Paschukanis versus Bloch – Sozialutopie und Rechtsform

Abstract

Bloch and Paschukanis have given a different answer to the question: What is law and what should happen to law in a socialist society? Paschukanis argues against Stalin’s order to create a specific socialist or soviet law and was killed for his dissident approach. He explained the thesis that law is a creation of exchange in capitalist societies, and that therefore socialist law, he declares, is an oxymoron. Forty years later Bloch came to an opposite result: to prevent servility and oppression in “socialist societies” of the eastern world the tradition of human rights should be conserved and developed, i.e. they should reflect the solidarity of the new post capitalist order. This debate is not only of historical interest, but represents a different approach to a theory of law and concerns the relation between social change and law as an instrument of this change.