Pašukanis on Ideology and the Juridical (A Note on The General Theory of Law and Marxism)

Chapter Four reconstructs the relationship between the concepts of law and ideology by examining Pashukanis’ views on the social ontology of law. The chapter identifies three strands of a critique of ideology: (1) the critique of the ideology of juridical form, that is, the fundamental and most general ideological presuppositions and implications of juridical form as such; (2) the critique of legal ideology, that is, the ideological presuppositions and implications of a concrete system of positive law (on the example of bourgeois legal form); (3) the critique of juristic ideology, that is, the professional (guild) ideology of the community of lawyers and jurists, including legal philosophers and theorists.