Abstract
The analysis of the relations of production as relations between economic agents (both individual and collective) has raised various issues whose implications require further exploration. The analysis of the relations of production as affecting the relative capacities of economic agents, capacities which can change as a result of struggle between agents, has raised the issue of the political determinants of the relations of production. These political conditions are important if one treats the relations between agents as being themselves partly political.
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Notes
P. Hirst, On Law and Ideology, Macmillan, London, 1979, ch. 5.
E. B. Pashukanis, Law and Marxism: A General Theory, Ink Links, London, 1978.
Edelman is a French lawyer whose book on French photographic copyright law was translated by E. Kingdom with an introduction by P. Hirst: B. Edelman, Ownership of the Image: Elements for a Marxist Theory of Law, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1979.
This forms chapter 4 of P. Carlen and M. Collinson (eds), Radical Issues in Criminology, Martin Robertson, London, 1980.
Pierre Lavigne and Marie Lavigne, Regards sur la Constitution Soviétique de 1977, Economica, Paris, 1979.
For a brief account of the Lavignes’ work, see G. Littlejohn, ‘The Soviet Constitution’, Economy and Society, vol. 9, no. 3, August 1980.
For an English-language version of both the draft and final versions of the 1977 Constitution, see W. Butler, The Soviet Legal System: Selected Contemporary Legislation and Documents, Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law, Columbia University, New York, 1978.
J. Hazard, W. Butler and P. Maggs, The Soviet Legal System, 3rd edn, Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law, Columbia University, New York, 1977.
J. F. Hough and M. Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed, Harvard University Press, 1979, ch. 10 ‘The Institutional Actors’.
The adequacy of such approaches have been challenged in P. Hirst, ‘Economic Classes and Polities’, in A. Hunt (ed.), Class and Class Structure, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1978; and in
B. Hindess, ‘Classes and Politics in Marxist Theory’, in G. Littlejohn, B. Smart, J. Wakeford and N. Yuval-Davis (eds), Power and the State, Croom Helm, London, 1978.
For an account and critique of such approaches, see B. Hindess, ‘Marxism and Parliamentary Democracy’, in A. Hunt (ed.), Marxism and Democracy, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1981.
J. F. Hough, The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory, Harvard University Press, 1977, p. 112.
The concept of an ‘advanced socialist society’ is also discussed by M. Lavigne, ‘Advanced Socialist Society’, Economy and Society, vol. 7, no. 4, November 1978.
B. Hindess, ‘Democracy and the Limitations of Parliamentary Democracy in Britain’, in Politics and Power 1, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1980.
S. White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics, Macmillan, London, 1979, ch. 8.
This book elaborates the argument which can be found in S. White, ‘The USSR: Patterns of Autocracy and Industrialism’, in A. Brown and J. Gray (eds), Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States, 2nd edn, Macmillan, London, 1979.
A. Brown, ‘Political Developments: Some Conclusions and an Interpretation’, in A. Brown and M. Kaser (eds), The Soviet Union since the Fall of Khrushchev, Macmillan, London, 1975, p. 248.
A. H. Brown, Soviet Politics and Political Science, Macmillan, London, 1974.
In the first place, Weber did not use the concept of ideal type in the same way in all his writings: see J. Rex, ‘Typology and Objectivity: A Comment on Weber’s Four Sociological Methods’, in A. Sahay (ed.), Max Weber and Modern Sociology, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1971.
Second, the main assumptions embodied in Weber’s concept of ideal type are highly questionable: see, for example, P. Q. Hirst, Social Evolution and Sociological Categories, Allen & Unwin, London, 1976.
Third, his use of the concept in his analysis of politics has been subjected to serious criticism: see, for example, A. Weights, ‘Weber and “Legitimate Domination”’, Economy and Society, vol. 7, no. 1, February 1978.
C. J. Friedrich and Z. K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Oxford University Press, 1965.
See G. Parry, Political Elites, Allen & Unwin, London, 1969;
and P. Thoenes, The Elite in the Welfare State, Faber, London, 1966.
The problems of such a position are more fully analysed in Hindess’s review of Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View, Macmillan, London, 1974:
see B. Hindess, ‘On Three-Dimensional Power’, Political Studies, vol. 24, no. 3, 1976.
I have already used the concept in G. Littlejohn, ‘State, Plan and Market in the Transition to Socialism: The Legacy of Bukharin’, Economy and Society, vol. 8, no. 2, May 1979.
J. F. Hough, ‘Policy-making and the Worker’, in A. Kahan and B. Ruble (eds), Industrial Labor in the USSR, Pergamon, New York, 1979.
G. B. Smith, ‘Socialist Legality and Legal Policy in the Soviet Union’, in G. B. Smith (ed.), Public Policy and Administration in the Soviet Union, Praeger, New York, 1980.
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© 1984 Gary Littlejohn
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Littlejohn, G. (1984). Law, State and Politics. In: A Sociology of the Soviet Union. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17358-7_5
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