is a form of production relations because the active influence of the
class organization of the ruling class transforms the factual relationship into
a legal one, gives it a new quality, and thus includes it in the construction
of the legal superstructure. This result is not achieved automatically by laissez faire, in the same way that
prices are established under free competition. Even in the case of so‑called
customary law, the ruling class‑through its special agencies, through the
courts‑ensures that the relations correspond to obligatory rules. This is
all the more true with respect to the legislative creation of norms.
In particular, the revolutionary
role of the legal superstructure is enormous in the transitional period when
its active and conscious influence upon production and other social
relationships assumes exceptional significance. Soviet law, like any law, will
cease to exist if it is not applied. But the application of law is an active
and conscious process by which the state apparatus plays the decisive role as a
powerful weapon of class struggle. Would it be possible, for instance, to speak
of Soviet law which did not somehow recognize the Soviet state, the Soviet
agencies of power, Soviet courts etc.? It is clear that while an individual
statute may be removed from the real legal order and remain a pious wish,
concrete legal relationships may never be removed from the consciousness and
will of the ruling class, may never be transferred from the superstructure to
the base without parting from the heart of historical materialism.
From all that has been said above it is clear that the definition of law as a formal intermediary of the economy must be recognized as insufficient and incorrect. The different branches of law are connected differently with the economy; this must never be forgotten, and this is not expressed in the above‑mentioned definition. On the
298
“PASHUKANIS SELECTED WRITINGS”
contrary it can lead to the
notion that the area of law is limited to property relationships alone. Then
all the other types of law must be declared non‑existent. Stuchka would,
in fact, have had to reach this conclusion. But he speaks of criminal and state
law, not entirely consistently with his other position, i.e. by referring to
them he recognizes their existence.
There is no doubt that economics
is at the base of political, familial and all other social relations.15
But the election law of any capitalist country facilitates the economy
differently from civil law or the Criminal Code. To try to force all the varied
branches of law into one formula is to give preference to empty abstractions.
Law as a
formal facilitation of social and (primarily) production relationships must be
studied concretely. This study may not be replaced with ready citations from
Hegel with respect to the “transformation of form into substance and substance
into form”. The dialectical method, which teaches that every truth is concrete,
becomes in this instance its own opposite‑dead scholasticism, barren
arguments and disputes on the theme that “form is not without content and
content not without form”. However, the matter really consists of showing the
role and character of law as form in specific and concrete branches of law and
concrete historial conditions with a relation to concrete content. Only in this
manner can the real relation of form and content be established and can one be
convinced that it is far from identical in different instances. Often legal
form hides economic content directly contrary to it (thus in the period when we
conducted the policy of restricting the kulak, the leasing of a horse or tools
by a poor peasant to a rich one often hid the sale of the first's labour power
to the second). A transaction of purchase and sale can hide the most diverse
economic content. The same could be said about any other relationships within
the so‑called law of obligations. Here we meet with a phenomenon whose
form is relatively indifferent to its content, but it I's improper to conclude
from this that in civil law we have a “faceless instrumentality” which must be
used independently of the economic class content of the relationships which it
implements. On the contrary, the significance of form is recognized only
through content, through economics, through politics and through relations
between classes.
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
“THE MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW” 299
Therefore, it is a flagrant error
to equate law as an historical phenomenon‑including various class systems‑with
the totality of those features of bourgeois law that derive from the exchange
of commodities of equal value.16 Such a concept of law minimizes the
class coercion essential to bourgeois law, essential to feudal law and to all
law. Law in bourgeois society serves not only the facilitation of exchange, but
simultaneously and mainly supports and consolidates the unequal distribution of
property and the monopoly of the capitalist in production. Bourgeois property
is not exhausted by the relationships between commodity owners. These [owners‑eds.] are tied by exchange and the
contractual relationship is the form of this exchange. Bourgeois property
includes in a masked form the same relationship of domination and subordination
which, in feudal property, appears chiefly as personal subordination.
This methodological mistake was
related to the relegation of the class repressive role of law, and to an
incorrect presentation of the relation between state and law (the state as the
guarantor of exchange), and to mistakes in questions of morality (the denial of
proletarian morality) and in questions of criminal law.
The attempts to distinguish
between formal characteristics and abstract legal concepts expressing the
relationship between commodity owners, and to proclaim this “form of law” as
the subject of the Marxist theory of law, should be recognized as grossly
mistaken. This paves the way to the separation of form and content, and diverts
theory from the task of socialist construction to scholasticism.
The immediate relation, in
practice, between the proletariat (as the ruling class) and law (as a weapon
with whose help the tasks of class struggle at any given stage are decided) is
in this case replaced by the abstract theoretical denial of the “narrow
horizons of bourgeois law” in the name of developed communism.
From this perspective Soviet law
is seen exclusively as a legacy of class society imposed on the proletariat and
which haunts it until the second phase of communism. The abstract theoretical
exposure of “bourgeois” law hides the task of the concrete analysis of Soviet
law at different stages of the revolution. Accordingly, it gives insufficient
concrete indication of the practical struggle against bourgeois influences, and
against opportunist distortions of the Party's general line on Soviet law.
300 PASHUKANIS:
SELECTED WRITINGS
The theoretical mistake of
exaggerating the importance of market relations can be the basis for right
opportunist conclusions about always preserving the bourgeois forms of law
corresponding to private exchange. Conversely, to ignore exchange in
considering the problems of Soviet law leads to “leftist” positions about the
withering away of law which is now in the process of socializing the means of
production, and about the withering away of economic accountability and the
principle of payment according to labour, i.e. to the defence of the
elimination of individual responsibility and wage egalitarianism.
Notes
1. K. Marx,
“Letter to Weydemeyer” (March 5, 1852), MES
W, vol. 1, p. 528.
2. V. I.
Lenin, “The Economic Content of Narodnism” (1895), LCW, vol. 1, p. 419.
3. See
Kellreiter's article “The State”, in D. Elster et al. (eds), Handwörterbuch
der Rechtswissenschaft (1923), Fischer, Jena, p. 599.
4. V. I.
Lenin, “A Contribution to the History of the Question of Dictatorship” (1920), LCW, vol. 31, p. 353.
5. F.
Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of
Classical German Philosophy (1888), MESW,
vol. 3, p. 371.
6. ibid. p. 371.
7. From a
resolution of the XVIIth Party Conference (1932).
8. J. Stalin, “The Fourteenth Congress of the
CPSU” (1925), Stalin: Works, Foreign
Languages Publishing House, Moscow (1954), vol. 7, p. 374.
9. V. I.
Lenin, “What the “Friends of the People”
Are (1894), LCW, vol. 1, pp. 141‑42.
10. K. Marx,
“The Class Struggles in France” (1850), MESW,
vol. 1, p. 282.
11. P. 1.
Stuchka, A Course on Soviet Civil Law (1927),
Communist Academy, vol. 1, p. 13.
12. ibid. pp. 78‑79.
13. P. 1.
Stuchka, The Revolutionary Role of Law
and State (1921), Moscow, p. 15.
14. ibid. (3rd edition); and P. 1. Stuchka's
article “Law” in Encyclopaedia of State
and Law, (1925‑1927), vol. 3, pp. 415‑430.
15. “The state
and law are determined by economic relations. Of course, the same must be said
of civil law whose role in essence consists of the legislative clarification of
the existing economic relations between individuals which are normal in the
given circumstances.” F. Engels, Ludwig
Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1888), op.
“THE MARXIST THEORY OF STATE AND LAW” 301
cit.
p. 370.
16. This
erroneous conception was developed in E. B. Pashukanis, The General Theory of Law and Marxism (1927), 3rd edition. See also
E. B. Pashukanis, “The Situation on the Legal Theory Front”, Soviet State and the Revolution of Law (1930),
no. 11‑12; and For a Marxist‑Leninist
Theory of State and Law (1931) Moscow, where a critique of this mistaken
conception is given.