Jewgienij Bronisławowicz Paszukanis i jego marksistowska teoria prawa — kilka refleksji krytycznych
Critical remarks on Evgeny B. Pashukanis and his Marxist theory of law

Summary/Abstract: Evgeny B. Pashukanis (1891—1937) is noted as the most influential theorist of law in Soviet Russia. In his book The General Theory of law and Marxism, issued in 1924, 1925 and 1927, he defined law as a form expressing the real relation between people in process of production and exchange of goods: the form that reaches its highest level as the rule of law (Rechtsstaat), when it becomes a mirage, concealing the real and deep conflict of interests. Pashukanis was convinced that in communism any form of law would disappear because there would be no class conflict of interests. He also repeated the prophesy of Marx that capitalism would disappear, as expressed in The Communist Manifesto. That the prophesy is false and that history is not a science in the same way as physics was showed and criticised by Karl Raimund Popper. The reduction of rule of law to the expression of class interest only is false as well, because many legal regulations are not connected to economic interests. The thesis whereby law occurs only in bourgeois society surely led people ruling in Soviet Russia to contempt of any law, taking into account the fact that Pashukanis’s book was popular and used in education. Interestingly enough, the book was printed in Polish in 1985, with the commentary that provides a very instructive and important theory of law.

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