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Socialist Legal Systems: Reflections on Their Emergence and Demise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2019

Thomas H. Reynolds
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Extract

For a significant part of the twentieth century, the countries and nations of Eastern Europe were considered as belonging to the “socialist family of laws”. There is no great need to study this particular phase or concept in any detail for the simple reason that in recent years it has become clear that Marx and Trotsky were wrong. It is not capitalism that will be consigned to the dust-bin of history, it is Communism that is being consigned to the trash heap in 1991.

It should now be evident that a lot of wool has been pulled over a lot of eyes on the subject of “socialist law”. For years, scholars and practitioners—believed in the existence of an efficient or at least a workable and functioning collection of legal systems in Eastern Europe. These were all assumed to be based, in some respectable fashion or other, on the precepts of Marx and Engels, applying the Hegelian dialectic to arrive at the desired legal norms of the new society and implementing legislation to achieve this goal. Everyone then understood the Communists view of law as a political instrument which would shift societies to a final workers’ paradise.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Legal Information , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Winter 1992 , pp. 215 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by The Institute for International Legal Information 

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References

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