Abstract
This work aims to present the usefulness of the notion of ideology in the research of legal discourse. There are at least two approaches to the whole issue of the relation between law and ideology. The first refers to Marx and is useful in researching the content of law. “Young Marx’s” political ontology helps to reveal political entanglements of concrete regulations, especially those regulating private ownership. An example of such research may be the issue of “forest theft” discussed by Marx in his 1842 article. The other approach to ideology, indebted to Louis Althusser and creatively developed by Slavoj Žižek, focuses on the issue of form. The view of ideology as a material practice exposes political entanglements of the form of law (e.g. democracy, rule of law, constitution). Susan Marks’ critique of constitutionalism and democracy is an example of such an approach. To resort to the language ideological of critique, especially in the post-Soviet countries, we have to begin by legitimising our approach. In other words, we have to prove that ideology is still alive.
Highlights
In the 19th century there was a commonly held myth that there were three elements of European thought – German, French and Anglo-Saxon
The European Union (EU) is commonly assumed to be founded on three pillars: common economic policy, common foreign and security policy, and cooperation of the police and judiciary in criminal cases
It is symptomatic that the economic element predominates here, resulting in an assumption that politics and culture are founded on the exchange of goods
Summary
In the 19th century there was a commonly held myth that there were three elements of European thought – German, French and Anglo-Saxon. The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of the lifeprocess of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people’s imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they operate, produce materially, and as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will.” In a crossed-out comment, Marx adds that people’s notions may be concerned with their relation to nature, to other people and/or to their own nature Even these “illusions” reflect the real basis of their emergence, as each notion results from production. Ideology is a reversal of the relation between the base and the superstructure which needs to be abandoned
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