A Course on Soviet Economic Law
CHAPTER
1
The Subject and Method of Soviet Economic
Law
1. Introductory remarks
The October Revolution initiated
a period of the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into
communist. The state of this period is the revolutionary dictatorship of the
proletariat. The proletarian dictatorship is called upon to perform a task of
exclusive complexity and difficulty, making unprecedented changes in the
innermost bases of human life. The period of the dictatorship of the
proletariat is not a passing episode, not an accidental, and not a brief period
in the development of modern society.
We say to the workers
[wrote Marx]
you must survive 15, 20, 50 years of civil war and international struggles not only to change existing relationships, but also to change yourselves and to become capable of political rule.1
[This is so because]
it is not a matter of transforming
private property but of eliminating it, not of concealing class contradictions,
but of eliminating classes, not of improving existing society, but of founding
a new one.2
The doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat was created and developed by the greatest theorists of scientific communism: Marx,
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305
Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Marx
and Engels showed the necessity and inevitability of the revolutionary
overthrow of bourgeois authority and the establishment of the proletarian
dictatorship as the political form of the transitional period from capitalism
to communism. Lenin re‑established and developed Marx's doctrine on the
dictatorship of the proletariat which had been vulgarized and distorted by the
theorists of the Second International. He also discovered the state form of the
proletarian dictatorship which corresponded to the age of imperialism and
proletarian revolution (the Soviets), laid the bases of the doctrine of
building socialism in one country, and justified the practice of state and
economic construction of the proletarian dictatorship in the conditions of
capitalist encirclement. This is a continuation of the proletarian class
struggle in new forms. Stalin enriched the heritage of Marxism‑Leninism
with the analysis and development of the basic questions of the theory and
practice of the building of socialism. He expanded the Marxist‑Leninist
doctrine on the dictatorship of the proletariat into the grandiose doctrine of
the building of socialism in one country. This occurred under the conditions of
the delay of the world revolution and of intensified internal class struggle
against the capitalist classes and their ideological arms‑bearers‑bourgeois
restorationist theorists, right and left opportunists, and counterrevolutionary
Trotskyites.
Stalin summed up the Marxist‑Leninist
doctrine on the dictator
ship
of the proletariat in the following manner. The proletarian
dictatorship includes “three aspects”, three “characteristic features”
1.
The utilization of the power of the proletariat for the suppression of the exploiters, for the defence of the country, for the consolidation of the ties with the
proletarians of other lands, and for the development and the victory of the
revolution in all countries.
2. The
utilization of the power of the proletariat in order to detach the toiling and
exploited masses once and for all from the bourgeoisie, to consolidate the
alliance of the proletariat with these masses, to enlist these masses for the
work of socialist construction, and to ensure the state leadership of these
masses by the proletariat.
3. The utilization of the power of the proletariat for the organization of socialism, for the abolition of classes, and for the transition to a society without classes, to a society without a state.3
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The proletariat organized as the
ruling class solves the world‑historic tasks noted here in the process of
intensified class struggle. The forms of this struggle are multiple. The
proletariat organizes the defence of the first state of the working people
against intervention and external war; it suppresses the resistance of the
capitalist elements within the country, reconstructs the small individual
peasant agriculture and remakes the numerous masses of small owners into active
builders of socialism. The proletariat uses, in the service of this new
society, those cadres of old bourgeois specialists who were ,the former
assistants of the bourgeoisie. Finally, in the process of intensified struggle
with petit bourgeois influences, customs and survivals of the old society, it
re‑educates itself as well. The inculcation of socialist discipline is
one of the most important new forms of the class struggle of the proletariat.
Soviet law, and in particular
Soviet economic law, is one of the powerful weapons of the proletarian class
struggle. Soviet law is a special form of proletarian policy. Soviet economic
law itself is a special (specific) form
of the policy of the proletarian state in the area of the organization of
socialist production and Soviet commerce. This is its significance and role
in the system of the proletarian dictatorship. All three aspects of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, and all the forms of its class struggle, find
their expression in Soviet economic law. Below we will consider the concept of
Soviet economic law from three different sides:
(a) Soviet economic law, we
affirm, is a form of the policy of the proletarian state in the area of the
organization of socialist production and Soviet commerce.
(b) This definition is, however,
insufficient. It still does not reveal the specific nature of Soviet economic
law as a special form of proletarian
policy. Its specific nature is determined by the concept of revolutionary legality. The application
of the bases of revolutionary legality to the organizations of socialist
production and Soviet commerce determines the concept of Soviet economic law in the
broad sense.
(c) We limit our area still
further, referring to the property
relations of socialist society as the direct subject of Soviet economic law
in the narrow sense of the term. The following exposition is devoted to Soviet
economic law (in this last sense).
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307
2. Soviet economic law as the
class law of the proletariat (as a special form of the policy of the
proletarian state in the area of the organization of socialist production and
Soviet commerce)
(i) Economics and policy
All the objective possibilities
for the building of socialism exist in the proletarian state. To the extent
that the country of socialism has inexhaustible natural riches, to the extent
that power is at hand‑power which has the strength and desire to apply
these resources for the use of the people (the dictatorship of the
proletariat); to the extent that the system of the economy is planned, free
from the accursed ills of capitalism; to the extent that the policy of the
state is directed by the only consistently revolutionary Bolshevik part‑to
this extent, there are no strongholds which the Bolsheviks cannot conquer. It
is all a matter of knowing how to manage production. Everything depends on the
quality of economic management, on the correct organization of the economy, and
on the mastery of technology. Politics cannot take priority over economics.
Policy is expressed in the general guidance of the Party, in its decisions, and
in such documents as the Six Conditions
of Comrade Stalin. These “determine the regularities of our economic
development and our victorious approach to socialism.”4
What explains this new,
immeasurably expanding rule of the political superstructure? It is explained by
the new combination of productive forces and productive relations under the
conditions of the proletarian dictatorship. The only “truly revolutionary
class” is the “proletariat”. On the other hand, “of all the means of production
the most productive force is the revolutionary class itself'.5 In a
state in which power is in the hands of the working class, “the most productive
force” is the bearer of state authority and the owner of the basic means of
production. This is the source and explanation of the special role and
exceptional significance of the political superstructure during the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
These facts are very closely
related to Soviet economic law. Soviet economic law has great significance as
one of the factors of the revolutionary socialist transformation of social
relationships. After the proletarian revolution the greatest task is organizational and, particularly, the
task of implementing the “extraordinarily complex and fine network of new
organizational relations encompassing the
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planned production and
distribution of the products necessary for the existence of tens of millions of
people”.6 The organizational question takes on a most decisive
significance in the conditions of the second Five Year Plan. “Now, when the
general line of the Party has won”, states the decisions of the XVIIth Party
Congress, “when the policy of the Party has been tested in practice, in the
experience not only of the members of the Party but also of millions of workers
and working peasants, the task of raising organizational work to the level of
political leadership stands out.” The organizational question, remaining
subordinate to the question of policy, nevertheless has exceptional
significance in this light.
Soviet economic law is a system
of measures necessary for the solution of the most important organizational
problems of the building of a socialist economy. All its principles and
institutions uch as plan discipline, one‑man management, economic
accountability, contract discipline etc.‑appear, upon closer examination,
to be important levers of the organization of socialist production and Soviet
commerce. The plan is the law of the Soviet state. Fulfilment of the plan is
the sacred obligation of every economic agency, of every manager, of every
working person. The obligatory nature of acts of socialist planning (plan
discipline) is supported by various sanctions, in particular by the threat of
criminal repression. The plan as law, and the court as the guardian of the plan
and law, are thus two of the most important levers in socialist organization.
One‑man management is the most important principle of the organization of
socialist production. The socialist economy, based upon a high‑level
technology, requires the strictest unity of will, unquestioning subordination
to the will of the Soviet manager. The consistent application of one‑man
management is confirmed by a series of Party decisions and legislative acts;
the violation of one‑man management is considered a violation of the laws
of the Soviet Union, as a distortion of the Party line in questions of economic
construction. Economic accountability is the basis of economic activity in all
sectors of the national economy. Finally, the Soviet economic contract‑the
“best means of combining the economic plan and the principles of economic
accountability”, one of the elements of unified Bolshevik policy‑plays a
huge role in the task of implementing a very fine network of organizational
relations in the socialist economy. The consistent implementation of economic
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309
accountability, and the strengthening
of contractual discipline, are the most important instruments for the expansion
of Soviet commerce‑of “commerce without profiteers, small and large”.7
A quick look at the history of
Soviet economic construction also reveals the role of Soviet economic law as a
form of the policy of the proletarian state.
In the first years of the
building of socialism, one of the first tasks of the victorious proletariat
consisted in the expropriation of the basic economic commanding heights from
the bourgeoisie. The nationalization of industry, transport, banks and land
constitutes the basic content of Soviet economic legislation in the first years
of Soviet power. The consistent execution of the legislation on nationalization
(i.e. the actual possession by the proletariat of the factories, plants,
transportation and credit institutions expropriated from the bourgeoisie) is
one of the most remarkable events in the history of socialist construction.
Simultaneously, this is one of the most interesting events of the history of
Soviet economic law.
In 1921‑1922, the Party
manned the helm of economic policy. The union of the working class and the
peasantry was transferred to the rails of commerce. In connection with this the
market was re‑established, and capitalist elements were permitted (with
essential limitations). This policy found its expression in a series of major
legislative acts. A basic document, and characteristic for the years of NEP, is
the Civil Code of the RSFSR (1922).
The basic ideas of the economic policy of the first years of NEP are imprinted
in it. Here is the commanding position of socialist property (Arts. 21 and 22
of the Civil Code), the limited
legalization of private ownership and civil commerce (Arts. 1, 4, 5, 54, 55, 58
of the Civil Code etc.), the elements of state capitalism (Arts. 55, 153, 154,
162 of the Civil Code) and the
priority rights of the working people and the state (Art. 5 of the Introductory Act, Art. 30 of the Civil Code).
Finally, both the economic legislation now in force, and the practice of its realization, have played a most important role in the conduct of the policy of expanded socialist offensive, of uprooting capitalism and of building a classless society. “The plan, and contracts, and economic accountability‑all these are elements of a unified Bolshevik economic policy”, stated Comrade Molotov
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PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
at the January Plenum of the
Central Committee and the Central Auditing Commission (1933).
The plan, contract and economic
accountability on the one hand and social (socialist) property as their basis
on the others, are simultaneously the most important categories of Soviet
economic law. The concrete application of these principles, and their
disclosure in the regulation of different branches of Soviet economy,
constitutes the content of the system of economic law of the U.S.S.R.
The role of Soviet economic law
as a form of the policy of the proletarian state is revealed exceptionally
clearly in judicial and arbitration practice. In 1925, for instance, the
Supreme Court of the RSFSR established the rule of the so‑called
“presumption of state ownership”, i.e. that in case of a dispute between state
agencies and private persons on the right of ownership to property, such
property is always presumed to belong to the state and the burden of proving
the opposite always rests upon the private party. This rule was widely used in
the conduct of the policy of limiting and eliminating capitalist elements.
Another example is provided by the State
Arbitration of the U.S.S.R. (1932) which established the principle of
strictly limited interpretation of instances of so‑called “impossibility
of performance”, i.e. of absolving contractual liability. State Arbitration recognized that an accident 'in production,
shortages of material supplies and a series of other circumstances, were not a
basis for absolving responsibility. This rule had great significance for
supporting contractual discipline between economic agencies, and therefore for
the fulfilment of the national economic plan. It was subsequently sanctioned in
legislation.
(ii) Soviet economic law‑the class law of the proletariat
Thus, Soviet economic law is a
special form of the policy of the proletarian state in the organization of
socialist production and Soviet commerce.
Policy is a relation between
classes. As a form of the policy of the proletarian state, Soviet economic law
expresses the will (or interests) of the ruling class organized in the state‑the
will of the proletariat. Bourgeois law is supported by all the power of the
bourgeois state. Soviet economic law is protected by all the power of the
proletarian dictatorship. Soviet economic law
is class law, just as bourgeois law is also, just as is law in general. But
it does not reflect
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311
the interests of an exploiting
class and it does not strengthen and perpetuate exploitative relationships. On
the contrary, being a weapon in the hands of the last of the exploited classes,
whose emancipation means the “abolition of all
inhuman living conditions of modern society” (i.e. of capitalist society),8
Soviet economic law is used in the struggle for classless socialist society,
where there will be no exploitation of man by man.
Socialism may be constructed only
in the process of intensified class struggle. “The abolition of classes will
not be achieved by way of eliminating the class struggle, but by its
intensification. “ The suppression of the resistance of the expropriated
exploiters, the leadership of millions of the masses of the working people, positive
creation in the building of the socialist economy‑these are the different
tasks of the proletarian dictatorship and at the same time the various forms of
the class struggle of the proletariat. They determine the content of the
institutions of Soviet economic law. Relationships connected with the execution
of the laws on nationalization, on collectivization, on the liquidation of the
kulaks as a class on the basis of total collectivization (the Law of February
1, 1930, “On Measures for the Strengthening of the Socialist Reconstruction of
the Agricultural Economy in the Regions of Total Collectivization and on the
Struggle with Kulakism”), on the expansion of Soviet commerce “without
profiteers‑small or large”‑all this is not only the new Soviet
economy, but simultaneously also the new Soviet economic legal relationships.
Morever, during the whole course of its development, beginning with the October
Revolution, the class nature of Soviet economic law has been unitary. This is the law of the
proletariat building socialism.
The thesis of the class (and
proletarian) nature of Soviet economic law has been repeatedly subjected to
dispute. In 1925 Reisner came out with an affirmation of the mosaic, patchwork
nature of Soviet law from the perspective of its class content. In Soviet law,
in Reisner's opinion, there are different “pieces”: both classical proletarian
law (the Code of Laws on Labour, the Decree on Trusts), petit bourgeois law
(the Land Code) and bourgeois law
(the Civil Code). Each of the three
“pieces” reflects the will and interests of one of the three social classes of
the transitional period: the working class, the petit bourgeoisie, and the NEP‑men
capitalists.
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In 1928, Professor Shreter
characterized Soviet economic law as a “faceless instrumentality”. In Soviet
economic law there is, purportedly, no “internal social orientation”.10
In 1930, Stal'gevich found in
Soviet law certain “reactionary possibilities” which were the reflection of the
interests of classes hostile to the proletariat.11
Finally, in 1931, Liberman
presented a theory which ignored the class differences between Soviet and
bourgeois law. According to Liberman, every civil law, and thus Soviet civil
law, has as its basis the law of private property. Therefore, the abolition of
kulak property and the process of the liquidation of the kulaks as a class,
were connected (for Liberman) with the proposal of the abolition (liquidation)
of Soviet civil law, a proposal that was clearly Trotskyite in its essence. It
ignored all differences between kulak private ownership of the means of
production and the private property of the medium‑scale peasant.12
These “theories” slander Soviet
law. Soviet law is a form of the policy of the proletarian dictatorship. This
policy is unified in its class proletarian essence. The fact that the
proletariat, at different stages of socialist construction, structures its
relations differently with respect to different classes (with respect to the
rural bourgeoisie: for instance, at one stage a policy of tolerance and
limitation; at another, liquidation of the kulaks as a class), does not shake
the unity of the class essence of working class policy. The methods and
concrete ways change, but the final goals and tasks do not change. Accordingly,
the nature of those measures, through which those goals are realized directly
or indirectly, does not change. Likewise, Soviet economic law, as one of the
forms of proletarian policy, remains unitary in its class proletarian nature at
all stages of its development.
3. Socialist (revolutionary)
legality and Soviet economic law
(i) The concept of socialist (revolutionary) legality
The proletarian dictatorship builds the socialist economy, organizes the process of expanded socialist reproduction by various ways, method and means. Not all of them are law. We speak of law only as the organized and coercive consolidation of a certain structure of social relationships which correspond to the interests of the ruling class.
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313
Equally, Soviet economic law is
not all and not every proletarian policy in the area of the organization of
socialist production and Soviet commerce. It is not accidental that we define
Soviet economic law as a special form of the policy of the proletarian state.
The special (specific) nature of the policy of the proletarian state in the
area of the organization of socialist production and Soviet commerce are most
clearly revealed through the concept of socialist (revolutionary) legality.
Socialist (revolutionary)
legality has enormous significance in the practice of the construction of
socialism and of Soviet state administration. The violation of revolutionary
legality a disruption of the proletarian state, and an aid to the class enemy.
“The least illegality”, wrote Lenin, “and the least violation of the Soviet
order, is a breach which the opponents of the working people will, immediately
use.”13 In 1922, in a letter to Stalin, Lenin characterized revolutionary
legality in the following manner:
Legality cannot be one thing for
Kaluga and another for Kazan, but must be uniform for all Russia and uniform
for the entire federation of Soviet Republics.”14 As the central task of the
new agency of Soviet authority created in 1922, the procuracy, Lenin stated:
“The procurator has the right and duty to do only one thing: to pursue the
establishment of a truly uniform concept of legality in the entire Republic,
despite any local differences and influences whatsoever . . ..”15
Revolutionary
legality signifies uniformity in the application of the policy of the Party and
government, and undeviating observance of the decrees and prescriptions of the
agencies of the proletarian dictatorship in the entire country. There must not
be arbitrariness and wilfulness in the understanding and execution of the
directives of the higher agencies of the proletarian dictatorship. Local
initiative, independence of the lower state, social and economic agencies of
the proletarian dictatorship, must develop within the bounds of general Soviet
legislation. Revolutionary legality depends on exact and clear instructions
from central agencies: directives, decrees, laws, i.e. the publication of
general norms that are obligatory for all the local agencies and citizens. A
special state apparatus is created to defend revolutionary legality. This
guarantees undeviating observance of the bases of revolutionary legality: the
procuracy, the court, arbitration. Revolutionary legality finally signifies the
uniform
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application of the directives of the Party and the government by the
masses of working people themselves (state discipline) and by their mass
social organizations.
In The German Ideology Marx defines the concept of bourgeois legality:
law is the will of the ruling class. The content of a law “is always given by
the relations of this class, as private and criminal law especially clearly
show”. In law, the will of the ruling class obtains "general expression in
the form of the will of the state”. In the law the ruling classes apply their
own will, but at the same time they do this in a form “independent of the
personal will of any one separate individual among them”.16
Bourgeois legality is directed,
naturally, at the defence of the basic conditions of the capitalist mode of
production, at the protection and strengthening of bourgeois private property,
and the guaranteeing of the rights of “man and citizen”, i.e. the right of the
owner and the exploiter to suppress the revolutionary actions of the exploited
classes.
In contradistinction to bourgeois
legality, socialist (revolutionary) legality expresses the will of the last of
the exploited classes, which has taken power‑the will of the proletariat.
The laws of the proletarian dictatorship are directed at the liquidation and
extinction of exploitative relationships. In the hands of the proletariat they
are a weapon for building a classless socialist society. They strengthen not
private, but public (socialist) property, they protect and preserve the rights
of the working people as citizens of the socialist state. “Regularity and
order”, states Marx, “are the form of social consolidation of the given mode of
production and therefore its relative emancipation from simple chance and
simple arbitrariness.” Socialist 44 regularity and order”, i.e. socialist
(revolutionary) legality, is a “form of social consolidation” of the socialist
mode of production. In other words, revolutionary legality has a tremendous
significance as a factor strengthening new socialist production relations, the
new socialist order.
It would be incorrect to think
that revolutionary legality is characteristic only of certain stages of the
development of the proletarian dictatorship (in particular the first stage of
NEP), or that revolutionary legality is peculiar only to the period of the
toleration and limitation of capitalist elements. This is the doctrine of
bourgeois jurist restorationists, the choir of the capitalist restoration. For
them,
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315
revolutionary legality was a
synonym for the policy of tolerating capitalist elements. Moreover, in a
bourgeois‑restorationist spirit, they distorted the purposes of this
policy. Emphasizing the significance of revolutionary legality in 1921‑1922,
they interpreted it as the regression of Soviet Russia, as progress towards ordinary
bourgeois social and legal order.
The meaning of this perspective
was found in the proof of the purported defeat of the Bolsheviks. For the old‑school
jurists (the group of bourgeois professors from the journal Law and Life), revolutionary legality was
“legally unthinkable”; the policy calculated to strengthen revolutionary
legality was a policy of strengthening legality “in general”, in other words,
bourgeois legality.
In fact, the concept of
revolutionary legality was not limited to the first years of NEP. Revolutionary
legality is neither a synonym for permitting capitalist elements nor, of
course, for the restoration of capitalism. Revolutionary legality keeps its
significance for all stages of development of the proletarian dictatorship and
for all forms of the class struggle at each of these stages. Revolutionary
legality was necessary for the proletariat in the years of Civil War, in the
first years of NEP, in the years of elimination of the survivals of War
Communism in the countryside (1925‑the XIVth Party Congress), and even
now, in the period when the foundation of the socialist economy has been built,
and the principles of socialism have been finally embedded in the economy of
the country.
At the height of the civil war,
on December 6, 1918, the VIth All‑Russian Congress of Soviets adopted a
special decree “On the Observance of the Laws” (Collection of Legislation, 1918, no. 90, item 908). The Congress
asked “all citizens of the republic, all agencies and all officials of Soviet
power, strictly to observe the RSFSR laws, decrees, statutes and orders issued
and published by central authority”. Strict legality was necessary for the
conduct of Civil War. The proletariat used revolutionary legality as one of the
weapons in the most acute form of class struggle.
In December 1921,
formulating the bases of the NEP, the IXth Congress of Soviets, in the
resolution on the Cheka, emphasized the necessity of strengthening the bases of
revolutionary legality. In the resolution on economic work, the Congress of Soviets demanded more energy
from the People's Commissariat of Justice in two respects:
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In the first
place, the people's courts of the Republic must strictly monitor the activity
of private commerce and entrepreneurs, not allowing the least restraint of
their activity, but at the same time strictly punishing the least attempts to
depart from the undeviating observance of the laws of the Republic. They must
raise the broad masses of workers and peasants to independence, and ensure
their swift and effective participation in the work of supervising the
observance of legality; in the second place, people's courts must pay more
attention to the judicial prosecution of bureaucratism, red tape and economic
disorganization (Collection of
Legislation, 1922, no. 4, item 30, para. 7, item 42).
The Congress emphasized the
necessity of the prompt enactment of major legislative work on the preparation
of a series of compilations of laws and codes. This work was conducted during
1922 (the Criminal, Civil, Land and Labour Codes).
In 1925, the XIVth Party Congress
recognized “that the interests of strengthening the proletarian state, and the
further growth of confidence in it on the part of the broad masses of the
peasantry‑in connection with the Party policy currently being
conductedrequire the maximum strengthening of revolutionary legality,
particularly in the lower agencies of authority.” In 1927‑1930, the Party
and the working class applied Soviet laws for the struggle against the kulaks,
who had sabotaged the state planned measures on agricultural procurement, on
taxes and, on the socialist reconstruction of agriculture.
Finally, at the new stage, when
the question of “who‑whom” was already decided in full favour of
socialism in both the town and the countryside, when on the base of the
successful fulfilment of the First Five Year Plan, an advanced technical base
had been created for the socialist reconstruction of the whole national
economy, the Party again clarified the question of revolutionary legality.
In the Decree of the Central
Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars (June 25, 1932), it
was emphasized that revolutionary legality was “one of the most important means
of strengthening the proletarian dictatorship, of protecting the interests of
the workers and of the working peasants, and of combatting the class enemies of
the working people (the kulaks, middlemen, blackmarketeers, bourgeois wreckers
and their counter‑revolutionary political agents).” Therefore the Party
proposed to all Party organi-
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zations; to provide the court and
the procuracy with all possible aid and support in the work of strengthening
revolutionary legality and consistently executing the Party directive that
Communists be strictly accountable for the slightest violation of the laws.
On July 20, 1933, the all‑union
procuracy was formed. This was for the purpose of strengthening socialist
legality and the proper protection of public property in the U.S.S.R. from
encroachments on the Party by anti‑social elements.
At the XVIlth Party Congress,
Comrade Stalin stigmatized Soviet personages” or violators of Soviet laws.
These people, on
account of their past services, have become “personages”. They consider that
Party and Soviet laws are not written for them, but for fools. These are the
same people who do not consider it their duty to carry out the decisions of the
Party and the government. They destroy the bases of Party and state discipline.
What do they hope to achieve in violating Party and state laws? They hope that
Soviet power will decide not to touch them because of their former services.
These conceited personages think that they are irreplaceable and that they can
violate the decisions of leading agencies without punishment. What should be
done with such people? They should be removed from leading posts without
hesitation and without consideration of their past services. They should be
replaced and demoted and this should be published in the press. This is
necessary in order to destroy their arrogance and to put them in their place.
This is necessary to strengthen Party and Soviet discipline in all our work.17
The creation of the People's
Commissariat of Internal Affairs has tremendous significance for the
strengthening of the bases of revolutionary legality in all areas of Soviet
construction. The main tasks of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs
consists of protecting revolutionary order, state security and public
(socialist) property.
Of course the content of
revolutionary legality has now (at the new stage) essentially changed. But it
still acts as a powerful working class weapon for uprooting capitalism and
building a socialist society. The new content of revolutionary legality at the
present stage was exhaustively characterized in the report by Comrade Stalin at
the January Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Auditing Committee
in 1933:
Revolutionary
legality of the first period of NEP ... was directed mainly against the
extremes of War Communism and
318 PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
“illegal”
confiscations and requisitions. It guaranteed the private homeowner, farmer and
capitalist the preservation of their property on the condition of their strict
observance of Soviet laws. The situation is entirely different with respect to
revolutionary legality in our time. Revolutionary legality of our time directs
its cutting edge not against the extremes of War Communism, which have long
since ceased to exist, but against thieves and wreckers in the public economy,
against hooligans and plunderers of public property. The basic concern of
revolutionary legality in our time consists only in the protection of public
property.18
The Party has repeatedly needed
to defend the correct concept of revolutionary legality from attacks,
onslaughts and distortions by a variety of anti‑Party tendencies and
movements. Attempts have been made to contrast revolutionary (or economic)
expediency. In this instance revolutionary legality was reduced to the
“protection of the personal and property rights of citizens of the U. S. S. R.
“ and was used in the struggle against the Party line, directed originally at
the limitation and then at the liquidation of capitalist elements. Purportedly relying
upon revolutionary legality, on the necessity of the strict observance of
Soviet laws and decrees, the right opportunists opposed the measures of the
Soviet state for mass confiscation of property from the kulaks in connection
with all‑out collectivization. The erroneousness of this point of view is
obvious. The coercion (unlimited by law) against exploiters is written in the
Soviet Constitution. On the other hand, even the application of the sharpest
measures of struggle against the exploiting and parasitical elements does not
eliminate the necessity of struggle with those who apply the measures
incorrectly, distorting the policy of the Party and Soviet authority or allow
abuses of it. It was so clear to Lenin that Soviet legality could be nothing other
than revolutionary that in the above cited letter, to Comrade Stalin, he spoke
simply of legality.19
The right opportunist concept of
revolutionary legality‑a concept which merges with the liberal bourgeois
concept‑is a distortion of the question of revolutionary legality. Other
distortions are ignorant, naive and careless attitudes towards revolutionary
legality. In practice these degenerate into naked bureaucratism, arbitrariness,
wilfulness, ignoring the rights of the working people as citizens of the Soviet
Union. The Party also conducts an implacable struggle
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with the “left” deviation at the
basis of which lies the same contrast between law and revolution, and between
legality and expediency.
(ii) Soviet economic law as the realization of the principles of
revolutionary legality in the area of the organization of socialist production
and Soviet commerce
A constituent part (one of the
most important parts) of all revolutionary legislation of the first proletarian
state in the world is economic legislation. Soviet economic legislation is
brought to life under the guidance of the Party by the state (Soviet)
apparatus, Soviet economic organizations, by the whole mass of working people
and by individual citizens of the Soviet Union. Special agencies of state
authority protect revolutionary legality in this area: the procuracy, court,
agencies of state and departmental arbitration.
From this viewpoint, all Soviet
economic law can and must be understood as the application of the principles of revolutionary legality to the
organization of socialist production and Soviet commerce. One of the most
important institutions of Soviet economic law‑‑contractual
discipline‑is nothing other than the realization of the principles of
revolutionary legality in the mutual relations of economic agencies and other
participants in economic commerce in the U.S.S.R. Revolutionary legality, as
the “iron discipline of the Party and the state”, is the organizational basis
for the administration of socialist enterprises, i.e. the organizational basis
of socialist production. Most significant, particularly at the present stage,
are questions of the protection of the property rights of toiling people,
workers, collective farmers, individual peasant farmers and employees.
The perspective that the question
of revolutionary legality found in the report of Comrade Stalin at the January
Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Auditing Committee relates only to
the area of criminal legislation, is unconditionally wrong. The protection of
public (socialist) property is a basic concern of revolutionary legality at the
present stage. But the protection and strengthening of public property is
realized not only by applying criminal repression against direct plunderers of
property, thieves and rogues, but also by a system of measures strengthening
socialist production and Soviet commerce. Such measures are: strengthening
financial budgeting, credit, plan and contract discipline, the introduction of
a system of
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savings, economic accountability,
and “control by the rouble” of the practical work of Soviet economic
organizations etc. These questions are within the competent sphere of Soviet
economic law and are, therefore, together with other parts of revolutionary
legality, a powerful weapon of the proletarian dictatorship for building a
classless socialist society.
4. Soviet economic law as a
system of property relations of the
transitional period from capitalism to communism
(i) The concept of property relations
The definition of Soviet economic
law developed above embraces a very broad area of social relationships. This is
the concept of Soviet economic law in the broad sense. We delineate it in the
narrower concept of Soviet economic law in the actual (or narrow) sense of the
term. Its subject is the property
relations of socialist society.
Property relations occur when
people enter into the process of producing the material conditions of their
existence, i.e. production relations. But these are not simply production
relations, but are production relations taken from the position of their “legal
expression”, i.e. as “relations of property”. In other words, they are
“relationships between individuals in connection with the materials,
instruments and products of labour”.20 They are formalized in a
definite manner, confirmed and supported by the organized power of the ruling
class, and are the relations for the distribution of labour and its products
among the members of society. “Whatever the social forms of production”, states
Marx, “workers and means of production always remain its factors. But, being in
a condition of isolation from each other, both of these factors are only
potential factors. In order to produce at all, they must be united. The special
character and method by which this union is realized identify the distinct
economic stage of a social structure.”21
The special character and method which is given to the matrix of labour power and the means of production under capitalism, finds its expression in the institution of the private ownership of the means of production. The special character and method of combining labour power and the means of production under the conditions of a socialist economy, is expressed by the institution of public (socialist) property. Bourgeois property, and the capitalist classes' monopoly
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of the means of production, is a source of capitalist domination over the proletariat and of capitalist exploitation (a special form of the appropriation of another’s labour). Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the distance between the direct producer, the means of production and the product of labour, is eliminated. The working class, “the most productive force”, itself as the “organizer, as the ruling class” (i.e as the state), becomes the owner of the instruments and the means of production and the “master of its product”.22
To the extent that economic law relations are property relations and property relations are relations of ownership‑the law of property is the central concept of every system of economic law: private ownership of the means of production is the central concept of bourgeois civil law, public (socialist) property is the central concept of Soviet economic law. All bourgeois “civil commerce” is a particular type of the circulation of private property. Equally, the system of Soviet economic law may be correctly understood only as public (socialist) property set in motion in the struggle with private property. Therefore, the law of August 7, 1932, “On the Protection and Strengthening of Public (Socialist) Property” (Collection of Laws, 1932, no. 62, item 360), the significance of which is correctly compared with the Constitution of the U.S.S.R., defines public property as the basis of the entire Soviet system: “The Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the U.S.S.R. decree that public property (state, collective farm, co‑operative) is the basis of the Soviet system, and that it is sacred and untouchable.”
As the legal expression of production relations, property relations may and must be understood as an organizational form of social production and “the social exchange of objects”. This is the way Marx understands them. Foe him, feudal property relations are “the feudal organization of agriculture and industry”, bourgeois property relations are the “modern [i.e. capitalist-eds.] organization of production”.23 Marx sees this organizational content in individual institutions of bourgeois civil (i.e. property) law. Thus, the different forms of property are different stages in the division of social labour. in particular, private property is “a necessary form of intercourse [stress ours, E.B.P.] at a given stage in the development of the forces of production”.24 It is the same with contract, in particular, with the contract of purchase and sale, personal hiring etc. The contract of
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purchase and sale, for instance, serves the social division of labour between the various branches of labour, and hired labour is “the essential bourgeois organization of labour”.
P. 1. Stuchka, following Marx, correctly characterizes the bourgeois civil code as a sort of charter of bourgeois civil society, i.e. as an act determining the internal order of society, its organization, the relations of its constituents‑accordingly, as an organizational act.25 It is true that in the conditions of bourgeois society the civil code “organizes” disorganization: the anarchy of production and capitalist competition. But in this respect this is bourgeois society itself; it does not have the power to cease being itself, i.e. to eliminate private property, to end capitalist competition. Therefore, one must not over‑rate the organizational possibilities of bourgeois civil law. Furthermore, the bourgeoisie tries to use the political superstructure ‑‑state and law‑for the purposes of ordering the course of social production. In the period of imperialism in general, and in particular in the recent years of the intensive process of the fascistization of the bourgeois state, these tendencies have been strengthened. But they do not and cannot produce the desired result, for they all leave unmoved the primary basis of capitalist society: capitalist private property.
Property relations in the U.S.S.R., as the legal expression of the production relations of socialist society, are thereby also the “formal organization” of socialist production and of the socialist “public exchange of objects”, i.e. of Soviet commerce. But posing the question of ownership in the U.S.S.R., and of the decisive role of public (socialist) property, places the whole problem of socialist property relations on a new level. To the extent that in the U.S.S.R. the basic economic commanding heights belong to one owner—to the proletariat, organized as the ruling class and also the most productive social force‑to this extent possibilities are created for the organization of the management of the processes of social production and exchange, for the conscious and planned construction of a socialist economy; processes that are entirely unattainable for capital ism. Hence, the organization of production and exchange in the
U.S. S. R. is the problem of control of the process of social production and organization of economic relations between the individual links of the socialist economy. This compels us to understand Soviet econo mic law, whose subject is the system of property relations of socialist
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society, as a special form of the policy of the
proletarian state in the area of the organization of the administration of the
economy and the organization of economic linkages.
(ii) Property relations in socialist society
But the question of socialist property relations under conditions of socialism is more complex than it seems at first glance. In capitalism everything is based upon private property. Private property divides. Private property presumes a multitude of owners with distinct interests, property rights and liabilities. Therefore, the capitalist system of relations of production and exchange is simultaneously an endless chain of relationships between property owners, between capitalists and workers, industrial and commercial capitalists, capitalists and landowners etc.
Conversely, public (socialist) property is unitary. It does not divide, but joins. Moreover, in the course of the Second Five Year Plan, public (socialist) property will become the sole form of ownership of the means of production. The socialist mode of production is being transformed into the sole mode of production in the U.S.S.R. It may be asked how are property relations, i.e. relations between owners, possible in these conditions (since there is no longer a multitude of owners)?
The classics of Marxism give the answer to this question.
“Law”, says Marx, “can never be higher than the economic structure of society and the cultural development conditioned by it.”26 The new socialist society proceeds from the womb of capitalism; we can see that during the course of a long period, “in all its relationships-economic, moral and intellectual‑it will still bear the imprint of the old society from whose womb it came;”27 hence the preservation in the new society (at the first phase of its development‑under socialism) of the tracer of “bourgeois law” as the regulator of the distribution of products and the distribution of social labour. Lenin, developing Marx’s thoughts, writes:
... At the first phase of communist society (which is usually called socialism), bourgeois law is not abolished in full, but only in part, only in proportion to the economic transformation already achieved, i.e. only with respect to the means of production. Bourgeois law recognizes them as the private property of individual persons. Socialism makes them public property. To this extent‑and only to this extent‑bourgeois law disappears,
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but it remains nevertheless in its other part, remains as a regulator (definer) of the distribution of products and the distribution of social labour. He who does not work, neither shall he eat‑this socialist principle is already realized; for an equal quantity of labour, an equal quantity of products‑this socialist principle is also already realized. However this is still not communism and this still does not eliminate bourgeois law that gives an equal quantity of products to unequal people for an unequal (unequal in fact) quantity of labour.28
Thus, in the first phase of communist society, under socialism, there is not and cannot be exploitation. Private property in the means of production has been eliminated. The socialist principle of remuneration according to labour is fully in effect, but “bourgeois” (in quotes) law is preserved. The preservation of “bourgeois” law consists here in the fact that an even scale (even measure) is applied to (factually) unequal persons, to unequal relations. Inequality, therefore, is preserved. Therefore, the norms which legalize this inequality are protected by the state, which maintains them by coercion. Only “in the higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour disappears; when the opposition between mental and physical labour disappears; when labour ceases to be merely a means for life and becomes life’s prime want; when the all‑around development of the individual, the forces of production and all the sources of social wealth flow in full stream‑only then may the narrow horizon of bourgeois law be fully overcome and may society inscribe on its banner: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!”29 Only at this stage will law and the state finally wither away.
The preservation under socialism of “bourgeois law”, i.e. of material inequality, means that individual members of society-working people-will enter into relations with one another as bearers of property rights and duties, as “persons “‑subjects of law. They are owners, but the range of objects capable of being the object of the right of property for individual persons under socialism is limited to objects of consumption. Means of production belong to all society.
However, according to Lenin, “bourgeois law” is the regulator not only of the social distribution of products, but‑within certain limits‑also of the “distribution of labour”. The distribution of labour between different branches of the economy is also the
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problem of organization
Of socialist production, but in the conditions of
socialist society, the organization of
the administration of socialist production. What does the preservation, in
this area, “of the narrow horizon of bourgeois law”, (i.e. the application of
an equal scale to the unequal) consist? It consists of the use of the method of
economic accountability by the proletarian state for the purpose of the planned
management of the socialist economy. Socialist enterprises, transferred to
economic accountability, enter into relations with one another as property‑wise
distinct economic units, as bearers of independent property rights and duties.
An organization of economic accountability is not a private owner. The part of
state property assigned to an organization of economic accountability is
“alloted” to it, but does not cease to be part of the single fund of state
property. But at the same time, an organization with economic accountability
has “its own” basic property, its own working assets, and independently enters
(within limits and for the fulfilment of planned tasks) into property relations
with other organizations having economic accountability. Therefore, recalling
the words of Lenin at the VIth Congress of Soviets on the remnants of
“bourgeois law” under socialism, Comrade Molotov illustrated this with the
examples of the organization of the distribution of labour and incomes in
collective farms, the policy of wages, co‑operative trade and economic accountability in state industry.30
Such are the reasons why in socialist society not
only relations between individual workers, in the distribution of consumer
items, take on the nature of property relations, but also the relations between
the links of the socialist economy for the organization of socialist production
and Soviet commerce.
These reasons are not, however, exhaustive. They do
not explain the whole multitude of property relations either beyond the limits
of the second Five Year Plan under the conditions of the classless socialist
society, or even less so at the present stage of development of the U.S.S.R.
The proletariat of the U.S.S.R. is building
socialism within a capitalist encirclement. The presence of intensive economic
ties between the U.S.S.R. and the capitalist world invokes a number of
institutions of Soviet economic law. Within the limits of the homogeneous and
dominant public (socialist) property in the U.S.S.R., the difference between
state socialist and collective farm co‑operative
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property retains all its significance. The Party firmly holds to its course on the organizational‑economic strengthening of collective farms in the form of the artel, i.e. it also considers it necessary to preserve the personal supplementary farming of the collective farmers along with the public collective farming. For all of the second Five Year Plan, and with the predominant role of socialism in the economy of the U.S.S.R., a petty commodity structure will also be maintained (individual peasant farming, craftsmen who are not members of co‑operatives). All these are facts which must be taken fully into account to understand the rich content of the system of Soviet economic law.
5. The system of Soviet economic
law
(i) Public and private law
Soviet economic law is not one indivisible whole. just like every other sphere of social relations, it is divided into several more or less independent parts. In correspondence with this, the science of Soviet economic law is also divided into a number of sections, the system and order of which is determined by the real delineation of the object itself
The literature of Soviet economic law unanimously sets apart the regulation of relations for labour (labour law), for land use (land law) and for the family (family law) from the general system of Soviet economic law. As for the rest, the delineation of the content of Soviet economic law is usually made in accordance with the forms adopted in bourgeois codes and bourgeois jurisprudence. It is necessary, first of all, to linger on these forms adopted in bourgeois codes and bourgeois jurisprudence and on the question of the propriety of their transfer to Soviet reality.
The division of law into public and private is basic to bourgeois law. One of the most important bourgeois civil law specialists, Dernburg, distinguishes between the spheres of public and private law as follows:
The main idea is the following. If a legal norm is designed to serve primarily the interests of individual persons, then it relates to private law; if it is for the social interest, then it belongs to public law. This division corresponds to the dual position of man in society. As a free personality he is the bearer of his own
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goals, he is an independent centre of legal relations. But at the same time he is a member of an expanded association to which he is subordinated, and which he serves.31
Public law includes state law, criminal law, criminal and civil procedure, canon law and international law. Private law includes civil law in the broad sense of the term (including commercial law and its subdivisions).
Dernburg’s definition is not generally recognized. Dozens of theories have been put forth on this question by bourgeois jurisprudence. In particular, in the Russian literature of the last years before the revolution and among Soviet bourgeois jurists, I. A. Pokrovsky’s viewpoint enjoyed great success. At the basis of the division of law into private and public it placed the type of method of regulation of the relations or the position of the subject ‘in the legal relationship. “If public law”, wrote Pokrovsky, “is a system of legal centralization of relations, then civil law, on the contrary, is a system of legal decentralization: it by its very existence proposes for its life the presence of a multitude of self‑defining centres. If public law is a system of subordination, then civil law is a system of co‑ordination; if the first is an area of authority and subordination then the second is an area of freedom and private initiative”.32
Bourgeois jurists cannot agree and will not agree on the principle of the separation of public and private law. They are not able to do this, for they are deprived of the possibility of revealing the true roots of this division, its source and basis. This may be done only by using the method of historical materialism. The real existence of the difference between private and public law was revealed by Marx with exhaustive clarity.
The roots of the division of law into public and private must be sought in the distinction between property and the social totality, the separation of civil society and political organization, and in the enhancement of the individuality of man and the citizen. “Private law”, states Marx, “develops parallel with private property and out of the process of the decay of naturally developing collectivism.” On the other hand, “because of the emancipation of private property from the community the state has obtained an independent existence alongside civil society and outside it.”33 The contrast between private and public law is most typical for bourgeois society, and impossible to eliminate. The monopoly of private property in the
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hands of individual members of the capitalist class, the separation of the state from society as a special organization of the ruling class for the purpose of supporting the relations of capitalist exploitation this is the basis for the division of law into private and public. The bourgeois (as owner) concludes commodity transactions of purchase and sale, including purchase and sale of labour power‑‑this is private law. The bourgeois as a member of the ruling class exercises authority and punishes the violators of capitalist principles‑this is public law.
The division of law into public
and private develops and deepens parallel to the process of the development of
the law of private property, from its initial primitive forms to “purely
bourgeois private property”. Marx foresees the removal of this division with
the transfer of the right of ownership of means of production into the hands of
all society‑and also the elimination of class differences and the ending
of the opposition between civil society and political (state) organization. He
had earlier noted this perspective in On the
Jewish Question:
When the actual individual man recognizes in himself the abstract citizen of the state, and as an individual man becomes a species being in his empirical life, in his individual labour, in his individual relationships, when man recognizes and organizes his “forces propres” as social forces‑and thus no longer continues internally to distinguish between social forces and the form of political force, only then will human emancipation be complete.34
The development of capitalism into the imperialist phase, characterized by the activation of the bourgeois state, its transition in a number of cases to methods of direct action in connection with the revolutionization of the working class, the growth of its power of resistance and the increasing breakdown of the whole capitalist system, the broad diffusion of methods of state control and “intervention” in economic life in the period of the war‑all this has brought to life a whole series of theories showing that the division of law into private and public has already fully outlived itself, that it is now unnecessary for the regulation of social relationships in the present stage and that soon it can be placed in the archives. Anton Menger, one of the first theorists of “Juridical socialism”, has affirmed that the capitalist world will move towards socialism through the publicization of private law. The entire matter is said to
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lie in the fact that the relationships which private law regulates in bourgeois society have fallen into the sphere of public law. The worldwide gradual municipalization of economic relations, possible even within the limits of capitalism‑in this, according to Menger, lies the establishment of socialism. Socialism means the victory of public law over private and the elimination of the primitive division of law into two spheres.
This theory was seized upon by the social fascists, the majority of whom are now “Juridical socialists”. On the other hand, a number of purely bourgeois theorists have developed the same or analogous notions. The typical ideologue of the imperialist bourgeoisie, the French jurist Duguit, proclaimed the socialization of private law. From now on the private owner is not simply a free personality, “the bearer of his own goals” (Dernburg), disposing of his property according to his will, but “the servant of society” fulfilling a “social function”, the organizer and manager of production. Only with respect to these social goals does the state preserve and defend the rights of the owner. The boundaries between private and public law are thus fully erased. In the same spirit, appropriately, was the German jurist Hedeman, one of the leading representatives of the “economic law” school. Economic or public economic law was the name given by the German jurists to the elements of state “regulation” of the economy, the appearance of which was conditioned by the war and the post‑war devastation. Goikhbarg, and after him a number of other Soviet jurists, tried to transfer these ideas to Soviet soil. In particular, Goikhbarg himself proclaimed the elimination of the division of law into private and public, both for Soviet and bourgeois law. “The basic division of law into two major parts‑public and civil”, wrote Goikhbarg in 1924, “which has rarely been explained well by jurists, now finds recognition only among the most backward jurists (including our own) ... The separation of the concept of civil law from other concepts‑which has lost its meaning even in countries which have not lived through a proletarian revolution‑is entirely unthinkable for us.”35 Goikhbarg’s position signified, first, the beautifying of capitalism, masking over its contradictions; it was objectively based upon the social‑fascist theory of the peaceful maturation of socialism in the laboratory of capitalism. It meant, secondly, ignoring the qualitative differences between Soviet and bourgeois law. Goikhbarg considered some arguments
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drawn from the analysis of the bourgeois Weimar Constitution and the Yugoslavian constitutional monarchy. He used these to prove the unnecessary division of Soviet law into private and public. Goikhbarg’s argument was discredited at its very roots.
It is necessary to proceed differentially towards the question of private and public law. This division cannot be eliminated for bourgeois law, to the extent that private ownership of the means of production has stability. This division keeps its significance even for the law of the modem imperialist state, just as competition, with all its conflicts and contradictions, is retained in the economy of imperialism alongside and together with monopolies. On the contrary it loses signficance in Soviet law. “We do not recognize anything ‘private”‘, wrote Lenin to Kursky in connection with the preparation of the Soviet Civil Code, “for us everything in the area of the economy is public law and not private. We permit only state capitalism ... Hence, we must expand the application of state intervention in ‘private law’ relations, expand the right of the state to annul ‘private’ contracts, to apply not corpus juris romani to ‘civil legal relations’, but our revolutionary legal consciousness. “36 The contradiction between private and public law vanishes in Soviet law, because in a society whose bases are the dictatorship of the proletariat and public (socialist) property, the contradiction between civil society and the state is eliminated.
Further, if one proceeds from
purely practical considerations, there is also nothing in Soviet law which
could motivate the preservation of the division of law into private and public.
For us there cannot even be a discussion of the limitation of state intervention in any sphere of economic activity‑but
this is the first thing that follows from the division of law into two spheres.
Soviet law denies the division of legal norms into compulsory (rules
established as obligatory for the
parties‑which is characteristic of public law) and optional or supplementary (certain
rules established for the parties only in the case when they themselves have
not decided otherwise‑this is characteristic of private law). All the
norms of Soviet law, unless otherwise stated in the norms themselves, are
compulsory. In bourgeois law, disputes and conflicts arising in the area of
private law relations are con sidered by
the court on the initiative of the disputing parties themselves. The initiative
for the consideration of disputes and conflicts in connection with the
violation of norms of public law
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belongs to the agencies of state authority. For us, also, this characteristic never had significance. The agencies of the court and arbitration have the broadest powers for the initiation of any case‑to the extent that it is an issue of the property relations of economic agencies and individual persons, or of the violation of the directives of the Party and the governments on questions of economic construction.
(ii) The law of things and of obligations
The system of Soviet economic law
also denies a second major subdivision of bourgeois law: the division of civil
law into the law of things and of obligations.
The codes of bourgeois civil law are usually constructed on one of two systems: either on the Institutes system or on the Pandectist system. The Institutes system derived its name from the first part of the famous code of Roman Law: Corpus juris civilis of the Emperor Justinian (in the year 553). The French Civil Code of 1804 is compiled according to this system. It is divided into three basic divisions: persons, things and transactions. (“On persons”, “On property and on various modifications of ownership”, “On various methods by which ownership is obtained”). The Pandectist system derived its name from the second part of the Justinian collection (the Pandects). The German Civil Code of 1896 and other recent codes (the Japanese of 1898, the Brazilian of 1916, and the Chinese of 1929), and also the Civil Code of the RSFSR of 1922 are compiled according to this system. The Pandectist system contains a general part and also: the law of obligations, the law of things, family law and inheritance law. Codes constructed on the Pandectist system include all these parts in one order or another. The most important division for all bourgeois civil law is the division into the law of things and the law of obligations. This division lies at the basis not only of codes constructed on the Pandectist system, but also of those constructed on the Institutes system: the second division of the French Code is the law of things, the third‑predominantly‑‑of obligations.
The law of things deals with rights in things, the law of obligations with obligational rights. What is the difference, what content is embodied in these concepts? Bourgeois jurisprudence answers this question in the following manner: the law of things has as its object a
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thing‑an item of the external world; the law of obligations‑the action of another person. Thus the object of the law of property (the law of things) may be buildings, structures, commodities or consumer goods; the object of a contract of purchase and sale (law of obligations)‑the action of the seller (to transfer the thing to ownership) and of the buyer (to accept the thing and pay the price). All rights in a thing have an absolute nature, i.e. the right of one person, authorized to use and dispose of the thing, contrasts with the obligation of an unlimited number of other persons not to violate his right (for instance not to violate the rights of an owner). Obligational rights have a relative nature. Here two or more completely determinate persons (seller and buyer, for instance) are connected with one another. The rights in things and obligational rights are further distinguished by the method of their protection. A right in a thing is defended by the so‑called vindicational suit, under which the right of demanding the thing in kind from the illegal possession of another is understood. Obligational rights are defended by a suit for damages, i.e. by a demand for compensation for the monetary equivalent of harm suffered. Finally, every system of law always establishes only a precisely limited number of types of rights in things (the so‑called numerus clausus: by the Soviet Civil Code, for instance, the right of property, of lien, and of lease); the law of obligations is not limited to a finite number of institutions; relations not envisioned by the legislator are allowed, to the extent that they do not contradict the general principles of the law of obligations.
Besides rights in things and obligational rights, bourgeois civil law provides still another category of rights, intermediate between rights in things and obligational rights: the so‑called exclusive rights‑copyright, right to an invention, to a trade name, to a trademark. Exclusive rights have an absolute nature like rights in things, but the object of an exclusive right is not a thing, but an action, an action of the holder of the right himself; in copyright, for instance, the reproduction of a certain literary work. Exclusive rights, therefore, are located, so to speak, between rights in things and obligations.
This is the bourgeois theory of the delineation of rights in things and obligational rights. Despite the fact that as time goes on the boundaries between the law of things and the law of obligations has been further erased‑both in legislation and in the practice of
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application of the law‑contemporary bourgeois science insists upon the preservation of this distinction, upon its significance in principle. What are the actual roots and bases of the division of law into the law of things and the law of obligations?
Stuchka emphasizes the relation between the institutions of the law of things (with feudal relations) and that of obligations (with bourgeois relations). It is no accident that Marx speaks of land ownership as feudal ownership subordinate to bourgeois conditions of production. On the other hand, the law of obligations is the law of “commerce” primarily, facilitating relations of commodity exchange. Its basic institution (contract) is a most important instrument, and with its help capitalist social exchange of things is realized. However, the law of things, and its basic institution, the law of bourgeois private property, are foundations of the bourgeois system. Therefore, the law of things is revered with a special piety and is placed under the special protection of the bourgeois state. “In case of conflict between an absolute right and a relative one, the latter always gives way to the former”,37 asserts a bourgeois jurist. In other words, the law of obligations is, so to speak, “second class” law in comparison with the law of things. In case of a dispute, preference will always be given to the law of things over the law of obligations.
Stuchka connects the law of things with production, and the law of obligations with exchange. However, the basis of the division of bourgeois civil law into the law of things and the law of obligations consists not only in the fact that one is the law of production and the other is the law of exchange. The question must be posed more deeply. The root of the contradiction that is irreconciliable for bourgeois law‑between the law of things and the law of obligations‑consists of the antagonistic nature of the capitalist system of production, in the exploiting nature of bourgeois law. The contradiction between the social nature of production and the private form of appropriation‑this is where it is necessary to look for the real basis of the division of civil law into the law of things and the law of obligations. A capitalist economy is a commodity economy. The bond between the isolated individual producers is established through exchange. “Exchange”, states Marx, “does not create the differences between the spheres of production but establishes a bond between spheres that are already
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different, and turns them into branches of social production that are more or less dependent on one on the other.”38 The law of obligations, the central institution of which is contract, is only the legal expression of this general interdependence of individual branches of social production. The contracts of the purchase and sale of products of different branches of labour, serve the social division of labour. The contracts of loan serve the movement of finance capital. The contracts of employment facilitate the process of the production of surplus value. The law of obligations facilitates, therefore, the relations between individual capitalists, between industrial and finance capitalists, between capitalists and workers.
The law of things (the central nucleus of which is the law of property) is, on the contrary, a legal expression of the breakdown, separation and anarchy dominant in capitalist society. “Private property”, says Lenin, “is the expression of the material isolation of commodity producers.”39 Private property isolates and distinguishes, since it creates “the possibility of disposing of ... the labour of another”;40 it confirms relations of the domination and authority of the owner over working people; it facilitates mutual competition between industrial, commercial and finance capitalists. Therefore, the basic contradiction of capitalist society finds its clearest expression in the contradiction between the law of things and the law of obligations: the contradiction between the public nature of production and the private form of expropriation and acquisition. This is also typical for the system of bourgeois law as a whole, and for each of its institutions.
This contradiction does not exist in the socialist economy. It has been eliminated by the expropriation of the expropriators. The division of Soviet economic law into the law of things and the law of obligations is, therefore, artificial. The basic practical difference between rights in things and obligational rights‑according to the method of their protection‑does not have such a major significance in the conditions of the U.S.S.R. The law of things, according to traditional theory, is protected by a special (vindicational) suit for the thing, by virtue of which it is possible to demand the thing in kind from anyone illegally in possession; obligational rights are protected by a suit on damages. But in 1922 the Soviet Civil Code established a rule according to which, if the object of a demand from an obligatory legal relationship is a concretely defined (a so‑called
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individually defined) thing, then the bearer of the right could demand it in kind, regardless of the recovery of damages. In this case, accordingly, the inviolability of the law of obligations is protected by a method typical only for the law of things.
However, the erasing of the boundaries between the law of things and the law of obligations in Soviet economic law is far from limited to Art. 120 of the Civil Code. Current Soviet contract law firmly holds to the principle of so‑called performance in kind, by virtue of which, not only in the case when the object of an obligation is an individually defined thing, but also in all other instances, compensation for damages, payment of a penalty, or a fine etc., do not free the debtor from fulfilment of the contractual obligation ‘in kind. In a series of laws on contract this is specially emphasized. Soviet economic law has always ignored, and now rejects in principle, the characteristic difference between the law of things and the law of obligations. The difference is that there are only a precisely defined number of rights in things (numerus clausus), which does not apply to obligational rights; but in this area “all that is not forbidden is permitted”. In Soviet law this is not so. The Soviet state precisely establishes determinate organizational forms of relations between economic agencies and between individual participants in economic commerce. They can and must use these forms. To go outside the limits of the permissible is to travel the path of speculation, the route of evading state accounting and supervision‑impermissible in Soviet conditions. And from this point of view, accordingly, the division of Soviet economic law into the law of things and the law of obligations would be untenable.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6. Methods of study of Soviet
economic law
(i) The dogmatic (formal‑juridical) method of studying law
The bourgeois “science of law” and, in particular, bourgeois civil law is elaborated primarily by the so‑called formal‑ legal or dogmatic method. According to Shershenevich’s definition, “dogmatics consists of the systematic statements of the rules of law in force at a given time in a particular country.”41 The dogma of law begins with legal norms, i.e. obligatory rules of conduct protected by the power of
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state coercion. Next it systematizes them, and subjects them to formal logical analysis from the referent of the prescriptions contained in these norms. Next, it generalizes them, i.e. brings particular norms of law under more general ones (this is called “establishing the legal nature of an institution”) and dissects, contrasts etc. In the conditions of bourgeois states the dogmatic elaboration of law has a direct practical significance, since it provides material to courts and agencies of authority applying the law in force. “The dogma of private law is nothing more than an endless chain of arguments pro and contra, imaginary claims and potential suits. Behind each paragraph of this systematic guide stands an unseen abstract client ready to use the relevant propositions as advice.”42
At the basis of the dogmatic method are a number of premises. The first of them is the equation of law and statute. The dogmatic jurist knows only the statute. The dogmatic jurist knows only the statute sanctified by the authority of state power, and therefore obligatory for each person within the territory of the state. The law of each given country is exhausted by the “totality of norms” formally “in force”, i.e. promulgated by the corresponding agencies of the state and not repealed by the established procedure. The application of law consists in the conduct of concrete legal relations under the general norms of the law (the establishment of the “nature of legal relations”) and in the derivation of a conclusion by the rules of formal logic. The second premise is the equation of law with the “will of the legislator”. The task of the jurist, in applying law, consists in the clarification of the exact content of this will with the help of various methods of legal technique. And the third is the belief in the absence of gaps in the system of law in force. The state of affairs in which the law in force has no answer for each of the infinite questions arising in life, is recognized as impossible. If there is not a direct answer, then it is contained in hidden form in one of the more general norms from which it must be extracted, by means of operations of various types of the same legal technique.
Legal dogmatism flourishes in full bloom in the bourgeois state. The cult of the dogma of law constitutes the nourishing soil for the juridical world outlook of the bourgeoisie “of the classic world outlook of the bourgeoisie”. Engels characterizes it as follows:
It represented the secularization of theology. The place of dogma or divine law has been taken by human law, the place of
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the church has been occupied by the state. Economic and social relations, which earlier, since they were sanctioned by the church, were considered a product of the church and of dogma, were now presented as based on law and created by the state. The exchange of commodities on a societal scale leads in its more developed form (because of the practice of loans and credit). to intricate contractual relations. It therefore requires generally recognized rules which can be established only by the social collective, the need for legal norms established by the state. Among the representatives of the new class this fact has created the illusion that these legal norms owe their origin not to economic relations, but to the formal legislative activity of the state. But since competition‑this basic form of relationships between commodity producers‑is a great equalizer, so equality before the law became the battle cry of the bourgeoisie. The fact that the struggle of this new class, striving for authority against the feudal lords and the absolute monarchy that protected them at that time and which, like every class struggle had to become a political struggle a struggle for the possession of state power‑the fact that this struggle had to be waged around legal demands aided still further the consolidation of the juridical world outlook.43
Marxism declares a merciless struggle both against the bourgeois juridical world outlook as a whole (and its recidivism and remnants on Soviet soil), and against the dogmatic method in jurisprudence. The latter has nothing in common with true science. It distorts reality. In the place of real facts it places “Juridical illusions”, it substitutes “legal stage settings” for real life. “The servants of the division of labour”44 (in the expression of Marx and Engels), i.e. the professionaI jurists and courts, created a cult of legal concepts dedicated to hide the real relations of exploitation and of domination‑subordination‑with the mottoes of freedom and equality.
Marxism exposes the very roots of the bourgeois juridical world outlook and the dogmatic method. It reveals the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Law is the will of the ruling classes expressed in statute. In the bourgeois state, the bourgeoisie rules. The state is merely “a committee managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie”.45 Only for this reason is the law proclaimed immutable for each and everyone. Only for this reason does the bourgeoisie deceptively declare state authority itself to be subject to law and the state to be bound by law. For law in the bourgeois state is its class will, and
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statute reflects the will of the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. Bourgeois statutes formalize and confirm the capitalist conditions of production and the relations of capitalist exploitation.
The most recent bourgeois jurisprudence suggests, along with the dogmatic, other methods for studying the law in force. The basic alternatives are the socio‑philosophical and the sociological. Each of them has in its turn a variety of forms serving as the bases of different directions in the “science” of law: legal policy, comparative historical jurisprudence etc. However, the dogma of law always remains as the basis of the scientific development of law for bourgeois jurisprudence. On the other hand, neither the most recent philosophical‑legal studies, that led into the chaos of idealistic and metaphysical neo‑Kantianism (neo‑Hegelianism), nor the sociological and comparative historical research of those bourgeois jurists who have ignored the class nature of law, can assume a true scientific nature. Only individual works of bourgeois sociologists and historians of law have material which, on appropriate critical reworking, can be used for the study of the law of one country or another.
(ii) The method of dialectical materialism and its application to
Soviet economic law
The Marxist theory of law in general‑and the Marxist theory of economic law in particular‑use the only truly scientific method, that of dialectical materialism. The systematic application of dialectical materialism to the study of Soviet law is one of the major victories of the Marxist theory of law in the U.S.S.R.
Coalescing in 1925 as a solid collective of Marxist jurists, the Section of State and Law of the Communist Academy formulated its tasks in the following manner:
We are united, above all, by the revolutionary‑dialectical method both in scholarly and in practical work on law‑its direction is opposite to the metaphysical, formal‑dogmatic and, finally, the historical evolutionary method of bourgeois jurisprudence. This simultaneously means a class approach to the study of both state and law, for we consider these phenomena as rooted in the material conditions of social life and as having obtained their development in the process of class struggle. Finally, we, being materialists, proceed from the material relations of people in the study of state and law, so as to draw therefrom
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an understanding of the ideas and concepts of people about their own relationships.46
From this, in particular, it follows that there can be no discussion of the creation of any “dogma of Soviet law”. Socialist construction needs the systematic, but not the dogmatic study of Soviet law. Attempts to smuggle in the rubbish of the bourgeois‑juridical world outlook, under the flag of “the limited” or “the subsidiary” application of the dogmatic method to the study of Soviet law, were met in the past and will be met in the future with invincible resistance.
What, concretely, should the application of dialectical materialism to the study of Soviet law signify?
Above all it signifies the necessity of an objective‑materialist approach. This means that, in studying Soviet economic law, one cannot operate only with norms, even though they were promulgated by competent agencies of Soviet authority and have not been formally repealed. It is necessary to take norms in their unity with the corresponding legal relations. In the opposite case, particularly having in mind the unique dynamism of Soviet law and the “speed of legislation” already noted by Lenin, we will always risk being seduced by and accepting the “formally in force” (more precisely‑formally unrepealed) for the actually existing.
Thus, for instance, until the end of 1933, the Law of October 7, 1929, “On Procurement of Products of Agriculture” was not repealed and was formally in force. But it was impossible to put together a correct impression of the organization (in 1933) of the procurement of agricultural products on the basis of this law. From the moment of publication of the law, radical changes took place in the economy of the whole country, and in particular in the economy of agriculture. The relations of the proletarian state with the basically collectivized peasant farming (from early 1933) were constructed very differently for a whole series of important crops. Procurement was entirely abolished for grain crops, for sunflowers, for potatoes, etc.; it was retained only for certain industrial crops, but even here it was often enacted differently to the provisions in the Law of October 7, 1929. From this it is obvious that the pure norm alone does not yet produce current Soviet law. The norm in unity with the legal relation‑the norm with a modification for its realization in the practice of economic construction‑is the correct position. However, it is wrong to err in the opposite direction: it is wrong also to tear the
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legal relation away from the norm. For the legal norm includes the rule which is in force and generally the “effective” directive of the authorized agencies of the proletarian dictatorship. Erring here also threatens the true Soviet law with a distorted reflection.
The objective‑materialist approach requires the closest bond between theory and practice in the development of questions of Soviet economic law. Soviet economic law is not “pure” and abstract theory. It is a practical discipline, whose propositions must be directed to practice, which must draw the materials for its conclusions from the practice of economic construction, and which must arm practical workers with the power of its theory in their struggle for revolutionary legality and the conduct of the economic policy of the Party.
The next principle is the obligation to take account of the class nature of each institution of Soviet economic law.
Every law corresponds to the interests of a ruling class. Soviet law corresponds to the interests of the proletariat organized as the ruling class. Hence: every problem of Soviet economic law must be treated from the point of view of the interests of the ruling class, from the point of view of the policy of the Party (the vanguard of the class) and of the government, and must receive Party interpretation and a party solution. ‘the slightest failure along ‘this line revenges itself by a complete distortion of the essence and spirit of Soviet law.
Party‑orientation is the highest and obligatory requirement in every scientifie discipline and for Soviet economic law in no less a degree than any other. Marx and Lenin repeatedly emphasized the Party of Marxist theory. A Party, revolutionary‑class, proletarian approach to Soviet economic law, or a bourgeois, formal‑legal and reactionary‑these are two poles, absolutely excluding one another. It is necessary to choose between them, but they allow no compromise, composite or mutual concessions. Only on the basis of true Party spirit‑armed by Party Bolshevik vigilance‑is it possible correctly to state and correctly to apply Soviet economic law. From this in particular comes the collossal significance of the problem of cadres for this area of socialist construction. On the contrary, the least concession to the bourgeois dogmatic‑legal method leads to the loss of revolutionary‑class perspective, to slipping into alien positions harmful to the proletariat.
Finally, there is a third point that derives from the application of dialectical materialism to the study of Soviet law. This is the
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requirement of taking each phenomenon in its motion, from the point of view of its orgin, development and elimination.
Bourgeois jurisprudence transforms its concepts into solid essences. It eternalizes them, and declares them as timeless legal categories characteristic of the specifically bourgeois mode of production. This is not avoided even by the most advanced bourgeois jurists such as Jhering. On the contrary, the Soviet science of law must build its institutions from concepts with concrete content. In Soviet economic law, in particular, each category and each institution must be filled with a definite organizationaleconomic content, corresponding to specific measures of the economic policy of the Party and government at the corresponding stage. If one takes the contract of procurement, this institution must be studied and stated in Soviet economic law in such a way that its origin, its development and its abolition become obvious for the basic mass of products of agricultural production. In Soviet economic activity there is nothing frozen, motionless or static. Soviet economic law must consider and reflect the internal dynamics of its subject: the states of development of the class struggle, the stages of socialist construction.
7. The concepts (categories) of
Soviet economic law
Above (in Section 5) we indicated a series of basic concepts (categories) of Soviet economic law (property, economic accountability, contract etc.). Soviet economic law also uses a number of other elementary concepts whereby the structure of this discipline is erected. We will now list the most important of them, while the detailed critical analysis of their content, the indication of the limits of their application etc. will be made in the corresponding chapters of the treatise. These concepts are borrowed from bourgeois law. This is understandable since Soviet economic law contains a number of elements of “bourgeois law without the bourgeoisie”.
First, it is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of the legal norm and the legal relation. The first is the traditional terminology of bourgeois jurisprudence, and is so‑called “law in the objective sense” (or objective law); the second is “a legal right in the subjective sense” (a subjective legal right). A norm is an objective rule of conduct. A juridic relationship is “the
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primary cell of the legal tissue”;47 it is a “volitional relation whose content is given by the economic relation itself” An example of a legal norm is Article 403 of the Civil Code of the RSFSR. According to this the “one who has caused harm to an individual or property of another is obliged to compensate for the harm caused.” An example of a legal relation is the relation which has arisen in connection with the causing of harm to the victim, and the person who caused the harm. Another example: the Law of January 19, 1933, on obligatory supply of grain. This is a legal norm. The relation between the collective farm or the individual peasant farm, on the one hand, and the local branches and offices of Grain Procurement on the other, is a legal relationship for the delivery and receipt of grain.
A legal norm is obligatory (or, as jurists say, is “law in force”) to the extent that it is sanctioned by the state or other organization capable of guaranteeing coercive measures of observance (realization) of the norm. “Law ... is nothing without an apparatus capable of compelling the observance of the norms of law.”48
In the technical sense, the various forms in which legal norms are expressed and confirmed as generally obligatory are called sources of law. These are: Party directives, statutes, decrees of co‑operative centres etc. (On the source of Soviet economic law: the authors refer to a later chapter in their book. ‑eds.)
The elements of every legal relationship are: the subject of the right (or duty), the object, the subjective right and the duty corresponding to it. The subject of a law is the bearer of the rights and duties, the final centre in the “legal tissue” to which property rights and duties are attached. In the first chapter of vol. 1 of Das Kapital, Marx studies the process of commodity exchange. In an action “C‑M” (exchange of commodities for money), two parties participate: the commodity owner and the owner of the money. From the legal perspective, a “C‑M” legal relation is a transaction of purchase and sale. The parties in this legal relation, the subjects of the law, are the buyer and seller. The object of the law (or the property) is that which the parties have in mind, the object of their mutual demands and obligations (rights and duties). Above we indicated that bourgeois jurisprudence, according to the nature of the object (thing or action) classifies rights into rights to things and obligational rights. In
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a transaction of purchase and
sale, the object of the law will be an action: of the seller‑to transfer
the thing to ownership of the buyer; and of the buyer‑to pay the price.
The latter element of the legal relation‑the relation between the parties
(the subjects of law) is the subjective
right of one party and the subjective
duty of the other
corresponding to it. The duty,
whose content is the execution of a certain action for the use of the other
party, is also called an obligation.
Economic law makes broad use of the concept of a legal institution. “By a legal institution”, states Stuchka, “ we understand a typical legal relationship constituting a generic concept for a whole series of identical relations”49 Examples of institutions of Soviet economic law include the law of public (socialist) property, prescription, the contract between the Machine Tractor Stations and collective farms, trusts, and others.
The bases for the origin of legal relationships are legal facts of different types: events, actions, transactions, agreements. For example, an earthquake is an event with which a series of important legal consequences are connected: in insurance law, an earthquake is considered one of the “insurable events”, whose occurrence involves the payment of the insurance premium provided by the insurance contract. Homicide is a legal act which is an act of will, the result of human conduct. This legal act also calls to life a series of legal relations, in particular of a property nature (for instance compensation for injury or provision for the family of the deceased). One of the types of legal actions is legal transactions. The Civil Code of the RSFSR provides a definition of legal transactions in Article 26. These are actions directed at the establishment, change, or cessation of legal relations. The essence of the matter here lies in the direction and the intention of the parties. Transactions may be unilateral, i.e. the volitional act of one person (for instance a will) and bilateral in which there must be an intent between a minimum of two persons. Bilateral transactions are also called agreements. Their significance in economic law is enormous.
Notes
1. K. Marx
and F. Engels, Sobranie sochinenii
(1922), Moscow, vol. 8, P. xxx.
2. ibid. p. xxiv.
344 PASHUKANIS: SELECTED WRITINGS
3. J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism (1947), State Publishing House, Moscow, 11th
edition, pp. 135‑136.
4. “Towards
the Struggle for the National Economic Plan”, Pravda, editorial, July 1, 1933, no. 179.
5. K. Marx
and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1847‑1848),
MESW, vol. 1, p. 117.
6. V. I.
Lenin, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government” (1918), LCW, vol. 27, p. 241.
7. J.
Stalin (1947), op. cit. p. 493.
8. K. Marx and F. Engels, Sobranie
sochinenii, vol. 3, p. 56.
9. J. Stalin (1947), op. cit. p. 424.
10. V.
Shreter, Soviet Economic Law (1928),
Moscow‑Leningrad, p. 34.
11. A. K.
Stal’gevich, Theses (1930), Moscow,
p. 36.
12. S.
Liberman, “The Last Stage of NEP and Economic Law”, Problems of Marxism, 1931, no. 5/6.
13. V. I. Lenin, Sochinenii, vol. 24, p. 434.
14. V. I.
Lenin, “ ‘Dual’ Subordination and Legality” (1922), LCW, vol. 33, p. 364,
15. ibid. p. 364.
16. K. Marx
and F. Engels, The German Ideology (1845‑1846),
Progress Publishers, Moscow (1976), p. 99.
17. J. Stalin (1947), op. cit. p. 512 [Report to the XVIIth Party Congress on the work of the
Central Committee].
18. ibid. p. 422.
19. E. B.
Pashukanis, “Soviet Law and Revolutionary Legality”, Journal of the I.K.P. (Institute of Red Professors)
(1934),
no. 2.
20. K. Marx
and F. Engels, The German Ideology (1845‑1846),
op. cit. p. 38.
21. K. Marx
and F. Engels, Capital (1867), op. cit. vol. 2, p. 34.
22. F. Engels,
The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State (1884), MESW, vol.
3, op. cit.
23. K. Marx
and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1847‑1848),
MESW, vol. 1, p. 113.
24. K. Marx
and F. Engels, The German Ideology (1845‑1846),
op. cit. p. 375.
25. P. I.
Stuchka, A Course on Soviet Civil Law (1928),
Moscow, 2nd edition, vol. 1, p. 44.
26. K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), MESW vol. 3, p. 19.
27. ibid. p. 17.
28. V. I.
Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917),
LCW, vol. 25, p. 467.
29. K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875),
op. cit. p. 19.
30. V.
Molotov, “Stenographic Report, Sixth Congress of Soviets of the U.S. S. R.
“,Publishing House of the Central
Executive Committee (1931), Bulletin no.
2, pp. 26‑27.
31. H.
Dernburg, Pandekten (1906), Moscow,
vol. 1, p. 53.
32. I. A.
Pokrovsky, The Basic Ideas of Civil Law (1917),
St. Petersburg, p. 10.
33. K. Marx
and F. Engels, The German Ideology (1845‑1846),
op. cit. p. 98.
A COURSE ON SOVIET ECONOMIC LAW 345
34. K. Marx,
“On the Jewish Question” (1843), op. cit.
p. 234.
35. A.
G. Goikhbarg, The Economic Law of the
RSFSR (1924), Moscow, p. 7.
36. V. I. Lenin, “On the Tasks of the People’s
Commissariat of justice under the New Economic Policy” (1922),
LCW, Vol. 36, pp. 562‑563.
37. G. Shershenevich, Textbook of Russian Civil Law (1914), Moscow, Vol. 1, p. 235.
38. K. Marx, Capital (1867), Vol. 1, op. cit.
39. V. I. Lenin, “What the “Friends of the People” Are (1894), LCW, Vol.
1,
p. 153.
40. K. Marx and F. Engels, Sobranie sochinenii, Vol. 4, p. 209.
41. G. Shershenevich, The General Theory of Law (1911), Vol. 4, St. Petersburg, p. 768.
42. E. B. Pashukanis, The General Theory of Law and Marxism (1924), see this volume p. 59.
43. F. Engels and K. Kautsky, “Juridical
Socialism” (1887), Politic’s and Society,
Vol. 7, no. 2, 1977, pp. 199‑220,
at p. 204, translated
and introduced by P. Beirne.
44. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology (1845‑1846), op.
cit., p. 385‑[eds. 1
45. K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1847‑1848),
MESW, Vol. 1, pp. 110‑111.
46. Revolution of Law: Collection 1 (1925), p.
3.
47. E. B. Pashukanis (1924), op. cit. see present volume p. 62.
48. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917), op. cit. p. 471.
49. P. I.
Stuchka, A Course on Soviet Civil Law
(1927), op, cit. pp. 192‑193.