Essay on the State theme

I - On the definition of State

Abstract

This essay belongs to a set of studies on the State problem to be successively published in this journal. It deals with the relations of the State with Law and political power, trying to establish a provisional definition and participating in a debate originated by the realization that there is serious fault inside every school of socialist thought: the political fault. As a mather of fact, either the revolutionary marxism or the anarchism hobble before the State, without making it possible for us to consider them plainly wrong, while the different reformisms have been compromised with that supreme instance in terms of a substancial passivity. As much as possible, the text has been organized in order to let the reader follow the thought and not only its results. For this reason, it presents contraditcions and perplexities, though trying to surpass them. At its basis it is the confrontation between two great theoreticians of the State: Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt — the first, a liberal, and the second, an «imperfect» nazi. Kelsen and Schmitt are here oonsidered as «enemy brothers» that make possible for the author to establish a vivid discussion, particularly stimulating. This discussion fills the two first parts of the essay, where is already visible a third presence: that of marxism. This one is directly approached in the third part. As the whole text gives a privileged place to the Law, such approach is make through Pasukanis, who is the greatest among Marx's jurist-disciples.