The Concept of Socialist Law

• Part 1 The "withering away" of law and egoism; socialism and egoism; law and ideology; socialism and ideology; law and class rule; socialism and class rule. Part 2 Justice and the sources of socialist law: the natural law position; the legal positivist critique; socialist positivism; hard cases and the morality of law; praxis and the identification of law; the justice of law - the show trials, the comrades' courts, the parasite laws. Part 3 Freedom and the rule of law: capitalist freedom and the rule of law; capitalist domination and the rule of law; the rule of law and freedom under socialism; the rule of law under capitalism - three cases - the biases of the judiciary, access to legal representation, the enforcement agenda. Part 4 Human rights and political reform: the concepts of human rights; human rights in Marxist theory and practice; the positivist critique; natural rights and social justice; natural rights versus human rights; what human rights do we have? Part 5 Altruism and rights under socialist circumstances of justice: the circumstances of justice; legal rights in a Golden Age; law as a vehicle of altruism; altruism and self-interest; rights as trumps. Part 6 Self-government and the obligation to obey socialist law: obligation derived from consent; the radical alternative; a critique of the radical, participatory alternative - the case of the dissenting minority, the role of extenuating circumstances, the problem of the non-participants.

'this is a carefully written and cumulatively impressive discussion of law and socialism which goes a long way towards establishing that "socialist legality" is not necessarily a contradiction in terms'Times Literary Supplement