Memorandum on The Study of Soviet and Socialist Legal Legacies for The Construction of New Socialist Constitutional Law

24 August 2025.

What follows is not the official outline report on how to study socialist law, but the memorandum on why to do so, to what end, and where to potentially begin. Eventually, an outline report will be composed and published, but the time and requisite learning are still at this point premature.

Comrades, the study of law and the conception of a philosophy of law have hitherto the addressing of this memorandum, in conjunction with the announcement of New Socialist Constitutional Law and Renewed Socialist Legality, been unacceptably stillborn on the non-liberal influenced Left. Indeed, one could justifiably say that socialists have hitherto spoken about emancipating the world (from law); the point, however, is to govern it (through law).

What we are touching upon is a dialectical struggle that has permeated the Left since its very inception: are we a political party of revolution, seeking to start the world anew, or are we a governing party of statecraft, seeking to reform and reconstitute the world as it is? (A case of Da and Nyet!) I should cheekily, if ultimately erroneously, jest that whilst the former is the liberal, anarchist, and Leninist answer, the latter is the genuinely Marxist and Marxist-Leninist (Reform-Leninist) one! Let us not antagonise our comrades, for every ideology and tendency on the Left is not only welcomed, but is even implored to take up the development and debates of New Socialist Constitutional Law.

An anecdote in illustration of the sorry state of legal studies on the Left, if I may share. I was listening to The Regrettable Century YouTube channel, and I was personally appalled by the pessimistic post-modern assumption belying what was pronounced to be a socialist examination of law. We have as well Marxist Unity Group begaging in much the same, 'Fight[ing] the Constitution', not revolutionising or reconstituting it on a Marxist basis, even as a mere thought experiment (that would be heresy). If law is part of the super-structure, then certainly such a mental exercise cannot be precluded as useless in light of our abysmal failure to change the base.

To the credit of our comrades in the Communist Party USA, they have resisted succumbing wholly to this dogmatic reflex, as seen in their theory of Bill of Rights socialism, which is one of the otherwise nearly non-existent attempts to construct a positive socialist study of law. That I must congratulate the CPUSA of all parties, demonstrates the dire depth of this deficiency on the Left.

Having laid out the problem, we are naturally confronted by Comrade Lenin's burning question to our Reform-Leninist movement: What is to be Done? What is the purpose of New Socialist Constitutional Law and Renewed Socialist Legality, and how may they be advanced? The first question communists must answer, however, is whether we wish to govern, or we wish to spar. We are doing a massive unservice to the Folk by pretending to both. The Bolsheviks failed to fully complete the transition from sparring to governance, which hindered the development of Soviet socialism all the way to Gorbachev.

Assuming we have affirmed our wish to govern seriously, we may ascertain those previous concerns. To advance Soconlaw and Resoleg, does not mean to follow one set of doctrines or policies; quite the contrary, such a course should be to disown them. Comrade Mao here has the key: investigate, study, put forth ideas, and if you must critique, critique from the stand-point of positive construction, rather than from the twin devils of post-modern pessimism and dogmatic ,,Marxist'' doctrinairism.

Critiquing burgher law and its legal philosophy and documents, whilst a necessary, inevitable portion of these policies' development, must not become the primary function and practise. Positive construction must ever be the foremost and fundamental aim. Therefore, to advance these policies means in the main to study prior socialist law, to build socialist analysis of present law (which does not amount to cynical, dogmatic negativity), and to develop new forms of socialist law and legal studies.

Let me give some starting points a comrade might begin with, as simplistic as they may appear. Read Stuchka, Kautsky, Pashukanis, Vyshinsky, Karpinsky, Chkhikvadze, Denisov, Romashkin, Alexeyev, and other socialist and particularly Soviet and Chinese sources, both parimary documents of state, and secondary expositions on the legal system. Then read Western scholars of Soviet law, such as John Hazard, Peter Maggs, Harold Berman, and the volumes in the Law in Eastern Europe series.

Alack regarding the legal systems and documents of the West, the post-modern nihil virus has long ago devasted what crops may been planted there. There is at present, to my knowledge, nay verse-by-verse socialist commentary on the US Articles of Confederation, Constitution, Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, Oliver Wendell Holmes' works, or any socialist casebooks, even of a negative sentiment. This is a grave absence which ought to forthwith be rectified.

Though we cannot yet alter the base, we may at least begin to build our own scaffolding to an alternative super-structure, and it is our duty to do so. States within states exist, and Folk's states have proved they can gain enough power to at times bend or subvert the laws of the sovereign/ruling state. Finally, all this education preceding a revolution will grant us invaluable experience, and a deep, formidable, thorough tradition to draw on, which it is to be hoped, helps the revolution succeed, stabilise, and prevents it from degenerating into yezhovshchina. Let us move beyond post-modern pessimism, the Cheka-Party tussle for rule, yezhovite factionalism, and cryptic Aesopian dogma. Let us rise to the bright dawn of New Socialist Constitutional Law and Renewed Socialist legality, under the crimson Disclosnost (clear) skies of Reform-Leninism.