1st Edition

Socialist Constitutionalism and the Communist Polity

Edited By Alexandros Chrysis, Dimitrios Kivotidis Copyright 2027
252 Pages
by Routledge

This collection of specially commissioned essays provides the first incisive collaborative intervention to ongoing debates about law and politics under capitalism from an explicitly socialist constitutionalist perspective. Heterodox literature on constitutional studies, to a large extent and with a few notable exceptions, shares a rejection of Marxist analytical principles. Moving beyond the... Read more

Editors’ Introduction

1. Democracy, State, and Constitutions in Socialist Transition: Socialist Revolutions as the Benchmark? 
RADHA D’SOUZA

2. Socialism, Working Class Self‑Emancipation, and Democratic Forms
PAUL O’CONNELL

3. Postponing Paradise: British Socialism and Constitutional Instrumentalisation
MARIA TZANAKOPOULOU

4. Gramsci’s Politics and Socialist Constitutionalism
ALEXANDROS CHRYSIS

5. A Socialist Constitutionalism for the Twenty‑First Century
DIMITRIOS KIVOTIDIS

6. Emergencies of the Possible: Exception, Revolution, and the Legal Past
COSMIN CERCEL

7. Right, Social Consciousness and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat: On the Philosophical Foundations of the Discussion on Socialist Constitutionalism
DIMITRIOS KILAKOS

8. Freedom: The Normative Ground of Marx’s Revolutionary Communism
MEHMET TABAK

9. Alternative Socialist/Communist Constitutional Futures in Pashukanis, Kojève, and Bloch
IGOR SHOIKHEDBROD

10. Proposals for a Socialist Constitution
TONY SMITH

Biography

Alexandros Chrysis is Professor of History of Ideas and Philosophy of History at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences. His main research interests refer to Enlightenment and Marxism. While dealing with theories of state and revolution, Chrysis published True Democracy as a Prelude to Communism: The Marx of Democracy (2018) and The Marx of Communism: Setting Limits in the Realm of Communism (2022).

Dimitrios Kivotidis is Senior Lecturer in Constitutional Law at City St George's, University of London. His research explores themes related to public law, constitutional theory, democracy, rights, and social change from a critical perspective. He is the author of The Dialectics of Democracy: Towards a Socialist Constitutionalism (Routledge, 2024), Dictatorship (Routledge, 2021), and several articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters.