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Marxist Legal Thought in Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Grzegorz Leopold Seidler
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Since World War II, Polish legal theory has focused principally on the sociological aspect of the law, dealing with its origin and social function. Detailed research and analytical studies have supplied information about which social groups have in the past influenced the enactment of legal norms, what their motives were, and what benefits they derived from these laws. As a result of this research the law lost its sacred character. It ceased to be thought of as something extraordinary and came to be regarded realistically as an instrument for the realization of the interests of those groups which had influenced the enactment of the law. This kind of research, however, proved to be insufficient and somewhat one-sided. Consequently, new problems are being considered, and, of these, three are receiving special attention: (1) the evaluation of positive law, (2) the relationship between legal consciousness and socialist consciousness (which might also be called Marxist consciousness), and (3) comprehensive legal research. All of these problems have practical implications for us which, I trust, justify a brief discussion of them here. Inasmuch as these problems are still being investigated and discussed, I will confine myself to mere presentation of them and mention of the efforts that have been made toward their solution.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1967 , pp. 382 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1967

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References

Grzegorz Leopold Seidler, rector of Marie Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, is a Polish legal philosopher and one of the leaders of the Marxist school of jurisprudence in Eastern Europe. This article was, in the main, written and translated into English in 1964. The final section, “Research on Polish Local Government,” was the subject of the author&s recent lecture tour of American universities, his second since 1960.

Born in 1913, Seidler received his legal education at Jagiellonian University in Krak6w, earning his doctorate in 1938. He also studied in Vienna and at Oxford. During his university years Seidler was active in the left-wing student movement in Poland and later joined the anti-Nazi resistance movement during World War II. From 1945 to 1950 Seidler held a research position at Jagiellonian University. In 1950 he became head of the Katedra of the Theory of State and Law of the Law Department of Marie Curie-Sklodowska University. He was appointed rector in 1959.

Seidler has published extensively on political and legal theory. A collection of his essays on the history of political ideas is to be published at an early date, in England, under the title The Emergence of the Eastern World (Oxford: Pergamon Press). His major work on jurisprudence, Doktryny prawne imperializmu (Krak6w), first published in 1957 with a second edition in 1961, is a critique of legal positivism, especially the main trends of twentieth-century “bourgeois” jurisprudence. Widely acknowledged as the outstanding Marxist analysis of modern “bourgeois” legal theory, the book has been translated into Russian, German, Czech, Ukrainian, and Hungarian.

Seidler has played a major role in the development of Polish Marxist jurisprudence, which he sees as divided into three phases: the critical, the theoretical, and the empirical. During the first phase, which began in the late 1940s, Polish jurists carried out a Marxist critique of “bourgeois” legal philosophy. Doktryny prawne imperializmu was among the major contributions to this effort (as were the works of Jerzy Wr6blewski and Jerzy Kowalski). The theoretical phase began in the late 1950s with the search for a “new model“ for Polish legal development. Seidler&s “Marxist Legal Thought in Poland” is an outline of his approach (other important participants in the “theoretical” discussion were Maria Borucka-Arctowa, Stanisiaw Ehrlich, Kazimierz Opatek, and Franciszek Studnicki). Polish Marxist jurisprudence is now in its empirical period. The various approaches developed after the rejection of the “bourgeois” legal models are now being tested in Poland. In the concluding part of the present essay Seidler describes the application of his approach, among others, to the subject of Polish local government (for other “empirical” studies, see the work of Adam Lopatka, Henryk Groszyk, Adam Podgorecki, and Sylwester Zawadzki).

In the broad context of Soviet and East European legal development, Seidler&s essay reflects the transition from legal positivism to what seems to be an emerging sociology of law. Teleological legal development, with its heavy dependence on coercion, is being rejected. Seidler&s essay indicates a perceptible shift to genetic legal development, with greater reliance on persuasion and consideration of “social facts a n d political behavior.” His genetic approach specifically incorporates the concept of “time,” a dimension of legal change previously ignored in Marxist jurisprudence. For Seidler, the normative purpose of Marxism will be realized after the slow conversion of “legal consciousness” (respect for legal rules) into “Marxist consciousness” (internalization of social norms). Ultimately, this would mean the gradual reduction of the role of compulsion in the social regulation of human behavior.Robert S. Sharlet, Union College.

Mr. Sharlet has styled and annotated the text of the article.

1 The author defines “consistency” as the properly phased relationship between existing objective reality and the application of alegal norm designed to correspond to and regulate it.—R. S. S.

2 The author uses the term “humanism” in the sense that the ultimate end of Marxism is the human being or the human personality and its dialectical relationship to society. —R. S. S.

3 The author uses the terms “socialist consciousness” and “Marxist consciousness” synonymously (see page 383). Both concepts are broader than “legal consciousness” in the sense that “political culture” is a broader concept than “legal culture” in the vocabulary of American political science.—R. S. S.

4 In this passage the “vanguard” is the Communist Party, the “ruling class” is the proletariat, and the “rest of the community” is the entire non-Party population.—R. S. S.

5 This is not a contradiction of Seidler's previous sentence. The only way in which the administrative structure (the central ministries) can exercise its authority is through thelocal councils. Hence, the executive officers of the councils simultaneously represent the central government while the administrative departments of the councils simultaneously serve as branch offices of the central ministries. This is consistent with Communist political and administrative theory, according to which the presidium of thelocal council is expected to fulfill the dual role of a representative and an administrative body.—R. S. S.

6 Heads of the departments of alocal council.

7 The National Unity Front consists of the Polish Workers Party, the United Peasant Party, and the Democratic Party, as well as social and professional organizations.