Меновая теория Е. Б. Пашуканиса: философско-теоретические основания

Российский юридический журнал. 2021. № 5. С. 37–46.

Bogatyrev G.

E. Pashukanis is known primarily as a radical Marxist and an author of the exchange theory of law. However, his contribution to the development of the ideas of the sociological positivist school of law is not given proper attention in modern doctrine. In his theory, Pashukanis combined Marxist and «bourgeois» approaches to law. However, unlike his colleagues, he did not try to reconcile these approaches, but, on the contrary, pushed them against each other. Pashukanis resolved the resulting conflict in favour of a sociological-positivist approach to law. This conclusion can be made on the basis of his critique of some key legal concepts: a legal norm, a subject of law, and an offence. Trying to reduce the phenomenon of law to the process of economic exchange, Pashukanis drew a line between law and economics and implicitly affirmed the autonomy of law. This circumstance prevented the further development of the Marxist foundations of his theory. The paradoxes of Pashukanis’ exchange theory can become for modern lawyers a source of arguments in favour of the autonomy of law in relation to economics, as well as in favour of the primacy of the content of social relations over their form.

Keywords: советское право, социологический позитивизм, марксизм, Marxism in Russia, exchange theory of law, sociological positivism, socialist law, меновая теория права