Panopticon posted:

rule of law lets us predict whether our actions will result in violence from the state or not

u mispelled "material analysis and common sense"

Having repealed the laws of the deposed governments, the Party gives the judges elected by Soviet electors the slogan: enforce the will of the proletariat, apply its decrees, and in the absence of a suitable decree; or if the relevant decree is inadequate, take guidance from your socialist sense of justice, ignoring the laws of the deposed governments.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/x02.htm

what exactly is a socialist sense of justice? Well, the Cultural Revolution took this idea even further

In order to simplify,
improve and transform the structure which was not suitable to a socialist economic
basis, and to simplify the procedure in the jurisdictional sphere for the convenience of
the masses", the functions and powers of the original public security organs and courts
were greatly contained, and the procuracy was even abolished with its functions and
its powers were transferred to the public security agency.98 In December 1968,
simultaneous with the dismantling of the procuracy, it was proposed that the other two
Central organs, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (neiwubu) and the Office of Internal Affairs (neiwuban), be abolished as well, while the Ministry of Public Security and
the Supreme Court only kept very few staff.99 Mao and Xie Fuzhi strongly argued
that it was not a good method to arrest people; that the government, the public
security organs, and the army should arrest as few people as possible; and that arrests
should be done on the demands and with the aid of the masses. As for the few bad
people, it was better to have them arrested by the masses themselves, not by the state
organs of dictatorship.100 Mao called this principle the “dictatorship of the masses”
(qunzhong zhuanzheng).101 He explicitly said that: “the dictatorship should be the
dictatorship of the masses

To expound the efficiency of the dictatorship of the masses, Xu
Jingxian gave an example of a wrongdoer in a Shanghai unit who asked the public
security force to arrest him because he could not bear the all-around supervision of the
masses.104 Of course, for the wrongdoers who were willing to reform themselves, the
masses would be willing to help at any time. In such a way, the amount of money that
had been spent in the past on the police, procuracy, and courts was greatly reduced.
More importantly, the crime rate was dramatically reduced. During the CR, under the
guidance of the thought of the dictatorship of the masses, in many places, including in
Shanghai, a large number of prisons were abandoned and a large portion of the
inmates were released to their original units and subject to the masses' supervision...The informal
process of dispute resolution enjoyed its heyday under Mao when the societal model
of law overshadowed the jural model

http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/2356/D_Jiang_Hongsheng_a_201005.pdf?sequence=1

it's sort of obvious that the withering away of the state is the withering away of the law (and thus the rule of law) but what this means in a concrete form is the interesting part for communists today. is socialist law simply the humanistic impulse of a socialist sense of justice, presumably differentiating between proletarian law and bourgeois law? is it simply the dismantling of legal structures layer by layer until only the state of administration (as Pashukanis calls it) remains? is it an entirely new form of mass law that is radically democratic? is it the preservation of the best aspects of bourgeois law, like innocent until proven guilty and habeas corpus, while eliminating the bad parts?

Stalin went both ways, strengthening the rule of law in the early 30s before the purges abandoned it entirely. And since Stalin was great, whatever he did is correct. So I'm inclined to believe that the rule of law serves as a useful fiction for the socialist state, though subordinate to the needs of socialism, until it is radically attacked and replaced with some kind of law of the masses.

littlegreenpills posted:

im also coming to the opinion that bothering to defend stalin against the scary propaganda your racist grandma cites on Pinterest is at best a waste of energy. there are a million different ways of being communist, capitalist, feudalist or whatever and, tis true, most of them suck

this is such a depressing post.

if you have no interest in how stalin is portrayed as a historical figure, fine, that's understandable, but if you consider yourself a communist, it's probably important to defend the historical record of communism against smears, since the number one line used to dismiss communism out of hand in the west is that it's always failed and a bunch of people died because of it.

it's also important to learn lessons from the past, what has worked well, what has caused problems etc, but it's kind of hard to do that if all you have to go on is the imperialist view of the past (and indeed present), which utterly demonises communism. what is to be learned from a history that claims communist leaders are all bloodthirsty thugs who kill billions of their own people etc?

so this really isnt about stalin as such, it's about applying the same scientific standards to history across the board and not leaving stalin in the too hard basket. becasue it's not about rehabilitating his fucking brand or something like this. if we want to learn about the actual soviet justice system and find what worked what didnt etc etc, maybe the go-to source isnt some populist anticommunist nonsense about how stalin was satan and american diplomats should have stood up to him more. i mean what the fuck people.

Panopticon posted:

it's sort of obvious that the withering away of the state is the withering away of the law (and thus the rule of law)

no it's not. in the marxist tradition the state is the instrument by which one class oppresses the other classes.

and how does anyone get away with unjust oppression? by legalizing it

babyhueypnewton posted:

Panopticon posted:
it's sort of obvious that the withering away of the state is the withering away of the law (and thus the rule of law)
no it's not. in the marxist tradition the state is the instrument by which one class oppresses the other classes. therefore a classless society is by definition a stateless one because there is no class oppression.
this has nothing to do with law and government, which are aspects of the weberian definition of the state.


you'll have to expand on this, as far as I'm aware Weber's definition of the law is a legitimation of the state's monopoly of violence which would imply that the withering away of class terror under the dictatorship of the proletariat necessitates the withering away of the need for legitimation of this violence.

weber's definition isn't predicated on classes though. they are different traditions. an institution can be a state in the marxist sense but not in the weberian sense, or neither, or both

Panopticon posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

Panopticon posted:
it's sort of obvious that the withering away of the state is the withering away of the law (and thus the rule of law)
no it's not. in the marxist tradition the state is the instrument by which one class oppresses the other classes. therefore a classless society is by definition a stateless one because there is no class oppression.
this has nothing to do with law and government, which are aspects of the weberian definition of the state.


you'll have to expand on this, as far as I'm aware Weber's definition of the law is a legitimation of the state's monopoly of violence which would imply that the withering away of class terror under the dictatorship of the proletariat necessitates the withering away of the need for legitimation of this violence.

weber's definition isn't predicated on classes though. they are different traditions. an institution can be a state in the marxist sense but not in the weberian sense, or neither, or both

only because Weber's thought is incomplete. There are many different Marxist concepts of the law but I think Pashukanis is sufficient for what we are talking about (Weber and bourgeois law):

The state apparatus actually realizes itself as an impersonal “general will”, as “the authority of law” etc., to the extent that society appears as a market. In the market each seller and buyer is, as we saw, a legal subject par excellence. For the categories of value and exchange-value to appear on the stage, the prerequisite is the autonomous will of those engaging in exchange. Exchange-value would cease to be exchange-value, and a commodity would cease to be a commodity, if the exchange ratio is determined by an authority situated above the inherent laws of the market. Coercion, as the command of one person directed to another and supported by force, contradicts the basic assumption of exchange between commodity owners. Therefore, in a society of commodity owners the function of coercion may not appear as a social function, because it is neither abstract nor impersonal. Subordination to the person as such, to man as a concrete individual, signifies for commodity-producing society subordination to arbitrary power, because it corresponds to the subordination of one commodity owner by another. Even coercion, therefore, cannot appear here in its unmasked form as an act of expediency. It must appear as coercion proceeding from some abstract, general person, as coercion exercised not in the interest of the individual from whom it proceeds – for each person in commodity society is an egoist – but in the interest of all the participants in legal transactions. The authority of one person over another is exercised as the authority of law itself, i.e. as the authority of an objective impartial norm.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/1924/law/ch05.htm

Thus while the law manifests itself as legitimization of violence, this is only because of the violence inherent in the separation of exchange value from value and use value. Further, this acts in a 'legal' form because the equality of the law is the equality of the free market which is the ideological mystification of the inequality of the capitalist production process. Thus the disappearance of capitalism is the dissapearance of the law, as socialism eliminates both the ideological need for legal relations (replacing them with the direct relations of men) and the material conditions for its existence (the foundation of capitalist law -private law- loses its raison d'artre) .

Ironically, by defending socialist law and the rule of law you are agreeing with Stalin

However, this question was totally misrepresented in The General Theory of Law and Marxism. Law, state and morality were simply declared to be bourgeois forms which cannot be filled with a socialist content and which must wither away in proportion to the realization of such content. This grossly mistaken position, foreign to Marxism-Leninism, distorts the meaning of the proletarian state, distorts the meaning of proletarian communist morality, and distorts the meaning of Soviet law as the law of the proletarian state which serves as an instrument in the construction of socialism.

The real and concrete history of Soviet law as a weapon of proletarian policy – which the proletariat used at various stages to defend the conquests of the revolution and the reconstruction towards socialism – was replaced by abstract and mistaken conclusions about the withering away of law, about the “disappearance” of the legal superstructure etc.

Confused conclusions on the withering away of the “form of law”, as a phenomenon inherited from the bourgeois world, distracted from the concrete task of combating bourgeois influence and bourgeois attempts to distort Soviet legislation and Soviet law.

The theoretical position which initiated this anti-Marxist confusion was the concept of law exclusively as a form of commodity exchange. The relationship between commodity owners was asserted to be the real and specific content of all law. It is clear that the basic class content of every system of law – which consists in the ownership of the means of production – was consequently relegated to the background. Law was deduced directly from commodity exchange according to value; the role of the class state was therefore ignored, protecting the system of ownership corresponding to the interests of the ruling class.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/1936/04/statelaw.htm

I don't think Pashukanis was pretending in order to save himself from purges or anything but I do think he was mistaken to criticize himself. Anyway this brings up the contradictory character of the law in the USSR which is an interesting but complicated discussion.

Panopticon posted:

rule of law is essential for not living in terror of being executed by state representatives with no oversight

counterpoint: every single western liberal democracy that exists under "rule of law"
e: counterpoint: i am slower than BHPN

Panopticon posted:

i believe in justice, and the ussr under stalin was an unjust system which lacked democracy and rule of law. there is nothing to be gained by defending the purges (if the ussr were still around it might be worthwhile to protect its legitimacy in a kind of sickening utilitarian way) and lots to lose (by defending or glossing over an injustice you give the impression communists do not care about justice)

the american wars of imperialism can be opposed without even mentioning the ussr, let alone defending the injustices committed inside it

what are you hoping to do, wait around for the bourgeoisie to accept you or something?you gotta play hardball, pal...there's nothing sickening or utilitarian about defending the USSR, nor would there be if it still existed, . WHO gives a shit if a bunch of first worlders disapprove. Even communist parties who claim to luuuuurv Kommunismus in the U$A and Europe, hate, despise and loathe the ussr, let alone the fucking labor aristocracy and bourgeoisie of said regions. The impression that communists don't care about justice? What is this the fucken bill maher show?? communist movements aren't built on idealisations about bourgeois justice and who is its rightful defender, they're built on material shit, class conflict. Psssssh.

babyhueypnewton posted:

But all of that happens under the rule of law. That people are not regularly executed for communist beliefs in the legally 'sophisticated' west is because of the labor aristocratic character of their politics. Drones could easily be used on the American population given a serious enough challenge to capital, the rule of law only makes it more convenient to use it on brown people. The main function of the rule of law is ensuring the smooth functioning of the market, everything else is fiction which no one really believes in (even at a casual level people challenge parking tickets because they know the legal system is dysfunctional and overburdened).

western states lack rule of law in direct proportion to their tendency to murder their own citizens and terror bomb middle easterners. that's why i am a communist, because this is an outrage against common decency. it was just as much an outrage when stalin did it, but that's not as relevant to politics today.

Gibbonstrength posted:

.

to be clear i don't think you or anyone else in particular on this board is a sociopath, i was speaking rhetorically. i think most people here believe in the same moral ideas i do, which is why they have to shrug off obviously immoral acts (like the executions following the leningrad affair) with jokes and role-playing.

blinkandwheeze posted:

however anyone thinks society ought to be constructed is always going to be at odds with how society actually will be constructed, which is why the marxist position is almost exclusively concerned with the latter

there is materialism and then there is determinism. if our ideas have no role, first world labour aristocrats would all be neo-cons and neo-liberals. as it stands there are hundreds of thousands of first world communists and millions of socialists.

i don't believe there is no room for debate in the direction of society.

blinkandwheeze posted:

both moral and utopian arguments might convince in the short term but they are fundamentally duplicitous and will always fall short.

every argument is a moral argument. every time you say "communists should do this if they want (a thing you desire)" or "the dictatorship of the proletariat needs to do that to accomplish (a thing you desire)" you are injecting your morals into the argument