Karl Marx's dialetics and the Marxist criticism of law/ A dialetica de Karl Marx e a critica marxista do direito.

AutorCasalino, Vinicius

"Although this is no more than a mere repetition of the production process on the same scale, this mere repetition or continuity imprints upon the process certain new characteristics or, rather, dissolves the apparent characteristics which it exhibited when it proceeded in isolation."

Karl Marx.

Introduction

One of the great merits of Pachukanis, recognized by almost all of those who have gone into General theory of law and Marxism, is the methodological rigor with which he proceeded the critical analysis of the main categories that form the general theory of law. (1) This characteristic can be detected, evidently, already in the essential nucleus of his thought, which consists in the original approximation between the form of law and the form of the commodity. (2) Thus, instead of placing its analysis in the relatively abstract context of the relations between infrastructure and superstructure, understanding law as a mere ideological expression (3), or introducing juridical form, abruptly, in the context of class struggle, Pachukanis follows the methodological steps of Marx and associates the law to the commodity, that is, to the elementary form of wealth in the capitalist mode of production. With this, he unveils the mythical figure of the legal subject, central element to the general theory of law, discovering its concrete origin in the "guardians of the commodities", that is to say, in the people urged to take their values of use to the market to make the exchange.

Besides a substantial concern with methodological problems, which led him to the critical analysis of the categories that form the general theory of law in the light of the Marxian presentation in Capital, Pachukanis demonstrates a formal concern as well, as he reserves a chapter of his work for the presentation of the methods of constructing the concrete in the abstract sciences. (4) Based on the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, a Marx's text rarely used at the time, the Russian author points out three fundamental questions: first, the importance of starting from the simple to the complex, from the pure form to the more concrete, so that, in the case of the juridical science, the State is a point of arrival and not of departure; second, the need of considering that the concepts that the social science uses have a history, that is to say, they are not forms of thought created by the human mind, but correspond to precise and historically delimited social relations--as, for example, the concept of value, of law, etc .; and finally, the Marxian observation that the understanding of the meaning of past social formations is given through the analysis of later, and therefore more developed, configurations, such as capitalist society. (5)

Although Pachukanis's work has meant a monumental advance in methodological concerns within the Marxist critique of his time (6), there is now a certain "paradox." Curiously, even the Marxist tradition that was formed in the wake of General Theory of Law and Marxism, failed in making significant progress on methodological issues. The notes drawn up by the Russian author were taken as correct, adequate, and above all, sufficient, and no further notes were made. Thus, central categories of the Pachukan apparatus, such as the figure of the subject of law, the pre-eminence of private law vis-a-vis the public, the extinction of juridical form, etc., are taken in a relatively uncritical (7) way, without any major concern with regard to a necessary and indispensable critical-methodological evaluation of Pachukanis's own theory. The result could not be more disheartening: the Marxist approaches to law have entered a vicious circle, within which they remain "spinning" about aspects constantly reiterated and ruminated to exhaustion.

The purpose of this article is to draw attention to this problem which has been overlooked by the Marxist critique of law: questions concerning the elucidation of the "method" used by Marx, and which require a necessary analysis of the particular contours of his dialectic, have not yet been duly solved in other "fields" of Marxism, such as philosophy, economics, politics, etc., to be given as definitively "solved" and set aside. On the contrary, this work is still ongoing and the Marxist approaches in the ambit of law can not afford to simply ignore it. For this reason, the object of this analysis comprises a part of the set of researches that have been developed around the Marxian dialectic, with the aim of identifying certain elements that are peculiar to it. The hypothesis maintained is that the Marxist critique of law needs to incorporate into its field of interests the problematics of the Marxian method, otherwise it will be stuck in constantly reiterated categories, or, worse still, it will lose itself in a radical eclecticism of premises, methods and conclusions so disparate that they approach dangerously the postmodern approach, so in vogue in traditional theory. Therefore, an analytical clipping of Book I of Capital was established, which consists precisely of the presentation of the conversion of the laws of mercantile property into laws of capitalist appropriation. In the light of this passage, the conceptual meaning of the form of private capitalist property in Pachukanis was analyzed, in order to testify to what extent his point of view approaches more or less the Marxian perspective. The conclusion points to a certain methodological insufficiency of the Pachukanian analysis. Finally, the method used can be none other but Karl Marx's dialectical-materialist one, whose fundamental features are incorporated in Capital.

  1. (Ancient) Problems of Marx's dialectics

    The problems related to Karl Marx's dialectic are ancient. Already in the afterword to the second edition of his great work, in 1873, the author affirmed: "The method applied in Capital was little understood, as already shown by the contradictory interpretations that were presented about the book" (MARX, 2013, p. 88, 1962, p.25). Equally ancient are the attempts to approximate his method to that of Hegel. At the same occasion, in a tone of complaint, he remarks: "The German commentators naturally cry out against the Hegelian sophistry" (MARX, 2013, p.88; 1962, p.25). Since always, however, the author struggles to claim the autonomy of his dialectical method. After mentioning extracts from a critique of Capital, he observes: "In describing so correctly my true method, as well as the personal application I make of the latter, what else did the author do but describe the dialectical method?" (MARX, 2013 , p.90, 1962, p27, my italics).

    After a period of relative "disinterest," in which strictly "economic" debates over Marx's work prevailed, "philosophical" subjects returned to the scene, especially through the substantial studies elaborated by Karl Korsch (2008) and Georg Luckacs (2003), published in the 1920s (8). However, if, on the one hand, they were engaged in the rescue of the dialectics, especially with regard to a necessary reincorporation of Hegel into the Marxist debate, on the other, they failed in facing, in a detained and rigorous way, the complex issues posed by the challenge of unraveling the conceptual contours of a specifically Marxian dialectic. This one, in turn, far from antagonizing or repelling the analysis of economic forms, presupposes them as constitutive elements of its own way of being. In this sense, it doesn't seem like an exaggeration to affirm the important role played by Isaak Illich Rubin (1987), in presenting, also in the 1920s, the Marxian theory of value in a non-autonomous way.

    However, a few years would have to pass, still, so that a more accurate rescue of the relations between economics and dialectics in Marx's thought would come to light. In the mid-1950s, Roman Rosdolsky (2001) focuses on the Grundrisse (MARX, 2011) to extract from there important indications of how the Marxian method is structured, especially with regard to the intimate relations it maintains with Hegel's Logic. (9) In doing so, Rosdolsky deals with specifically "economic" themes (money, capital, etc.), which are, after all, the very object of Marx's "draft." However, it is only from the 1960s onwards, perhaps due to a welcome departure from academic studies in relation to the political vicissitudes of the time, that emerges in the intellectual Marxist scene a "new reading" of Marx, whose objective is to face certain challenges linked to the interpretation of the Marxian work in a relatively autonomous way, without giving the "official" interpretations until then established an account.

    This "new horizon" gave rise to a more direct confrontation with the problems concerning the dialectical method that Marx "applied" to the economic questions. Helmut Reichelt, one of the exponents of this "new reading", captured the problem in a perspicacious way:

    In the meantime the interest has been turning more and more to Marx's late work, but it seems that not one step closer to the expected clarification of methodological problems has been reached. Neither did Rosdolsky's commentary change much in this regard. Although he says that exactly the Draft shows us how much the "structuring of Marx's Capital is dialectical from beginning to end," it is, after all, nothing more than an assertion. One of the weaknesses of his book consists especially of the fact that it only draws attention to the use of Hegelian categories and, in the same breath, reproduce almost without commentaries whole passages that are distinguished by their highly speculative formulations and, therefore, extremely lacking in interpretation. This naturally gives rise to the question if Rosdolsky would not have equally incurred the superficiality he censured; if--although he affirms this--he has really abandoned the position he sees in the dialectics present in Capital only a stylistic ingredient that remains external to the subject treated...

Para continuar a ler

PEÇA SUA AVALIAÇÃO

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT