From Negt to Negri: A History of Pashukanian Theory — Carl Wilén

November 5, 2024 –
From Legal Form

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In 1973, German sociologist and ‘academic spokesman of the neo-Marxist left in the 1970s,’ Oskar Negt characterised the materialist theory of right as the stepchild of Marxist theory.^[1]With the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious that Negt’s intervention itself was part of an unparalleled development in Marxist theory, which had precisely the issue of right, rights and law as its common denominator. Another unifying element of this discussion was the central role granted to the thought of E. B. Pashukanis; negatively, in terms of his critique of formalism and instrumentalism; as much as positively, in terms of his theorization of right under capitalism. To substantiate the claim about the prominent status of Pashukanis in the late 1970s, it suffices to consider a vehemently anti-Pashukanian review from 1980 of a book on capitalism and the rule of law, edited by Robert Fine and others. Several of the chapters, the reviewer complains, are tainted by the ‘by now familiar … exultation of the work of Pashukanis’.^[2]

Moving forward some four decades to 2017, Antonio Negri published a new postface to an article from 1973 (the same year Negt’s article appeared). Negri – the prominent exception within the Franco-Italian theory strand which was largely characterized by its hostility to Pashukanis – argued that a second wave of interest in Pashukanis’ thought had emerged.^[3] Today, as we pay attention to the 100^th anniversary of the publication of The General Theory of Law and Marxism (1924), Negri’s appraisal has only gained in significance.

Considering the current state of discussions about Pashukanis, along with the impressive activity on the Legal Form blog, one must also refer to the two recent full volumes on Pashukanis, edited by Cosmin Cercel, Gian-Giacomo Fusco, and Przemysław Tacik.^[4] The status of Pashukanis could also be measured by noting the rise of ambitious critical assessments of various aspects of his work.^[5]Igor Shoikhedbrod and Rafael Khachaturian’s remarkable project of editing and translating various texts of Pashukanis and his interlocutors between 1917 and 1931 from Russian to English will appear in Brill’s Historical Materialism Book Series.^[6] To be sure then, the claim that the area of law and rights within Marxist theory is marginalised is no more defensible today than it was in the late 1970s.^[7]

It is important to acknowledge the two revivals of Pashukanis, so that we can begin to investigate the continuities and discontinuities between them. It also becomes possible to ask questions about the theoretical, political and strategic strengths and weaknesses that can be detected with the help of this comparison. In the present essay, I limit myself to a general outline of continuities and differences and to a closer investigation of a specific strength evident in both revivals, namely the way in which the difference between what Pashukanis called ‘logical deduction’ and ‘historical process’ has continued to play a significant role. Before addressing the issue of continuities and differences however, I will offer a few notes on the spatiality of the reception of Pashukanis, which is no less important than its temporality, (though more challenging to address due to language barriers).

Towards a Global History

Taking into account the contemporary reception of Pashukanis beyond the Anglosphere, one would reasonably conclude that the current debates are even more intensive today compared to the 1970s.^[8] Let me offer a few examples. To begin with, as I come from Sweden, I want to mention that Pashukanis was translated into Swedish from Russian for the first time in 2018 in an effort to revive and renew discussions about Marxism and law from the 1970s in the Scandinavian context.^[9] In German, several books from the last decades have delved deeply into the theoretical universe and genealogy of Pashukanis’ project.^[10] In Japan, Pashukanis has been available since 1930. From that point on, a dialogue among Japanese Marxists has taken place, stretching all the way to the present day.^[11] In French, The General Theory was reprinted in 2018, including a new postface that deals with the debates about Pashukanis in the French context.^[12] In Italian and Spanish, several books on Pashukanis have been published over the last years.^[13]

Although I could continue listing additional examples, I want to focus on a particularly important area of contemporary discussion about Pashukanis, notable for its intensity, scope, and diversity: the 25-year-old Brazilian reception and debate on Pashukanis. To provide an overview of the Brazilian Pashukanists, I rely entirely on the rich considerations and references shared with me by Thais Hoshika and Romulo Cassi Soares de Melo, both of whom have recently published books on Pashukanis in Portuguese.^[14]

An important catalyst for the Brazilian debates about Pashukanis was the 2000 publication of Márcio Bilharinho Naves’s book Marxismo e direito: um estudo sobre Pachukanis .^[15] Bilharinho Naves not only put Pashukanis on the agenda but also defended an interpretation of Pashukanis that involved a significant dose of Althusserianism, particularly in so far as the concept of overdetermination is concerned. In Marxismo e direito, the concept of overdetermination is used to counter critiques of Pashukanis for allegedly focusing too heavily on the circulation of commodities at the expense of production.

Since Bilharinho Naves, several authors have continued to expand and substantiate Althusserian approaches to Pashukanis. One of the most influential scholars to take up this Althusserian legacy is Celso Naoto Kashiura Jr., who published the book Sujeito de direito e capitalismo in 2014.^[16] Equally important among the Althusserians, Alysson Leandro Mascaro – who is not only influential as a Marxist within the academy, but also in public debates and on social media – has published several books that engage with Pashukanis from an Althusserian perspective. One of these books, Estado e forma política, was published in 2013.^[17] It is also worth mentioning in this setting that there is also a research group dedicated to labor law and the general theory of law and Marxism.^[18]

In addition to the Althusserian school of Pashukanis, two other distinct theoretical alternatives have emerged. On the one hand, Vitor Bartoletti Sartori has published several important articles on Pashukanis within the framework of Lukácsian theory.^[19] On the other hand, what Hoshika proposes can be termed an ‘Insurgent Law’ school of Pashukanis reception has materialised during the last years. For instance, authors such as Moisés Alves Soares and Ricardo Prestes Pazello have adopted concepts from Pashukanis and Pyotr Stuchka, which they translate – in the Gramscian sense – to address and prioritize the issues of praxis and normativity in communities and social movements.^[20]

To consider the strengths and weaknesses of all these different interpretations of Pashukanis beyond the Anglophone realm, would require large scale collaboration and translation projects. Here, I am content to conclude that when we discuss the continuities and ruptures in the Anglophone reception of Pashukanis, it is crucial to be aware of what is left out. From my point of view, this is not primarily important on account of justice, representation, or pluralism for the sake of pluralism. Instead, I believe it is essential to break down theoretical and linguistic barriers as pluralism can sharpen the focus of our arguments. In the long run, this outlook can hopefully inspire dialogue and clarify the differences and stakes in the reception of Pashukanis, highlighting their significance.

Continuities and Rupture

Coming back to Negri; he takes us some way on our path towards the questions about continuities and ruptures as well as about the dissemination of Pashukanis’ work in Western scholarly discourse in the 1970s more generally. Negri states that the cyclical pattern of interest in Pashukanis, marked by periods of resurgence and suppression, is readily discernible in his own intellectual trajectory. Following an initial engagement with Pashukanis’ ideas during the 1930s–1950s by scholars such as Kelsen, Hazard, Fuller, Schlesinger, and Korsch, Negri notes that there was a notable revival of interest in the 1970s among ‘dissident intellectuals’. Negt, Paul, Reich, Poulantzas, and Cossutta (none of whom wrote in English, which means we should not contrast the current state of heterogeneous reception with a past of English dominance) are names mentioned in Negri’s 1973 article .

It is within the latter historical setting that Negri situates his 1973 essay. He goes on to observe that the current resurgence of interest in Pashukanis’ ideas provokes the question, what motivates contemporary debates and research on his work? In his own answer, Negri is mainly interested in differences. The contemporary interest in Pashuaknis is no longer driven solely by curiosity, informational agendas (such as inquiries into the role of law in the Bolshevik revolution and its implications for the transition to communism), or polemical engagements (which often depicted Soviet law as either barbaric or emblematic of totalitarianism). Instead, he argues that it centres on the theoretical underpinnings of the ‘juridical discipline’ developed by Pashukanis and on its applicability to understanding international law, criminal law, and various other legal domains, while also addressing fundamental questions about the nature of law.

Negri’s conclusion is that the present resurgence of interest is grounded in an appreciation of the substantive contributions of Pashukanis’ theory. It is recognized that his materialist approach offers insights that may help navigate the contemporary challenges facing legal systems in a globalized world. The renewed attention to Pashukanis’ work reflects a recognition of its potential to offer conceptual clarity and solutions to the complexities confronting legal orders today.

While I agree with Negri’s assessment, it lacks detail. Moreover, it could be supplemented with a focus on continuities alongside differences between the two conjunctures of Pashukanis’ reception. It is decisive to begin by noting that the contemporary Marxist critique of right and the field of Marxism and law is part of an English language renaissance of Marxist theory and historiography in general (which also exists beyond the Anglophone area). This renaissance has most markedly appeared in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the contradictory movements we have seen since then, ranging from anti-austerity movements, Black Lives Matter, and climate justice to xenophobic authoritarianism.

Yet, the current surge of interest in Marxism also reaches back in time to the rise of the global justice movement around the turn of the millennium and the anti-war movement following George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’. Regardless of the specific origins, it is apparent today that the ‘crisis of Marxism’ – which began in the mid-1970s with the decline of the social movement wave of the 1960s, was reinforced by the collapse of the Communist regimes in 1989–1991, and was accompanied by ever deeper frictions and crises of accumulation of capital in the wake of the shift from the big boom after WWII to recurrent economic crises – now belongs to history.^[21]

It is in this specific setting that various contemporary Marxists have returned to Pashukanis. In addition to previous iterations, new topics include the theorization of international law, critiques of the limits of right and rights under capitalism, theorization of the relation between the abstract equality of the legal form and social difference (e.g. race and gender to social inequality more generally), as well as engagement with the historical and theoretical configurations between law, state and imperialism.^[22]

Logical Deduction vs. Historical Process

I want to posit that a specific continuity between the reception of Pashukanis in the 1970s and today is the legacy of the distinction between what Pashukanis calls the vantage point of ‘logical deduction’ or ‘dialectical development’ on the one hand, and the vantage point of ‘historical evolution’ or ‘historical process’ on the other hand.^[23] By making use of this distinction, Pashukanis aligns his concept of the legal form with the Hegelian difference between ‘time order’ and ‘logical order’, which, in turn, was reconceptualised by Marx as a difference between ‘logic’ and ‘natural history’.^[24] In the reception of Pashukanis, the difference between logical deduction and historical process has most often been conceptualised either using the terms ‘logic of capital’ and ‘class struggle’ or ‘logic’ and ‘history’.^[25]

Opting for the Hegelian language, one perspective addresses the logical order – or, to use another term from Marx’s third volume of Capital, the ideal average – of the legal form in capitalism in general. Here, the focus is on the location of the legal form within a given totality (e.g. capitalism). When considering the temporal order of the legal form, the attention shifts to the emergence of its constituent elements in a concrete sequence of events and processes in time and space. Importantly, in this context, the intentions, ideology, and actions of individual and collective actors, as well as causes, effects, and specific sequences of events and processes, clearly emerge as central. In contrast, when concentrating on the logical order or ideal average of the legal form under capitalism in general, the significance of these categories diminishes considerably. In this context, intentions, causes, and effects are less relevant, if at all.^[26]

Moreover, building on discussions within Hegelian Marxism, my own position here would be that the perspective of the logical order of the legal form under capitalism requires us to organise the different elements of the legal form with its simplest form of appearance.^[27] With each move of concretisation, the legal form gets transformed as the reconstruction takes into account more and more of its preconditions. Transitions from one moment to another, such as from the ‘legal form as such’ to the ‘legal form in relation to circulation of commodities’ are accomplished by efforts to reconstruct the ideal average of the legal form according to the provisional totality under consideration. Reconstruction is called for if it turns out that a category under consideration is limited, contradictory or unable to comprehend itself. While a moment, such as the relation between the legal form and the commodity form, may appear to be independent at first, it may also prove to be dependent on further moments.^[28]

Crucially, this represents a methodological procedure that differs from the Kantian conception of abstraction, which can sometimes be seen in discussions about Pashukanis; according to which we can use ‘very abstract concepts’ to ‘learn little in many things’ and ‘very concrete concepts’ to ‘learn much about few things’.^[29] Thus, the Kantian approach would suggest that the simplest determinations of the legal form are also the most essential for the differentia specifica of the legal form in comparison to other totalities of social formations.^[30] The Hegelian focus on the logical order of the legal form in contrast, begins the analysis and critique with the simplest category, which also turns out to be insufficient in so far as the differentia specifica of the legal form under capitalism is concerned. Thus, I propose that Pashukanian theory needs to be more Hegelian than Kantian, even though the Kantian problem of the essential elements of a specific phenomenon is undoubtedly important as a result of the analysis. Four additional elements are more significant than others in this context.

First of all, with the risk of being overly explicit, the logical order of the legal form is no less historically specific than its time order. Thus, the difference between the logical and temporal order is that they are historically specific in different ways, not that one of them would be ahistorical.

Moreover, one must beware of two extremes –which is sometimes the case in the debates about Pashukanis – when dealing with the distinction between the logical and temporal order, both of which, in my view, ought to be avoided. Fully collapsing the distinction between the logic and temporal order is only a less grave error than to conceptualise the two vantage points in terms of a binary opposition. Instead, given that we are interested in the legal form as part of the ideal average of the capitalist mode of production, we should initiate theorization and critique with the simplest abstraction of the ideal average of the legal form. Equally important, we should then continue by investigating its more concrete presuppositions, leading to a shift from the logical to the temporal order and, in the end, surpassing the distinction altogether.

Equally importantly; without the distinction between logic and temporal order of the legal form, it would not be possible to avoid the limits of formalist and instrumentalist theories of law.^[31] Instrumentalism is built on the tacit prioritisation of the temporal order. That is, when an instrumentalist reduces law to an instrument of elite actors, to its origins in the inequality of capitalist relations of power, to its functions, or to its unequal effects, the time order of the legal form has been presupposed in terms of a perspective that privileges intentions, ideology and actions of individual and collective actors as well as causes, effects and specific temporal sequences of events and processes. In contrast, formalism is built on a prioritisation of the logical order. To the extent that a formalist theory of law involves an assumption that politico-legal ideals as measures of what ought to be in a critique of what is, the logical order of the legal form has been presupposed in terms of a perspective that brackets historical and spatial difference. In contrast to the Pashukanian focus on the logical order or the ideal average of the legal form in capitalism though, the formalist theory of law disregards historical specificity altogether.

A final point; contrary to some critics of the legacy of Pashukanis, it seems clear to me that the distinction between logic and history has not, at least not generally speaking, resulted in ‘theoreticism’ or a ‘prison-house’ of abstractions that makes the concept of the legal form irrelevant to historiographic, political, or strategic issues.^[32] On the contrary, as I demonstrated above, in so far as the contemporary reception is concerned, it has been deeply rooted in concrete historico-political issues of the current conjuncture. Similarly, from the Pashukanis debates in the 1970s, one can mention the common double-edged critique of Stalinism and Social Democratic reformism, as well as the simultaneous critique of ultra-leftist rejections of the rule of law on the one hand and alliances with right-wing parties in defence of democracy and the rule of law on the other hand. Perhaps less known is the way in which several Marxist criminologists used Pashukanis to criticise what they called the philosophy of marginalization and its idealization of difference found in French post-structuralism on the one hand, and a reformist and progressivist belief in the state on the other hand.^[33] In all these instances, interventions into concrete historical, political and strategical issues has been accomplished not despite but precisely because of an active engagement with the distinction between logic and history.

Concluding Remarks

To sum up, the Marxist critique of right in general, and the debates about Pashukanis in particular, constitutes a vibrant contemporary field of theoretical, historical and strategic discussions. Today, it is both possible and desirable to distinguish between an original wave of Pashukanis debates from the 1960s and 1970s, and a contemporary renaissance. By doing so, a discussion about continuities and rupture, as well as strengths and weaknesses, becomes possible.

What I have accomplished in this short essay is not much more than identifying some tracks that such a discussion could follow. Nonetheless, in engaging with the debates from the 1960s and 1970s and contemporary interventions, the difference – or rather the relationship – between the logical and temporal order of the legal form deserves a prominent position. Moreover, one could hope that such a discussion would also be able to include a substantial engagement with the reception of Pashukanis beyond the English-speaking world.

Carl Wilén is a postdoctoral fellow at the Division of Human Rights Studies, Department of History, Lund University, Sweden. In his postdoctoral project, he theorizes the relation between the legal form and the Haitian Revolution. Recent publications include, ‘Formalism and Instrumentalism in the Marxist Critique of Right: With What must Pashukanian Theory Begin?’, Rethinking Marxism (forthcoming 2024); ‘Why Pashukanis was Right: Abstraction and Form in The General Theory of Law and Marxism‘, Capital & Class (2023); ‘Rethinking the Haitian Turn: Beyond the Universality Paradigm and Its Enemies’, Global Intellectual History (2023).

[1] Oskar Negt, “Thesen Zur Marxistischen Rechtstheorie”, Kritische Justiz 6, no. 1 (1973). For the description of Negt’s status in the 1970s, see Sonja Buckel, Subjectivation and Cohesion: Towards the Reconstruction of a Materialist Theory of Law (Brill, 2020 [2007]), 111. This essay is based on a talk given at the conference “Pashukanis@100: Legacies and Future Directions”, held on the 11th and 12th January 2024 at Queen Mary University of London. Thanks once again to the organisers – Tanzil Chowdhury, Rob Knox, Eva Nanopoulos and Fernando Quintana – for inviting me and for two wonderful days in London.

[2] See Kelvin Jones, “Review”, British Journal of Law and Society 7, no. 2 (1980).

[3] Antonio Negri, “Rereading Pashukanis: Discussion Notes”, Stasis 5, no. 2 (2017 [1973]).

[4] See Cosmin Cercel, Gian-Giacomo Fusco and Przemysław Tacik (eds.), Legal Form: Pashukanis and the Marxist Critique of Law (Routledge, 2024); Cosmin Cercel, Gian-Giacomo Fusco and Przemysław Tacik (eds.) Legal Form and the End of Law:Pashukanis’s Legacy (Routledge, 2024).

[5] See e.g. Igor Shoikhedbrod, Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality and Rights (Springer, 2019); Maïa Pal, Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

[6] The volume has the tentative title The Revolution of Law: Developments in Soviet Legal Theory, 1917-1931. For the two most recent articles in English that engage with Pashukanis, see: Andrew Woodhouse, “Commodity-form theory of law, the climate crisis, and the European Union”, Transnational Legal Theory (e-publication ahead of print, 2024); Suzana Rahde Gerchmann, “Between Consumption and Liberation – A Critical Analysis of Women’s Legal Trajectory of Emancipation, Regulation and Gender Pricing”, Australian Feminist Law Journal (E-publication ahead of print, 2024).

[7] For a discussion about the contemporary reception of Pashukanis, see Carl Wilén, “Why Pashukanis was Right: Abstraction and Form in The General Theory of Law and Marxism”, Capital & Class (published online on 14 December 2023); on the Franco-Italian theory strand, see Buckel, Sibjectivation and Cohesion, 131–134.

[8] To be clear, this is not meant to suggest that debates about Pashukanis in the 1970s were confined to the English language.

[9] To be more precise, it was chapter 4 of The General Theory that was translated into Swedish from the Russian original, and included in a special issue of the left-wing theory journal Fronesis on the theme of property, see: Jevgenij Pasjukanis, “Varan och subjektet”, Fronesis no. 68–69 (2018).

[10] See e.g. Andreas Harms, Warenform und Rechtsform: zur Rechtstheorie von Eugen Paschukanis (Nomos, 2000); Sonja Buckel, Subjektivierung und Kohäsion: Zur Rekonstruktion einer materialistischen Theorie des Rechts (Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2007); Daria Bayer, Tragödie des Rechts (Duncker & Humblot, 2021); Linda Lilith Obermayr, Die Kritik der marxistischen Rechtstheorie: Zu Paschukanis’ Begriff der Rechtsform (Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2022).

[11] For the debates about Pashukanis in Japanese, I build on a paper presented by Shibuya Kenjiro, who is based in the Waseda University in Japan, at the conference “Pashukanis & the Critique of Right in the Twenty First Century” in Lund, 26^th–27^th October, 2024: “Japanese Marxism and Pashukanis: Toward a Renewal of the Commodity Exchange Theory of Law”.

[12] See Evgueni Bronislavovitch Pachoukanis, La théorie générale du droit et le marxisme (Editions de l’Asymétrie, 2018). The postface – “Penser la réalité du droit avec E.B Pašukanis” – is written by Léon Loiseau. See also several articles related to Pashukanis in the following special issue: “Marx et le droit”, Droit & philosophie 10 (2018).

[13] In Spanish, see e.g. Carlos Rivera Lugo and Oscar Correas Vázquez, El comunismo jurídico (Ceiich-Unam, 2013); Carlos Rivera-Lugo, La rebelión de Edipo y otras insurgencias jurídicas (Editciones Callejón, 2004); in Italian, see e.g. Carlo Di Mascio, Note su “Hegel. Stato e diritto” di Evgeny Pashukanis (Phasar Edizioni, 2020).

[14] See Thais Hoshika, Pachukanis e a forma jurídica: contribuição à crítica da teoria geral do direito [Pachukanis and the Legal Form: Contribution to the Critique of the General Theory of Law] (LavraPalavra, 2022); Romulo Cassi Soares de Melo, Dinheiro e formas sociais [Money and Social Forms] (LavraPalavra, 2023). Thanks once again to both of you for stimulating discussions and for providing me with a selection of references to the Brazilian Pashukanis debates!

[15] Márcio Bilharinho Naves, Marxismo e direito: um estudo sobre Pachukanis (Boitempo, 2000). [Marxism and Law: A Study on Pashukanis]

[16] Celso Naoto Kashiura Jr., Sujeito de direito e capitalism (Outras Expressões/Dobra Universitário, 2014.) [Legal Subject and Capitalism]

[17] Alysson Leandro Mascaro, Estado e forma política (Boitempo, 2013). Another scholar who has published a book in Portuguese who should be mentioned here, alongside his work on Pashukanis in Spanish, is Carlo Rivera-Lugo: Crítica à economia política do direito (Editora Ideias e Letras, 2019). [State and Political Form]

[18] See e.g. Flávio Roberto Batista, “O conceito de ideologia jurídica em Teoria geral do direito e marxismo: uma crítica a partir da perspectiva da materialidade das ideologias [The concept of legal ideology in The general theory of law and Marxism: a criticism from the perspective of the materiality of ideologies]”, Verinotio no. 19 (2015).

[19] See e.g. Vitor Bartoletti Sartori, “Lukács e Pachukanis diante da gênese do Direito e da forma jurídica [Lukács and Pachukanis Towards the Genesis of Law and Juridical Form]”, Questio Iuris no. 4, vol. 16 (2023).

[20] See e.g. Moisés Alves Soares, “Por um Pachukanis Insurgente: elementos de uma outra recepção da obra Teoria Geral do Direito e Marxismo” [For an Insurgent Pachukanis: Elements of Another Reception of the Work General Theory of Law and Marxism], Boletim Lua Nova (2023); Ricardo Prestes Pazello, “Direito Insurgente: Fundamentações Marxistas desde a América Latina [Insurgent Law: Marxist Foundations from Latin America], UERJ (2018). The names mentioned in this brief overview could be complemented with several others. For instance, among the Althusserian interpretations, one could mention Marcus Orione, Julia Lenzi, Pablo Biondi and Pedro Davoglio. In the vicinities of the Lukáckian scholars, one could also include Vinicius Casalino, Guilherme Leite Gonçalves and Cesar Mortari Barreira. Most of them can be found in an 800-pages edited volume from 2015: Celso Naoto Kashiura Jr., Oswaldo Akamine Jr. and Tarso de Melo (eds.), Para a crítica do direito: Reflexões sobre teorias e práticas jurídicas (Dobra, 2015).

[21] On the diagnosis of the “crisis of Marxism” and renaissance of Marxist theory and historiography in the wake of the financial crisis, see e.g. Alex Callinicos, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Lucia Pradella, “Introduction”, in Routledge Handbook of Marxism and Post-Marxism, ed. Alex Callinicos, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Lucia Pradella (Routledge, 2021), 1; Stathis Kouvelakis, “Beyond Marxism? The ‘Crisis of Marxism’ and the Post-Marxist Moment”, in Routledge Handbook of Marxism and Post-Marxism, ed. Alex Callinicos, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Lucia Pradella (Routledge, 2021), 338–340. See also Paul O’Connell and Umut Özsu, “Introduction to the Research Handbook on Law and Marxism”, in Research Handbook on Law and Marxism, ed. Paul O’Connell and Umut Özsu (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021), 1.

[22] See e.g. Susan Marks, “Empire’s Law”, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 10, no. 1 (2003): 454–457, 464–465; China Miéville, Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law (Brill, 2005); Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano, “Race, Real Estate and Real Abstraction”, Radical Philosophy 194 (2015): 8, 14; Brenna Bhandar, Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership (Duke University Press, 2018), 96–100, 105; Buckel, Subjectivation and Cohesion; Robert Knox, “Valuing Race? Stretched Marxism and the Logic of Imperialism”, London Review of International Law 4, no. 1: 81–126; Rob Hunter, Rafael Khachaturian and Eva Nanopoulos, Marxism and the Capitalist State: Towards a New Debate, (Routledge, 2023).

[23] Evgeny Pashukanis, The General Theory of Law and Marxism (New Brunswick: Transaction Publichers, 2009 [1924]), 71, 114; see references to the introduction found in Marx’s Grundrisse in Pashukanis, General Theory, 67

[24] G.W.F. Hegel, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right (Oxford University Press, 2008 [1820]), 48; see also G.W.F. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences with the Zustze (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991 [1830]), 52, 237; G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (George Allen & Unwin, 1969 [1812–1816]), 70, 77; Stephen Houlgate, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity (Purdue University Press, 2006), 83–88; Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Penguin, 1993 [1857–1858]), 107,

[25] For an example of the former couple, see e.g. John Holloway and Sol Picciotto, “Introduction: Towards a Materialist Theory of the State”, in State and Capital: A Marxist Debate (Edward Arnold, 1978), 29; for an example of the latter couple, see Miéville, Between Equal Rights, 96–97

[26] This paragraph is based on Wilén, “Why Pashukanis was Right”.

[27] Again, see Wilén, “Why Pashukanis was Right”.

[28] For a much more elaborated discussion, see Christopher J. Arthur, The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital (Brill, 2004), 7, 24–27, 66–67, 83, 120; Christopher J. Arthur The Spectre of Capital (Brill, 2022), 10; Patrick Murray, The Mismeasure of Wealth: Essays on Marx and Social Form (Brill, 2016), 438.

[29] Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Logic (Cambridge University Press, (2004 [1800]), 597.

[30] I see now that I could have expressed this point more clearly in ”Why Pashukanis was Right”.

[31] For more details, see Wilén, “Why Pashukanis was Right”.

[32] For the critique of abstract theory in the fields of left-wing international law and in the Pashukanis reception, see e.g. Peter Binns, “Review Article: Marxism and Law”, Capital & Class 4, no. 1 (1980), 112; Akbar Rasulov, “‘The Nameless Rapture of the Struggle’: Towards a Marxist Class-Theoretic Approach to International Law”, Finnish Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 19 (2008).

[33] For these particular examples, see Robert Fine, Richard Kinsey, John Lea, Sol Picciotto and Jock Young (eds.) Capitalism and the Rule of Law (Hutchinson & Co, 1979).

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