Evengy Pashukanis was a russian legal scholar who with his book Law and Marxism: a general theorydeveloped a theory according to which law emerges from the exchange of commodities undercapitalism. The aim of this essay, called “the Right to the commodity and the origins of subjectivity”,is to determine the meaning of the term “legal subjectivity” and how the legal subject gains “adouble” with a “juridically constituted” will and how this affects a concrete person’s lived experienceaccording to Pashukanis. Legal subjectivity arises from the need of commodities to be exchanged onthe market, which makes the law and the economy mutually dependent upon each other. Thecommodity gives subjectivity to its owner and engenders it with a profit maximizing will, asubjectivation completed through a mutual recognition between two commodity owners in whichthey recognize each other’s abilities to hold rights and duties. This means the subjects recognize eachother as formally equal and independent. This leads to the beliefs that the will comes from theconcrete person and not the commodity, and that the subject is autonomous when in fact it is theresult of a social interplay. When the two legal subjects get into a conflict it gives rise to a statemachinery in the form of the judiciary and the law which appears neutral but acts in accordance withthe needs of the capitalist system, and the legal form, which the machinery then spreads to othersocial relations, turning them into to relations between legal subjects based on rights and duties. Thestate and the economy appear separate but are linked through the legal subject. The legal formtransforms the legal subject into its own double, this more abstract subjectivity can be described asdifferent roles that the legal subject acts out in different scenarios with a will based on the needs ofthe capitalist system, although the will seems to be free and absolute and emanating from theconcrete person. The legal subjectivity is coded as a male and limited in what duties it can take on.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-52712 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Huhmarniemi Elfving, Ville |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Filosofi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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