Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:11:19.808Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Jurist: Evgeny Pashukanis and Stalinism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2015

Michael Head
Get access

Extract

One question looms large in the early history of Soviet legal theory and practice: how and why did EvgenyPashukanis emerge as the pre-eminent Soviet jurist from 1924 to 1930, come under only minor criticism from 1930 to 1936 and then be denounced and executed in 1937 as a ‘Trotskyite saboteur’? Of course, Pashukanis was not alone. Virtually every leading figure associated with the October 1917 Russian Revolution and the early years of the Soviet Union fell victim to Stalin’s purges by 1937 (from Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin to thousands of less-known socialists). Yet, there are some particularly revealing aspects in the case of Pashukanis that have not been probed adequately by most Western or Soviet writers. His rise to leadership of Soviet legal work in 1924, with the publication of his The General Theory of Law and Marxism, coincided with Stalin’s initial victory over the Left Opposition and the enunciation of Stalin’s program of seeking to build ‘socialism in one country’. Pashukanis’ unexpected emergence from obscurity appears to be related to the fact that he publicly lined up against the Left Opposition as early as 1925. Pashukanis’ central theme in his General Theory, somewhat simplistically referred to as a ‘commodity-exchange’ theory of law, was related to the limited restoration of commercial property and market relations under the 1921 shift to the New Economic Policy. The dangers inherent in this temporary retreat became entrenched in Stalin’s bureaucratic elite after 1924. As discussed in this article, Pashukanis’ approach, which regarded commodity exchange as the essence of legal relations, to some extent reconciled Marxist theory with the official revival of economic relations based on private ownership and market forces.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , July 2004 , pp. 269 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Pashukanis’ main treatise was originally published in the Soviet Union in 1924. It was published in a new English translation, Pashukanis, , Law and Marxism, A General Theory, trans. Einhorn, Barbara (London: Inks Links, 1978)Google Scholar, which is the edition that will be cited (as Pashukanis) in this article.

2. Beirne, P. & Sharlet, R., eds., Pashukanis: Selected Writings on Marxism and Law (London: Academic Press, 1980) at 37.Google Scholar

3. Ibid. at 152.

4. Head, M., “The Passionate Legal Debates of the Early Years of the Russian Revolution” (2001) 14 Can. J. L. & Juris. 3 at 15–19.Google Scholar

5. On the defeat of the 1926-27 Chinese Revolution and its implications for Stalin’s usurpation of power, see Trotsky, L., The Third International After Lenin (London: New Park, 1974) at 127-76.Google Scholar

6. Beirne & Sharlet, supra note 2 at 194.

7. Ibid. at 364.

8. Ibid. at 305.

9. Kelsen, H., The Communist Theory of Law (London: Stevens, 1955)Google Scholar; Hazard, J., Soviet Legal Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951)Google Scholar; Fuller, L., “Pashukanis and Vyshinskii: a study of the development of Marxist Legal Theory” (1949) 47 Mich. L. Rev. 1159 Google Scholar; and Schlesinger, R., Soviet Legal Theory (London: Routledge, 1951).Google Scholar

10. Kamenka, E. & Tay, A., “The Life and Afterlife of a Bolshevik Jurist” (Jan-Feb 1970) Problems of Communism 72 Google Scholar; Arthur, C., “Towards a Materialist Theory of Law” (1976-77) 7 Critique 31 Google Scholar; Redhead, S., “The Discrete Charm of Bourgeois Law: A Note on Pashukanis” (1978) 9 Critique 113 Google Scholar; Beirne, & Sharlet, , supra note 2.Google Scholar

11. Beirne, & Sharlet, , supra note 2 at i.Google Scholar

12. Fuller, , supra note 9.Google Scholar

13. Kamenka, & Tay, , supra note 10.Google Scholar

14. Editor’s introduction to Pashukanis, supra note 1.

15. Ibid. at 9.

16. Warrington, R., “Pashukanis and the Commodity Form Theory” (1981) 9 Int. J. Social. L. 1 Google Scholar; also reprinted in Varga, C., Marxian Legal Theory (London: Dartmouth, 1993) 179.Google Scholar

17. Head, , supra note 4 at 19–23.Google Scholar

18. As explored later, Pashukanis did not deny the ideological and re Pressive aspects yet insisted that these were not fundamental but rather derivative of the social relations of production.

19. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 61.

20. Schlesinger, , supra note 9 at 92 and 149.Google Scholar

21. Editor’s introduction to Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 28.Google Scholar

22. Beirne, & Sharlet, , supra note 2 at 17.Google Scholar

23. Sharlet, R., “Pashukanis and the Rise of Soviet Marxist Jurisprudence, 1924-1930” (1974) 1 Soviet Union 112–15.Google Scholar

24. Beirne, & Sharlet, , supra note 2 at 17–18.Google Scholar

25. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 36.

26. Ibid. at 37.

27. Carr, E. H., The Interegnum 1923-1924 (London: Pelican, 1969)Google Scholar; Lewin, M., Lenin’s Last Struggle (London: Faber and Faber, 1969).Google Scholar

28. Beirne, P. & Sharlet, R., “Toward a General Theory of Law and Marxism: E. B. Pashukanis” in Beirne, P., ed., Revolution in Law: Contributions to the Development of Soviet Legal Theory, 1917-1938 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1990) 17.Google Scholar

29. See Lapenna, I., State and Law: Soviet and Yugoslav Theory (London: Athlone Press, 1964) 55 Google Scholar and 94n.

30. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 34.

31. Hazard, supra note 9 at 139.

32. Ibid at 131.

33. Ibid at 149.

34. Ibid. at 169.

35. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 112.

36. Pashukanis quotes a footnote by Engels: “This derivation of the modern ideas of equality from the economic conditions of bourgeois society was first demonstrated by Marx in Capital’’ Ibid. at 34 and Engels, F., Anti-Duhring (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978) at 130.Google Scholar

37. Engels, , supra note 36 at 130.Google Scholar

38. Ibid. at 131-32.

39. Pashukanis, , supra note 1 at 39.Google Scholar

40. Ibid. at 68.

41. Head, supra note 4 at 8-10.

42. Pashukanis, , supra note 1 at 41 Google Scholar. Marx’s words are from his Critique of the Gotha Program (New York: International, 1970) at 10.Google Scholar

43. Pashukanis, , supra note 1 at 58 and 81.Google Scholar

44. Zile, Z., Ideas and Forces in Soviet Legal Theory: Statutes, Decisions and Other Materials on the Development and Processes of Soviet Law (Madison, WI: College Printing & Publishing, Inc., 1970) at 215-19Google Scholar.

45. Hazard, , supra note 9 at 137.Google Scholar

46. Schlesinger, supra note 9 at 162.

47. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 61.

48. Ibid. at 61.

49. Ibid. at 62, quoting Marx, , Selected Works, vol. III (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970) at 18.Google Scholar

50. Lenin, , The State and Revolution (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970) at 138.Google Scholar

51. Ibid. at 139.

52. Jaworskyj, M., Soviet Political Thought—An Anthology (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins, 1967) at 137.Google Scholar

53. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 179.

54. Ibid. at 151.

55. Ibid. at 152.

56. Paton, H., trans. and ed., The Moral Law: Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals 3rd ed. (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1956) at 88.Google Scholar

57. Pashukanis, , supra note 1 at 154.Google Scholar

58. Ibid. at 155.

59. Ibid. at 158-59.

60. Stuchka, P. I., “Preface” The Revolutionary Part Played by Law and the State: A General Doctrine of Law, 3rd ed. (Moscow: 1924).Google Scholar

61. See Marx, K., “Preface” A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977).Google Scholar

62. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 44.

63. Ibid. at 44.

64. Ibid. at 45.

65. Weber, M., The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism (Glenco, IL: The Free Press, 1951) at 149.Google Scholar

66. See Kelsen, H., General Theory of Law and State, trans. Wedberg, A. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1961).Google Scholar

67. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 52.

68. Ibid. at 53.

69. Ibid. at 140.

70. Warrington, , supra note 16.Google Scholar

71. See Freeman, M., Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence, 7th ed. (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 2001) at 982-96Google Scholar.

72. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 133. See Warrington supra note 16 at 180.

73. Warrington, supra note 16 at 180.

74. Head, supra note 4 at 8-10.

75. Warrington, supra note 16 at 181; Sharlet, R., “Pashukanis and the withering away of law in the USSR” in Fitzpatrick, S., ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978) at 170.Google Scholar

76. Warrington, supra note 16 at 181.

77. Ibid. at 181.

78. Ibid.

79. Ibid. at 187.

80. Ibid at 194. Warrington refers to Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 170 and 110.

81. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 110.

82. Warrington, supra note 16 at 187.

83. For example, Engels, F., The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977)Google Scholar; Lafargue, P., The Evolution of Property from Savagery to Civilization and Social and Philosophical Studies (London: New Park Publications, 1975)Google Scholar. See also Macpherson, C., Democratic Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

84. R.|Schlesinger, supra note 9 at 152.

85. Marx, K., Capital, vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977).Google Scholar

86. Fine, B., “Law and class” in Fine, B. et al., eds., Capitalism and the Rule of Law: From Deviancy Theory to Marxism (London: Hutchinson, 1979) at 41.Google Scholar

87. S. Picciotto, “The theory of the state, class struggle and the rule of law” in Fine et al., eds., ibid. at 170.

88. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 100.

89. See generally Lenin, , Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970).Google Scholar

90. See Engels, F., Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Part III (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982).Google Scholar

91. Picciotto, supra note 87 at 170.

92. Marx, supra note 85 at Part 1.

93. Ibid at 164.

94. For instance, the 1998 waterfront dispute in Australia. See Davies, A. & Trinca, H., Waterfront: The Battle that Changed Australia (Sydney: Doubleday, 2000).Google Scholar

95. Stuchka, P., “My journey and my errors” in Zile, supra note 44 at 230.Google Scholar

96. Beirne & Sharlet, supra note 2 at 92.

97. Head, supra note 4 at 3.

98. Pashukanis, , “Exchange and Law” in Zile, supra note 44 at 235.Google Scholar

99. See, for example, Fine and Picciotto, supra note 86.

100. Warrington, supra note 16 at 192.

101. Head, M., supra note 4 at 8–9.Google Scholar

102. Warrington, supra note 16 at 194, citing Berman, H., Justice in the USSR: An Interpretation of Soviet Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963) at 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

103. Ibid. at 194.

104. Ibid. at 160.

105. Korsch, K., “An Assessment” in Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 189–95.Google Scholar

106. Pashukanis, supra note 1 at 175.

107. Warrington, supra note 16 at 197.

108. Freeman, supra note 71 at 984.

109. Ibid. at 984.

110. Pashukanis frequently cited Lenin’s The State and Revolution, where the necessity for the overthrow of the capitalist state was outlined.

111. Hazard, J., Settling Disputes in Soviet Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960) at vi.Google Scholar

112. Head, supra note 4 at 19-23.

113. Jaworskyj, supra note 52 at 4.

114. Head, supra note 4 at 23-27.