>>> Rob Schaap <rws at comserver.canberra.edu.au> 09/08/99 11:44PM >>>
Huh? Lawyers have every right to be lawyers, Chas, even to defend their
profession if they feel they must (and certainly someone must). But to pin
our hopes in progress, nay, give the credit for its manifestations, on this
particular institution - well, that's going just a few light years too far,
for mine.
(((((((((((
Charles: You seem to have Lenin's thought , "law is politics" completely backward. He is cutting law and legal institutions down to size, saying they are NOT above politics, in the modern ,dirty sense of "politics". Judges can be bought, etc. The Supreme Court is NOT to be respected, but seen as subject to political influence. See ? Law, like all other politics, can be analyzed in terms of politics and class struggle. It is not some superrational process above the real class and power relations.
As Shakes said, first we kill all the lawyers. Except for Fidel.
This is lawyers and economists, economists and lawyers. The separation of law and economics reflects an inappropriate epistemological separation/reductionism , as Jim Craven emphasizes. The better category is political economy , and get rid of all the bad lawyers and economists.
((((((((((
Rob:
If our law constitutes our politics, it might do us some good to reflect on how stuffed our politics is right now (mebbe coz it precisely reflects the formalism, individualism and cultural lag imminent in, and perpetuated by, that particular institution).
((((((((((((
Charles: Lenin's point in saying "law is politics" is to say , don't think that law is about justice and reason. It is not above politics, but is riddled through and through with politics and class struggle. Not that politics can be reduced to law. In fact ( and at law) , the opposite. He is saying law can be reduced to politics.
You are confusing your formal logic here. Lenin does not mean all politics is law, but rather all law is politics. Politics is the larger category. You know , Aristotle's logic, syllogism, Plato's guy Socrates: "All men (sic) are mortal; Socrates is a man ; therefore Socrates is mortal. Not all mortality is human.
All law is politics. not all politics is law. Law is a subset of the set of politics, not politics is a subset of law.
Law is the language of the state. The state is essentially its repressive apparatus.
Also, we see in The Communist Manifesto that Marx and Engels formulate their most succinct slogan in legal terms : Abolition of private property. The relations of production are fixed and formulated in law as property relations.
(((((((((((
>Lenin's success where the unemployed professor Marx fell down may have
>been due >to the emphasis of lawyers on the unity of theory and practice.
And don't take this as a backhanded defence of academics - that'd be too difficult a task for the likes of me.
Yours 'some of my best friends are lawyers',
((((((((((((((((
Charles: Lawyers are mainly assholes, but there are a few good ones.
CB