social relations was dominated by
a military-bureaucratic constitution. In this environment, in which a
written code of reason had been built up, there was no longer any trace
of spontaneity or popular life, there was no more democracy. This same
law, before arriving at this crystallization, had arisen and had
developed: and if we study it in its origins and in its developments,
and especially if, in this study, we employ the comparative method, we
recognize that, upon many points, it is analogous to the institutions of
inferior societies and nations. It therefore becomes evident that the
true science of law can be nothing less than the genetic history of the
law itself.

But, while the European continent had created in the codification of
civil law the type and the textbook of practical bourgeois judgment, was
there not in England another self-originating form of law, which arose
and developed in a purely practical manner, from the very conditions of
the society which produced it without system, and without the action of
methodical rationalism having any part in it? The law, which actually
exists and is applied, is therefore a much simpler and much more modest
thing than was imagined by the enthusiasts who sing the praises of
written judgment, of the empire of reason. For their defense, it must
not be forgotten that they were the ideal precursors of the great
Revolution. For ideology it was necessary to substitute the history of
legal institutions. The philosophy of law ended with Hegel; and if
objectors mention the books published since, I reply that the works
published by professors are not always the index of the progress of
thought. The philosophy of law thus became the philosophical study of
the history of law. And it is not necessary to repeat here again how
historic philosophy ended in economic materialism and in what sense
critical communism is the reversal of Hegel.

This revolution, apparently a revolution in ideas alone, is merely an
intellectual reflection of the revolutions which have been produced in
practical life.

In our century, legislating has become an epidemic; and reason enthroned
in legal ideology has been dethroned by parliaments. In these the
antitheses of class interests have taken on the form of parties; and the
parties struggle for or against definite laws; and all law appears as a
simple fact, or as a thing which it is useful or not useful to do.

The proletariat has arisen; and wher