gas law essay

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The Gas Laws

Introduction: what are the gas laws.

The gas laws are a group of laws that govern the behaviour of gases by providing relationships between the following:

The volume occupied by the gas.
The pressure exerted by a gas on the walls of its container.
The absolute temperature of the gas.
The amount of gaseous substance (or) the number of moles of gas.

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The gas laws were developed towards the end of the 18 th century by numerous scientists (after whom the individual laws are named). The five gas laws are listed below:

Boyle’s Law: It provides a relationship between the pressure and the volume of a gas.
Charles’s Law: It provides a relationship between the volume occupied by a gas and the absolute temperature.
Gay-Lussac’s Law: It provides a relationship between the pressure exerted by a gas on the walls of its container and the absolute temperature associated with the gas.
Avogadro’s Law: It provides a relationship between the volume occupied by a gas and the amount of gaseous substance.
The Combined Gas Law (or the Ideal Gas Law): It can be obtained by combining the four laws listed above.

Under standard conditions, all gasses exhibit similar behaviour. The variations in their behaviours arise when the physical parameters associated with the gas, such as temperature, pressure, and volume, are altered. The gas laws basically describe the behaviour of gases and have been named after the scientists who discovered them.

We will look at all the gas laws below and also understand a few underlying topics.

Boyle’s Law

Charle’s Law

Gay-Lussac Law

Avogadro’s law, combined gas law.

Gas Law Table
Gas Law Problems
Applications of Gas Law

Boyle’s law gives the relationship between the pressure of a gas and the volume of the gas at a constant temperature. Basically, the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to the pressure of a gas at a constant temperature.

Boyle’s law equation is written as:

Where V is the volume of the gas, P is the pressure of the gas, and K 1 is the constant. Boyle’s Law can be used to determine the current pressure or volume of gas and can also be represented as,

P 1 V 1 = P 2 V 2

Problems Related to Boyle’s Law

An 18.10mL sample of gas is at 3.500 atm. What will be the volume if the pressure becomes 2.500 atm, with a fixed amount of gas and temperature?

By solving with the help of Boyle’s law equation

P 1 V 1 = P 2 V 2

V 2 = P 1 V 1 / P 2

V 2 = (18.10 * 3.500 atm)/2.500 atm

V 2 = 25.34 mL

Charle’s Law

Charle’s law states that at constant pressure, the volume of a gas is directly proportional to the temperature (in Kelvin) in a closed system. Basically, this law describes the relationship between the temperature and volume of the gas.

Mathematically, Charle’s law can be expressed as,

Where, V = volume of gas, T = temperature of the gas in Kelvin. Another form of this equation can be written as,

V 1 / T 1 = V 2 / T 2

Problems Related to Charle’s Law

A sample of carbon dioxide in a pump has a volume of 21.5 mL, and it is at 50.0 °C. When the amount of gas and pressure remain constant, find the new volume of carbon dioxide in the pump if the temperature is increased to 75.0 °C.

V 2 = V 1 T 2 /T 1

V 2 = 7,485.225/ 323.15

V 2 = 23.16 mL

Gay-Lussac law gives the relationship between temperature and pressure at constant volume. The law states that at a constant volume, the pressure of the gas is directly proportional to the temperature of a given gas.

If you heat up a gas, the molecules will be given more energy; they move faster. If you cool down the molecules, they slow down, and the pressure decreases. The change in temperature and pressure can be calculated using the Gay-Lussac law, and it is mathematically represented as,

P / T = k 1

P 1 / T 1 = P 2 / T 2

Where, P is the pressure of the gas, and T is the temperature of the gas in Kelvin.

Problems Related to Gay-Lussac Law

Determine the pressure change when a constant volume of gas at 2.00 atm is heated from 30.0 °C to 40.0 °C.

P 1 = 2.00 atm P 2 =? T 1 = (30 + 273) = 303 K T 2 = (40 + 273) = 313 K

According to the Gay-Lussac law, P ∝ T P/T = constant P 1 /T 1 = P 2 /T 2 P 2 =( P 1 T 2 ) / T 1 = (2 x 313) / 303 =2.06 atm

Avogadro’s law states that if the gas is an ideal gas, the same number of molecules exists in the system. The law also states that equal volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure contain equal numbers of molecules. This statement can be mathematically expressed as,

V / n = constant

V 1 / n 1 = V 2 / n 2

Where V is the volume of an ideal gas and n represents the number of gas molecules.

Problems Related to Avogadro’s Law

At constant temperature and pressure, 6.00 L of a gas is known to contain 0.975 mol. If the amount of gas is increased to 1.90 mol, what new volume will result?

V 1 = 6.00 L V 2 = ? n 1 = 0.975 n 2 = 1.90 mol

According to Avogadro’s law V ∝ n V/n = constant V 1 / n 1 = V 2 / n 2 V 2 = V 1 n 2 /n 1 V 2 = (6 x 1.90)/ 0.975 = 11.69 L

The combined gas law, also known as a general gas equation, is obtained by combining three gas laws which include Charle’s law, Boyle’s Law and Gay-Lussac law. The law shows the relationship between temperature, volume and pressure for a fixed quantity of gas.

The general equation of combined gas law is given as,

If we want to compare the same gas in different cases, the law can be represented as,

P 1 V 1 / T 1 = P 2 V 2 / T 2

Ideal Gas Law

Much like the combined gas law, the ideal gas law is also an amalgamation of four different gas laws. Here, Avogadro’s law is added, and the combined gas law is converted into the ideal gas law. This law relates four different variables, which are pressure, volume, number of moles or molecules and temperature. Basically, the ideal gas law gives the relationship between these four different variables.

Ideal Gas Equation

Mathematically Ideal gas law is expressed as,

V = volume of gas

T = temperature of the gas

P = pressure of the gas

R = universal gas constant

And n denotes the number of moles

We can also use the equivalent equation given below.

Where, k = Boltzmann constant and N = number of gas molecules.

Ideal gases are also known as perfect gas. It establishes a relationship among the four different gas variables such as pressure (P), Volume (V), Temperature (T) and amount of gas (n).

Ideal Gas Properties and Characteristics

The motion of ideal gas in a straight line is constant and random.
The gas occupies a very small space because the particle in the gas is minimal.
There is no force present between the particle of the gas. Particles only collide elastically with the walls of the container and with each other.
The average kinetic energy of the gas particle is directly proportional to the absolute temperature.
The gases are made up of many of the same particles (atoms or molecules), which are perfectly hard spheres and also very small.
The actual volume of the gas molecule is considered negligible as compared to the space between them, and because of this reason, they are considered as the point masses.

Gas Law Formula Table

The following table consists of all the formulas of Gas Law:

Problems Related to Gas Law

(1) A sealed jar whose volume is exactly 1 L, which contains 1 mole of air at a temperature of 20 degrees Celcius, assuming that the air behaves as an ideal gas. So, what is the pressure inside the jar in Pa?

By solving with the help of the ideal gas equation,

(1) By rearranging the equation, we can get,

(2) Write down all the values which are known in the SI unit.

R= 8.314J/K/mol

T= 20degree celcius=(20+273.15)K=293.15K

V=1L=0.001m 3

(3) Put all the values in the equation

P=(1*8.314*293.15)/0.001

P= 2,437,249

P=2.437*10^6 Pa

The pressure is almost 24atm.

Application of Gas-law

During summer, when the temperature is high, and pressure is also high, a tire is at risk of bursting because it is inflated with air. Or when you start climbing a mountain, you feel problems related to inhaling. Why does it happen?

When the physical condition changes with changes in the environment, the behaviour of gases particle also deviates from their normal behaviour. These changes in gas behaviour can be studied by studying various laws known as gas laws.

Gas laws have been around for quite some time now, and they significantly assist scientists in finding amounts, pressure, volume, and temperature related to matters of gas.

Besides, the gas law, along with modern forms, are used in many practical applications that concern gas. For example, respiratory gas measurements of tidal volume and vital capacity etc., are done at ambient temperature while these exchanges actually take place in the body at 37 degrees Celsius. The law is used often in thermodynamics as well as in fluid dynamics. Also, it can be used in weather forecast systems.

Frequently Asked Questions on Gas Laws

What is an ideal gas.

Gases are puzzling. They are packed with a large number of very energetic gas molecules that can collide and interact. Because it’s difficult to precisely characterise a real gas, the concept of an ideal gas was developed as an approximation to help us model and understand the behaviour of real gases.

What are the rules followed by ideal gas?

Ideal gas molecules are neither attracted nor repellent to one another. An elastic collision is the only interaction between ideal gas molecules when they collide with each other or with the container’s walls.

The volume of ideal gas molecules is zero. The ideal gas molecules are considered as point particles with no volume in and of themselves.

What is the expression for ideal gas law?

PV = nRT P is the pressure of the ideal gas. V is the volume of the ideal gas. T is the temperature of the ideal gas. R is the gas constant. n is the number of moles.

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15 Gas Laws

LumenLearning

Boyle’s Law: Volume and Pressure

Boyle’s law describes the inverse relationship between the pressure and volume of a fixed amount of gas at a constant temperature.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Apply Boyle’s law using mathematical calculations.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

According to Boyle’s law, an inverse relationship exists between pressure and volume.
Boyle’s law holds true only if the number of molecules (n) and the temperature (T) are both constant.
Boyle’s law is used to predict the result of introducing a change in volume and pressure only and only to the initial state of a fixed quantity of gas.
The relationship for Boyle’s law can be expressed as follows: P 1 V 1 = P 2 V 2 , where P 1 and V 1 are the initial pressure and volume values, and P 2 and V 2 are the values of the pressure and volume of the gas after change.
isotherm : In thermodynamics, a curve on a p-V diagram for an isothermal process.
Boyle’s law : The absolute pressure and volume of a given mass of confined gas are inversely proportional while the temperature remains unchanged within a closed system.
ideal gas : A theoretical gas composed of a set of randomly moving, noninteracting point particles.

Boyle’s Law

Boyle’s law (sometimes referred to as the Boyle-Mariotte law) states that the absolute pressure and volume of a given mass of confined gas are inversely proportional, provided the temperature remains unchanged within a closed system. This can be stated mathematically as follows:

[latex]P_1V_1 = P_2V_2[/latex]

History and Derivation of Boyle’s Law

The law was named after chemist and physicist Robert Boyle, who published the original law in 1662. Boyle showed that the volume of air trapped by a liquid in the closed short limb of a J-shaped tube decreased in exact proportion to the pressure produced by the liquid in the long part of the tube.

The trapped air acted much like a spring, exerting a force opposing its compression. Boyle called this effect “the spring of the air” and published his results in a pamphlet with that title. The difference between the heights of the two mercury columns gives the pressure (76 cm = 1 atm), and the volume of the air is calculated from the length of the air column and the tubing diameter.

The law itself can be stated as follows: for a fixed amount of an ideal gas kept at a fixed temperature, P (pressure) and V (volume) are inversely proportional—that is, when one doubles, the other is reduced by half.

Remember that these relations hold true only if the number of molecules (n) and the temperature (T) are both constant.

In an industrial process, a gas confined to a volume of 1 L at a pressure of 20 atm is allowed to flow into a 12-L container by opening the valve that connects the two containers. What is the final pressure of the gas?

Set up the problem by setting up the known and unknown variables. In this case, the initial pressure is 20 atm (P 1 ), the initial volume is 1 L (V 1 ), and the new volume is 1L + 12 L = 13 L (V 2 ) since the two containers are connected. The new pressure (P 2 ) remains unknown. P 1 V 1 = P 2 V 2

(20 atm)(1 L) = (P 2 )(13 L)

20 atom = (13) P 2

P 2 = 1.54 atm

The final pressure of the gas is 1.54 atm.

“Boyle’s Law”: An introduction to the relationship between pressure and volume and an explanation of how to solve gas problems with Boyle’s law.

Charles’s and gay-lussac’s law: temperature and volume.

Charles’s and Gay-Lussac’s law states that at constant pressure, temperature, and volume are directly proportional.

State Charles’s Law and its underlying assumptions.

The lower the pressure of a gas, the greater its volume (Boyle’s law); at low pressures, [latex]\frac{V}{273}[/latex] will have a larger value.
Charles’s and Gay-Lussac’s law can be expressed algebraically as [latex]\frac{\Delta V}{\Delta T} = \text{constant or} \frac{V_1}{T_1} = \frac{V_2}{T_2}[/latex]
Charles’ law : At constant pressure, the volume of a given mass of an ideal gas increases or decreases by the same factor as its temperature on the absolute temperature scale (i.e., gas expands as temperature increases).
absolute zero : The theoretical lowest possible temperature; by international agreement, absolute zero is defined as 0 K on the Kelvin scale and as −273.15° on the Celsius scale.

Charles’s and Guy-Lussac’s Law

Charles’s law describes the relationship between the volume and temperature of a gas. The law was ﬁrst published by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac in 1802, but he referenced unpublished work by Jacques Charles from around 1787. This law states that at constant pressure, the volume of a given mass of an ideal gas increases or decreases by the same factor as its temperature (in Kelvin); in other words, temperature and volume are directly proportional. Stated mathematically, this relationship is

[latex]\frac{V_1}{T_1} = \frac{V_2}{T_2}[/latex]
A car tire filled with air has a volume of 100 L at 10°C. What will the expanded volume of the tire be after driving the car has raised the temperature of the tire to 40°C?
[latex]\frac{\text{100 L}}{\text{283 K}} = \frac{V_2}{\text{313 K}}[/latex]
[latex]V_2 = \text{110 L}[/latex]

V vs. T Plot and Charles’s Law

A visual expression of Charles’s and Gay-Lussac’s law is shown in a graph of the volume of one mole of an ideal gas as a function of its temperature at various constant pressures. The plots show that the ratio [latex]\frac{V}{T}[/latex] (and thus [latex]\frac{\Delta V}{\Delta T}[/latex]) is a constant at any given pressure. Therefore, the law can be expressed algebraically as [latex]\frac{\Delta V}{\Delta T} = \text{constant or } \frac{V_1}{T_1} = \frac{V_2}{T_2}[/latex].

Extrapolation to Zero Volume

If a gas contracts by 1/273 of its volume for each degree of cooling, it should contract to zero volume at a temperature of –273°C; this is the lowest possible temperature in the universe, known as absolute zero. This extrapolation of Charles’s law was the first evidence of the significance of this temperature.

Why Do the Plots for Different Pressures Have Different Slopes?

The lower a gas’s pressure, the greater its volume (Boyle’s law), so at low pressures, the fraction [latex]\frac{V}{273}[/latex] will have a larger value; therefore, the gas must “contract faster” to reach zero volume when its starting volume is larger.

“Charles’ Law”: Discusses the relationship between volume and temperature of a gas and explains how to solve problems using Charles’s law.

Avogadro’s law: volume and amount.

Avogadro’s law states that at the same temperature and pressure, equal volumes of different gases contain an equal number of particles.

State Avogadro’s law and its underlying assumptions.

The number of molecules or atoms in a specific volume of ideal gas is independent of size or the gas’s molar mass.
Avogadro’s law is stated mathematically as follows, [latex]\frac{V}{n} = k[/latex], where V is the volume of the gas, n is the number of moles of the gas, and k is a proportionality constant.
Volume ratios must be related to the relative numbers of molecules that react; this relationship was crucial in establishing the formulas of simple molecules at a time when the distinction between atoms and molecules was not clearly understood.
Avogadro’s law : Under the same temperature and pressure conditions, equal volumes of all gases contain the same number of particles; also referred to as Avogadro’s hypothesis or Avogadro’s principle.

Definition of Avogadro’s Law

Avogadro’s law (sometimes referred to as Avogadro’s hypothesis or Avogadro’s principle) is a gas law; it states that under the same pressure and temperature conditions, equal volumes of all gases contain the same number of molecules. The law is named after Amedeo Avogadro who, in 1811, hypothesized that two given samples of an ideal gas—of the same volume and at the same temperature and pressure—contain the same number of molecules; thus, the number of molecules or atoms in a specific volume of ideal gas is independent of their size or the molar mass of the gas. For example, 1.00 L of N 2 gas and 1.00 L of Cl 2 gas contain the same number of molecules at Standard Temperature and Pressure (STP).

Avogadro’s law is stated mathematically as:

[latex]\frac{V}{n} = k[/latex]

V is the volume of the gas, n is the number of moles of the gas, and k is a proportionality constant.

As an example, equal volumes of molecular hydrogen and nitrogen contain the same number of molecules and observe ideal gas behavior when they are at the same temperature and pressure. In practice, real gases show small deviations from the ideal behavior and do not adhere to the law perfectly; the law is still a useful approximation for scientists, however.

Significance of Avogadro’s Law

Discovering that the volume of a gas was directly proportional to the number of particles it contained was crucial in establishing the formulas for simple molecules at a time (around 1811) when the distinction between atoms and molecules was not clearly understood. In particular, the existence of diatomic molecules of elements such as H 2 , O 2 , and Cl 2 was not recognized until the results of experiments involving gas volumes were interpreted.

Early chemists calculated the molecular weight of oxygen using the incorrect formula HO for water. This led to the molecular weight of oxygen being miscalculated as 8, rather than 16. However, when chemists found that an assumed reaction of [latex]\text{H + Cl} \rightarrow \text{HCl}[/latex] yielded twice the volume of HCl, they realized hydrogen and chlorine were diatomic molecules. The chemists revised their reaction equation to be [latex]\text{H}_\text{2} \text{ + Cl}_\text{2} \rightarrow \text{2HCl}[/latex].

When chemists revisited their water experiment and their hypothesis that [latex]\text{HO } \rightarrow \text{ H + O}[/latex], they discovered that the volume of hydrogen gas consumed was twice that of oxygen. By Avogadro’s law, this meant that hydrogen and oxygen were combining in a 2:1 ratio. This discovery led to the correct molecular formula for water (H 2 O) and the correct reaction [latex]\text{2H}_\text{2} \text{O} \rightarrow \text{2H}_\text{2} \text{ + O}_\text{2}[/latex].

“Avogadro’s Law”: Practice problems and examples looking at the relationship between the volume and amount of gas (number of moles) in a gas sample.

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This chapter is an adaptation of the chapter “ Gas Laws ” in Boundless Chemistry by LumenLearning and is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

in thermodynamics, a curve on a p-V diagram for an isothermal process

the absolute pressure and volume of a given mass of confined gas are inversely proportional, while the temperature remains unchanged within a closed system

a theoretical gas composed of a set of randomly-moving, non-interacting point particles

at constant pressure, the volume of a given mass of an ideal gas increases or decreases by the same factor as its temperature on the absolute temperature scale (i.e. gas expands as temperature increases)

the coldest possible temperature, zero on the Kelvin scale, or approximately −273.15 °C, −459.67 °F; total absence of heat; temperature at which motion of all molecules ceases

under the same temperature and pressure conditions, equal volumes of all gases contain the same number of particles; also referred to as Avogadro’s hypothesis or Avogadro’s principle

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Introduction to Temperature, Kinetic Theory, and the Gas Laws

Chapter outline.

Heat is something familiar to each of us. We feel the warmth of the summer Sun, the chill of a clear summer night, the heat of coffee after a winter stroll, and the cooling effect of our sweat. Manifestations of heat transfer —the movement of heat energy from one place or material to another—are apparent throughout the universe. Heat from beneath Earth’s surface is brought to the surface in flows of incandescent lava. The Sun warms Earth’s surface and is the source of much of the energy we find on it. Rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide threaten to trap more of the Sun’s energy, perhaps fundamentally altering the ecosphere. In space, supernovas explode, briefly radiating more heat than an entire galaxy does.

What is heat? How do we define it? How is it related to temperature? What are heat’s effects? How is it related to other forms of energy and to work? We will find that, in spite of the richness of the phenomena, there is a small set of underlying physical principles that unite the subjects and tie them to other fields.

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How is the Ideal Gas Law Explanatory?

Using the ideal gas law as a comparative example, this essay reviews contemporary research in philosophy of science concerning scientific explanation. It outlines the inferential, causal, unification, and erotetic conceptions of explanation and discusses an alternative project, the functional perspective. In each case, the aim is to highlight insights from these investigations that are salient for pedagogical concerns. Perhaps most importantly, this essay argues that science teachers should be mindful of the normative and prescriptive components of explanatory discourse both in the classroom and in science more generally. Giving attention to this dimension of explanation not only will do justice to the nature of explanatory activity in science but also will support the development of robust reasoning skills in science students while helping them understand an important respect in which science is more than a straightforward collection of empirical facts, and consequently, science education involves more than simply learning them.

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How is the Ideal Gas Law Explanatory?

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Andrea Woody

Philosophy of science offers a rich lineage of analysis concerning the nature of scientific explanation, but the vast majority of this work, aiming to provide an analysis of the relation that binds a given explanans to its corresponding explanandum, presumes the proper analytic focus rests at the level of individual explanations. There are, however, other questions we could ask about explanation in science, such as: What role(s) does explanatory practice play in science? Shifting focus away from explanations, as achievements, toward explaining, as a coordinated activity of communities, the functional perspective aims to reveal how the practice of explanatory discourse functions within scientific communities given their more comprehensive aims and practices. In this paper, I outline the functional perspective, argue that taking the functional perspective can reveal important methodological roles for explanation in science, and consequently, that beginning here provides resources for developing more adequate responses to traditional concerns. In particular, through an examination of the ideal gas law, I emphasize the normative status of explanations within scientific communities and discuss how such status underwrites a compelling rationale for explanatory power as a theoretical virtue. Keywords: explanation, explanatory power, functional perspective, idealization, ideal gas law

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Contributing to the recent debate on whether or not explanations ought to be differentiated from arguments, this article argues that the distinction matters to science education. I articulate the distinction in terms of explanations and arguments having to meet different standards of adequacy. Standards of explanatory adequacy are important because they correspond to what counts as a good explanation in a science classroom, whereas a focus on evidence-based argumentation can obscure such standards of what makes an explanation explanatory. I provide further reasons for the relevance of not conflating explanations with arguments (and having standards of explanatory adequacy in view). First, what guides the adoption of the particular standards of explanatory adequacy that are relevant in a scientific case is the explanatory aim pursued in this context. Apart from explanatory aims being an important aspect of the nature of science, including explanatory aims in classroom instruction also promotes students seeing explanations as more than facts, and engages them in developing explanations as responses to interesting explanatory problems. Second, it is of relevance to science curricula that science aims at intervening in natural processes, not only for technological applications, but also as part of experimental discovery. Not any argument enables intervention in nature, as successful intervention specifically presupposes causal explanations. Students can fruitfully explore in the classroom how an explanatory account suggests different options for intervention.

Vin Saavedra

This paper presents an analysis of the different types of reasoning and physical explanation used in science, common thought, and physics teaching. It then reflects on the learning difficulties connected with these various approaches, and suggests some possible didactic strategies. Although causal reasoning occurs very frequently in common thought and daily life, it has long been the subject of debate and criticism among philosophers and scientists. In this paper, I begin by providing a description of some general tendencies of common reasoning that have been identified by didactic research. Thereafter, I briefly discuss the role of causality in science, as well as some different types of explanation employed in the field of physics. I then present some results of a study examining the causal reasoning used by students in solid and fluid mechanics. The differences found between the types of reasoning typical of common thought and those usually proposed during instruction can create learning difficulties and impede student motivation. Many students do not seem satisfied by the mere application of formal laws and functional relations. Instead, they express the need for a causal explanation, a mechanism that allows them to understand how a state of affairs has come about. I discuss few didactic strategies aimed at overcoming these problems, and describe, in general terms, two examples of mechanics teaching sequences which were developed and tested in different contexts. The paper ends with a reflection on the possible role to be played in physics learning by intuitive and imaginative thought, and the use of simple explanatory models based on physical analogies and causal mechanisms.

Kevin McCain

Foundations of Science

Gerhard Schurz

Jeroen Van Bouwel , Leen De Vreese

This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: (i) construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make (ii) descriptive and (iii) normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to (i), but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the “pragmatic approach to scientific explanation.” We clarify what this approach consists in and defend it.

Science & Education

Sahar Alameh

Alirio Rosales

This paper describes the development of theories of scientific explanation since Hempel's earliest models in the 1940ies. It focuses on deductive and probabilistic why-explanations and their main problems: lawlikeness, explanation-prediction asymmetries, causality, deductive and probabflistic relevance, maximal specifity and homogenity, tile height of the probability value. For all of these topic the paper explains the most important approaches as well as their criticism, including the author's own accounts. Three main theses of this paper are: (1) Both deductive and probabilistic explanations are important in science, not reducible to each other. (2) One must distinguish between (cause giving) explanations and (reason giving) justifications and predictions. (3) The adequacy of deductive as well as probabilistic explanations is relative to a pragmatically given background knowledge-which does not exclude, however, the possibility of purely semantic models.

Social Science Research Network

Mariam Thalos

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How is the Ideal Gas Law Explanatory?

Published: 07 December 2011
Volume 22 , pages 1563–1580, ( 2013 )

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Andrea I. Woody 1

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Some of these conceptions have several distinct variants.

The terminology of nomological subsumption simply refers to particular states of affairs (that is, descriptions of events or objects with specific properties) being subsumed under general laws in the sense that these states of affairs are seen to be instances of some lawlike generalizations.

By ‘phenomenological’ I mean a description of phenomena solely in terms of the detectable and measurable properties of macroscopic physical objects. Phenomenological descriptions, or models, of gases are composed of variables representing measurable quantities, including temperature, pressure, and volume, drawn from the framework of phenomenological thermodynamics (and without reference to the underlying micro-level constitution of gases).

The interested reader might want to consider what Woodward would say about the air mattress example offered by Salmon.

Friedman’s original article refers to Graham’s law of diffusion. As an anonymous referee helpfully pointed out, the kinetic theory of gases allows one to derive the law of effusion, but not the more complex law of diffusion.

More precisely, the unifying power of a theoretical structure varies directly with the size of the conclusion set regarding empirical phenomena generated from the associated argument patterns, inversely with the number of argument patterns, and directly with the stringency of the patterns (Kitcher 1989 : 435).

‘Erotetics’ or ‘erotetic logic’ is the area of study concerned with the logic and pragmatics of questions.

But what about the person who generates an explanatory question and answers it herself? This is certainly possible in principle, but as Salmon ( 1998 ) and Van Fraassen ( 1980 ) both discuss, explanatory demands would not arise for an omniscient being. Explanations arise from ignorance, or at the very least, uncertainty. Consequently, for an individual to pose a genuine explanation-seeking question, even to herself, in some respect she must not already know the answer and she will likely turn to some external source of information, one she considers authoritative, to find the answer. In doing so, she is engaged in an activity that is arguably social.

A rationale for the ordering can be distinct, of course, from the reasons why the ordering was originally established. That gases are an early topic in introductory textbooks is partially a legacy of the historical development of chemistry, in which gas experiments played a central role as the discipline was first emerging during the eighteenth century. Still, there is common ground between the historical explanation of why we start with gases and the current rationale for doing so. In each, the investigation of gas behavior has cultivated the development of atomic hypotheses; this fact is as clearly evidenced in the writings of Dalton ( 1808 ) as in any contemporary text.

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Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Jim Greisemer, Roberta Millstein, the audience for a Philosophy Department Colloquium at University of California at Davis in February 2011, two anonymous referees for this journal, and especially members of a graduate seminar at the University of Washington in winter 2011 for constructive feedback and insights regarding aspects of this project.

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Ukraine-Russia war latest: Vladimir Putin repeats warning he could send weapons to adversaries of the West

Speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin also says he does not see the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons as set out in Russia's nuclear doctrine - but adds he could not rule out a change to it.

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Thank you for reading.

We will be back soon with more updates from the war in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin has said he does not see the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons as set out in Russia's nuclear doctrine - but added he could not rule out a change to the doctrine.

"We have a nuclear doctrine which states that the use of nuclear arms is possible in an exceptional case, when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country is threatened," he told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

"But the doctrine can be changed.

"The same applies to nuclear tests. We will carry out tests if needed, but so far there is no such need."

Russia could send weapons to adversaries of the West, Vladimir Putin has warned for a second time.

The Russian president repeated the warning from earlier this week during the St Petersburg Economic Forum.

He did not say what countries or entities he was referring to, and he stressed that Moscow is not doing it currently.

"If they supply (weapons) to the combat zone and call for using these weapons against our territory, why don't we have the right to do the same?" he told the crowds.

"But I'm not ready to say that we will be doing it tomorrow, either."

On Wednesday, Putin told international journalists that Russia could provide long-range weapons to others to strike Western targets in response to NATO allies allowing Ukraine to use their arms to attack Russian territory.

He also reaffirmed Moscow's readiness to use nuclear weapons if it sees a threat to its sovereignty.

Joe Biden has apologised to Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the recent delay in approving new US aid for Ukraine.

Last month, following months of political disagreements, the Senate passed $95bn (£76.2bn) in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan .

"I apologise for those weeks of not knowing," the US president said.

"Some of our very conservative members [of Congress] were holding it up.

"But we got it done, finally. We're still in - completely, totally."

The Ukrainian president thanked his counterpart for American assistance.

"It's very important that you stay with us," he said.

"It's very important that in this unity, the United States of America, all American people stay with Ukraine, like it was during World War Two - how the United States helped to save human lives, to save Europe."

The two men were speaking in Paris, the day after D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

Russia needs to boost its use of non-Western currencies, Vladimir Putin said as he addressed the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

He also said his country needs to reduce imports while calling for a major expansion of its domestic financial markets.

Trade with Asia is soaring, he told delegates, adding that almost two fifths of Russian external trade is now in roubles.

The share conducted in US dollars, euros and other Western currencies has declined.

Russia will try to boost the share of settlements conducted in the currencies of BRICS countries - which include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Mr Putin said.

"Last year, the share of payments for Russian exports in the so–called 'toxic' currencies of unfriendly states halved, while the share of the rouble in export and import transactions is growing - it is approaching 40% today," the president said.

Russia has referred to nations that imposed sanctions on it as "unfriendly".

The session begins with an address by the Russian president.

Vladimir Putin says there is a race among world powers to establish sovereignty.

He speaks of the need for countries to both establish partnerships and also to look internally to tackle challenges presented by the current global economic landscape.

Despite all the "obstacles and illegitimate sanctions", Russia remains one of the world's economic leaders, he says.

He adds that "friendly countries" - those that have not joined sanctions against Moscow - account for three quarters of Russia's mutual trade turnover, and praises them for that.

Countries including India and China have strengthened economic ties since Mr Putin launched his war in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin has taken to the stage in St Petersburg to address the International Economic Forum there.

He's joined by Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwais and Bolivian President Luis Alberto Arce Catacora.

Chairing the session is Sergey Karaganov - a Russian political scientist.

We'll bring you any key lines here in this live blog.

A T-shirt is on sale at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum printed with a phrase attributed to Vladimir Putin, Sky News has discovered.

"If a fight is inevitable, throw the first punch," it says.

The Russian president reportedly said it in 2015.

He apparently explained that it was something he had learned while growing up on the streets of Leningrad - a former name of St Petersburg.

The Russian defence ministry has accused Ukraine of injuring 20 people, including children, in a missile attack on the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, using US-supplied ATACMS missiles.

Four of five missiles were shot down by air defence systems, the ministry said in a statement.

However, one of the missiles damaged two residential apartment blocks, it added, claiming it was deliberate.

Sky News is unable to verify the allegations.

There has been no immediate comment from Ukraine.

The European Commission supports starting EU accession talks with Ukraine, the country's prime minister has said.

Denys Shmyhal said the commission had confirmed in a report that Kyiv had fulfilled the remaining steps required to start negotiations.

"Now we expect our European partners to take the next step - to start negotiations on European Union membership this month," Mr Shmyhal said on Telegram.

Earlier (7.43am post) we reported that the commission was reportedly ready to recommend that accession talks get underway.

It is part of an attempt to signal support for Kyiv before Hungary takes over the rotating presidency of the EU next month, the Financial Times reported.

The EU announced earlier this year that it was sending an additional £42bn in aid to Ukraine - but only after weeks of resistance from Hungary , which reportedly has concerns about minority rights in Ukraine.

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MIA > Archive > Pashukanis

Evgeny Pashukanis

Marksistskaia teoriia gosudarstva i prava , pp.9-44 in E. B. Pashukanis (ed.), Uchenie o gosudarstve i prave (1932), Partiinoe Izd., Moscow. From Evgeny Pashukanis, Selected Writings on Marxism and Law (eds. P. Beirne & R. Sharlet), London & New York 1980, pp.273-301. Translated by Peter B. Maggs . Copyright © Peter B. Maggs. Published here by kind permission of the translator. Downloaded from home.law.uiuc.edu/~pmaggs/pashukanis.htm Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive .

Introductory Note

In the winter of 1929-1930, during the first Five Year Plan, the national economy of the USSR underwent dramatic and violent ruptures with the inauguration of forced collectivization and rapid heavy industrialization. Concomitantly, it seemed, the Party insisted on the reconstruction and realignment of the appropriate superstructures in conformity with the effectuation of these new social relations of production. In this spirit Pashukanis was no longer criticized but now overtly attacked in the struggle on the “legal front”. In common with important figures in other intellectual disciplines, such as history, in late 1930 Pashukanis undertook a major self-criticism which was qualitatively different from the incremental changes to his work that he had produced earlier. During the following year, 1931, Pashukanis outlined this theoretical reconstruction in his speech to the first conference of Marxist jurists, a speech entitled Towards a Marxist-Leninist Theory of Law . The first results appeared a year later in a collective volume The Doctrine of State and Law .

Chapter I of this collective work is translated below, The Marxist Theory of State and Law , and was written by Pashukanis himself It should be noted that this volume exemplifies the formal transformations which occurred in Soviet legal scholarship during this heated period. Earlier, Pashukanis and other jurists had authored their own monographs; the trend was now towards a collective scholarship which promised to maximize individual safety. The source of authority for much of the work that ensued increasingly became the many expressions of Stalin’s interpretation of Bolshevik history, class struggle and revisionism, most notably his Problems of Leninism . Last, but not least, the language and vocabulary of academic discourse in the 1920s had been rich, open-ended and diverse, and varied tremendously with the personal preferences of the individual author; this gave way to a standardized and simplified style of prose devoid of nuance and ambiguity, and which was very much in keeping with the new theoretical content which comprised official textbooks on the theory of state and law. The reader will perhaps discover that The Marxist Theory of State and Law is a text imbued with these tensions. Pashukanis’ radical reconceptualization of the unity of form and content, and of the ultimate primacy of the relations of production, is without doubt to be preferred to his previous notions. But this is a preference guided by the advantages of editorial hindsight, and we feel that we cannot now distinguish between those reconceptualizations which Pashukanis may actually have intended and those which were produced by the external pressures of political opportunism.

CHAPTER I Socio-economic Formations, State, and Law

1. the doctrine of socio-economic formations as a basis for the marxist theory of state and law.

The doctrine of state and law is part of a broader whole, namely, the complex of sciences which study human society. The development of these sciences is in turn determined by the history of society itself, i.e. by the history of class struggle.

It has long since been noted that the most powerful and fruitful catalysts which foster the study of social phenomena are connected with revolutions. The English Revolution of the seventeenth century gave birth to the basic directions of bourgeois social thought, and forcibly advanced the scientific, i.e. materialist, understanding of social phenomena.

It suffices to mention such a work as Oceana – by the English writer Harrington, and which appeared soon after the English Revolution of the seventeenth century – in which changes in political structure are related to the changing distribution of landed property. It suffices to mention the work of Barnave – one of the architects of the great French Revolution – who in the same way sought explanations of political struggle and the political order in property relations. In studying bourgeois revolutions, French restorationist historians – Guizot, Mineaux and Thierry – concluded that the leitmotif of these revolutions was the class struggle between the third estate (i.e. the bourgeoisie) and the privileged estates of feudalism and their monarch. This is why Marx, in his well-known letter to Weydemeyer, indicates that the theory of the class struggle was known before him. “As far as I am concerned”, he wrote,

no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society, or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle, and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes.

What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical forms of struggle in the development of production ...; (2) that the class struggle inevitably leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and the establishment of a classless society. [1]

[ Section 2 omitted – eds. ]

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3. The class type of state and the form of government

The doctrine of socio-economic formations is particularly important to Marx’s theory of state and law, because it provides the basis for the precise and scientific delineation of the different types of state and the different systems of law.

Bourgeois political and juridical theorists attempt to establish a classification of political and legal forms without scientific criteria; not from the class essence of the forms, but from more or less external characteristics. Bourgeois theorists of the state, assiduously avoiding the question of the class nature of the state, propose every type of artificial and scholastic definition and conceptual distinction. For instance, in the past, textbooks on the state divided the state into three “elements”: territory, population and power.

Some scholars go further. Kellen – one of the most recent Swedish theorists of the state – distinguishes five elements or phenomena of the state: territory, people, economy, society and, finally, the state as the formal legal subject of power. All these definitions and distinctions of elements, or aspects of the state, are no more than a scholastic game of empty concepts since the main point is absent: the division of society into classes, and class domination. Of course, the state cannot exist without population, or territory, or economy, or society. This is an incontrovertible truth. But, at the same time, it is true that all these “elements” existed at that stage of development when there was no state. Equally, classless communist society – having territory, population and an economy – will do without the state since the necessity of class suppression will disappear.

The feature of power, or coercive power, also tells one exactly nothing. Lenin, in his polemic of the 1890s with Struve asserted that: “he most incorrectly sees the distinguishing feature of the state as coercive power. Coercive power exists in every human society – both in the tribal structure and in the family, but there was no state.” And further, Lenin concludes: “The distinguishing feature of the state is the existence of a separate class of people in whose hands power is concentrated. Obviously, no one could use the term ‘State’ in reference to a community in which the ‘organization of order’ is administered in turn by all of its members.” [2]

Struve’s position, according to which the distinguishing feature of a state is coercive power, was not without reason termed “professorial” by Lenin. Every bourgeois science of the state is full of conclusions on the essence of this coercive power. Disguising the class character of the state, bourgeois scholars interpret this coercion in a purely psychological sense. “For power and subordination”, wrote one of the Russian bourgeois jurists (Lazarevsky), “two elements are necessary: the consciousness of those exercising power that they have the right to obedience, and the consciousness of the subordinates that they must obey.”

From this, Lazarevsky and other bourgeois jurists reached the following conclusion: state power is based upon the general conviction of citizens that a specific state has the right to issue its decrees and laws. Thus, the real fact-concentration of the means of force and coercion in the hands of a particular class-is concealed and masked by the ideology of the bourgeoisie. While the feudal landowning state sanctified its power by the authority of religion, the bourgeoisie uses the fetishes of statute and law. In connection with this, we also find the theory of bourgeois jurists-which now has been adopted in its entirety by the Social Democrats whereby the state is viewed as an agency acting in the interests of the whole society. “If the source of state power derives from class”, wrote another of the bourgeois jurists (Magaziner), “then to fulfil its tasks it must stand above the class struggle. Formally, it is the arbiter of the class struggle, and even more than that: it develops the rules of this struggle.”

It is precisely this false theory of the supra-class nature of the state that is used for the justification of the treacherous policy of the Social Democrats. In the name “of the general interest”, Social Democrats deprive the unemployed of their welfare payments, help in reducing wages, and encourage shooting at workers’ demonstrations.

Not wishing to recognize the basic fact, i.e. that states differ according to their class basis, bourgeois theorists of the state concentrate all their attention on various forms of government. But this difference by itself is worthless. Thus, for instance, in ancient Greece and ancient Rome we have the most varied forms of government. But all the transitions from monarchy to republic, from aristocracy to democracy, which we observe there, do not destroy the basic fact that these states, regardless of their different forms, were slave-owning states. The apparatus of coercion, however it was organized, belong to the slave-owners and assured their mastery over the slaves with the help of armed force, assured the right of the slave-owners to dispose of the labour and personality of the slaves, to exploit them, to commit any desired act of violence against them.

Distinguishing between the form of rule and the class essence of the state is particularly important for the correct strategy of the working class in its struggle with capitalism. Proceeding from this distinction, we establish that to the extent that private property and the power of capital remain untouchable, to this extent the democratic form of government does not change the essence of the matter. Democracy with the preservation of capitalist exploitation will always be democracy for the minority, democracy for the propertied; it will always mean the exploitation and subjugation of the great mass of the working people. Therefore theorists of the Second International such as Kautsky, who contrast “democracy” in general with “dictatorship”, entirely refuse to consider their class nature. They replace Marxism with vulgar legal dogmatism, and act as the scholarly champions and lackeys of capitalism.

The different forms of rule had already arisen in slave-owning society. Basically, they consist of the following types: the monarchic state with an hereditary head, and the republic where power is elective and where there are no offices which pass by inheritance. In addition, aristocracy, or the power of a minority (i.e. a state where participation in the administration of the state is limited by law to a definite and rather narrow circle of privileged persons) is distinguished from democracy (or, literally, the rule of the people), i.e. a state where by law all take part in deciding public affairs either directly or through elected representatives. The distinction between monarchy, aristocracy and democracy had already been established by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the fourth century. All the modern bourgeois theories of the state could add little to this classification.

Actually the significance of one form or another can be gleaned only by taking into account the concrete historical conditions under which it arose and existed, and only in the context of the class nature of a specific state. Attempts to establish any general abstract laws of the movement of state forms – with which bourgeois theorists of the state have often been occupied – have nothing in common with science.

In particular, the change of the form of government depends on concrete historical conditions, on the condition of the class struggle, and on how relationships are formed between the ruling class and the subordinate class, and also within the ruling class itself

The forms of government may change although the class nature of the state remains the same. France, in the course of the nineteenth century, and after the revolution of 1830 until the present time, was a constitutional monarchy, an empire and a republic, and the rule of the bourgeois capitalist state was maintained in all three of these forms. Conversely, the same form of government (for instance a democratic republic) which was encountered in antiquity as one of the variations of the slave-owning state, is in our time one of the forms of capitalist domination.

Therefore, in studying any state, it is very important primarily to examine not its external form but its internal class content, placing the concrete historical conditions of the class struggle at the very basis of scrutiny.

The question of the relationship between the class type of the state and the form of government is still very little developed. In the bourgeois theory of the state this question not only could not be developed, but could not even be correctly posed, because bourgeois science always tries to disguise the class nature of all states, and in particular the class nature of the capitalist state. Often therefore, bourgeois theorists of the state, without analysis, conflate characteristics relating to the form of government and characteristics relating to the class nature of the state.

As an example one may adduce the classification which is proposed in one of the newest German encyclopaedias of legal science.

The author [Kellreiter] distinguishes: (a) absolutism and dictatorship, and considers that the basic characteristic of these forms is that state powers are concentrated in the hands of one person. As an example, he mentions the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV in France, tsarist autocracy in Russia and the dictatorial power which was invested by the procedure of extraordinary powers in the one person, for instance the president of the German Republic on the basis of Art.48 of the Weimar Constitution; (b) constitutionalism, characterized by the separation of powers, their independence and their checks and balances, thereby weakening the pressure exerted by state power on the individual (examples: the German Constitution before the 1918 revolution, and the USA, where the President and Congress have independent powers); (c) democracy, whose basic premise is monism of power and a denial in principle of the difference between power and the subject of power (popular sovereignty, exemplified by the German Republic); and (d) the class-corporative state and the Soviet system where as opposed to formal democracy, the people appear not as an atomized mass of isolated citizens but as a totality of organized and discrete collectives. [3]

This classification is very typical of the confusion which bourgeois scholars consciously introduce into the question of the state. Starting with the fact that the concept of dictatorship is interpreted in the formal legal sense, deprived of all class content, the bourgeois jurist deliberately avoids the question: the dictatorship of which class and directed against whom ? He blurs the distinction between the dictatorship of a small group of exploiters and the dictatorship of the overwhelming majority of the working people; he distorts the concept of dictatorship, for he cannot avoid defining it without a relevant law or paragraph, while “the scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing less than power resting directly upon force, unlimited by laws, and unconstricted by absolute rules”. [4] Further it is sufficient to indicate, for instance, that under the latter heading the author includes: (a) a new type of state, never encountered before in history, where power belongs to the proletariat; (b) the reactionary dreams of certain professors and so-called guild socialists, about the return to the corporations and shops of the Middle Ages; and, finally (c) the fascist dictatorship of capital which Mussolini exercises in Italy.

This respected scholar consciously introduces confusion, consciously ignores the concrete historical conditions under which the working people actually can exercise administration of the state, acting as organized collectives. But such conditions are only the proletarian revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

4. The class nature of law

Bourgeois science confuses the question of the essence of law no less than the question of the state. Here, Marxism-Leninism opposes the diverse majority of bourgeois, petit bourgeois and revisionist theories which, proceeding from the explanation of the historical and class nature of law, consider the state as a phenomenon essential to every human society. They thus transform law into a supra-historical category.

It is not surprising, therefore, that bourgeois philosophy of law serves as the main source for introducing confusion both into the concept of law and into the concept of state and society.

The bourgeois theory of the state is 90% the legal theory of the state. The unattractive class essence of the state, most often and most eagerly, is hidden by clever combinations of legal formalism, or else it is covered by a cloud of lofty philosophical legal abstractions.

The exposure of the class historical essence of law is not, therefore, an unimportant part of the Marxist-Leninist theory of society, of the state and of law.

The most widespread approach of bourgeois science to the solution of the question of the essence of law consists in the fact that it strives to embrace, through the concept of law, the existence of any consciously ordered human relationships, of any social rules, of any phenomenon of social authority or social power. Thus, bourgeois scholars easily transfer law to pre-class society, find it in the pre-state life of primitive tribes, and conclude that communism is unthinkable without law. They turn law as an empty abstraction into a universal concept devoid of historical content. Law, for bourgeois sociologists, becomes an empty form which is unconnected with concrete reality, with the relationships of production, with the antagonistic character of these relationships in class society, [and] with the presence of the state as a particular apparatus of power in the hands of the ruling class.

Representatives of idealist philosophy of law go still further. They begin with “the idea of law”, which stands above social history as something eternal, immutable and independent of space and time.

Here, for example, is the conclusion of one of the most important representatives of the ideological neo-Kantian philosophy of law – Stammler:

Through all the fates and deeds of man there extends a single unitary idea, the idea of law. All languages have a designation for this concept, and the direction of definitions and judgements expressed by it amount, upon careful study, to one and the same meaning.

Having made this discovery, it cost Stammler nothing “to prove” that regardless of the difference between the “life and activity of nations” and “the objects of legal consideration”, we observe the unity of the legal idea and its equal appearance and intervention.

This professorial rubbish is presented without the least attempt at factual proof In actuality it would be rather difficult to explain how this “unity of the legal idea and its equal appearance” gave birth to the laws of the Twelve Tablets of slave-owning Rome, the serf customs of the Middle Ages, the declarations of rights of capitalist democracies, and our Soviet Constitution.

But Stammler is not embarrassed by the scantiness of factual argument. He deals just as simply with the proof of the eternity of law. He begins from those legendary Cyclops described in the Odyssey; even these mythical wonders were the fathers of families and, according to Stammler, could not do without law. On the other hand, however, while Stammler is ready to admit that the pigmy tribes of Africa and the Eskimos did not know the state, he simply denies as deceptive all reports about peoples not knowing law. Moreover, Stammler immediately replaces the concrete historical consideration of the question with scholastic formal-logical tightrope walking, which among bourgeois professors is presented as a methodological precision. We present these conclusions, for they typify the whole trend and, moreover, are most fashionable in the West.

Stammler proposes that the concrete study of legal phenomena is entirely unable to provide anything in the understanding of the essence of law. For if we assign any phenomenon to the list of legal ones, this means that we already know that this is law and what its characteristics are. The definition of law which precedes the facts presupposes knowledge of what is law and what is not law. Accordingly, in the opinion of Stammler, in considering the concept of law, it is necessary to exclude all that is concrete and encountered in experience and to understand “that the legal idea is a purely methodological means for the ordering of spiritual life”.

This conclusion, which confronts one with its scholasticism, is nothing other than a Kantian ideological thesis embodied in the context of Stammler’s legal stupidity. It shows that the so-called forms of knowledge do not express the objective characteristics of matter, are determined a priori, and precede all human experience and its necessary conditions.

Having turned law into a methodological idea, Stammler tries to locate it not in the material world where everything is subordinate to the law of cause and effect, but in the area of goals. Law, according to Stammler, is a definition which proceeds not from the past (from cause to effect), but from the future (from goal to means). Finally, adding that law deals not with the internal procedure of thoughts as such, but with human interaction, Stammler gives this agonizing and thoroughly scholastic definition:

The concept of law is a pure form of thought. It methodically divides the endlessly differentiated material of human desires apprehended by the senses, and defines it as an inviolable and independent connecting will.

This professorial scholasticism has the attractive feature for the bourgeoisie that verbal and formalistic contrivances can hide the ugly reality of [their] exploiting society and exploiting law.

If law is “a pure form of thought”, then it is possible to avoid the ugly fact that the capitalist law of private property means the misery of unemployment, poverty and hunger for the proletarian and his family; and that in defence of this law stand police armed to the teeth, fascist bands, hangmen and prison guards; and that this law signifies a whole system of coercion, humiliation and oppression in colonies.

Such theories allow the disguising of the fact that the class interest of the bourgeoisie lies at the basis of bourgeois law. Instead of class law, philosophers such as Stammler dream up abstractions, “pure forms”, general human “ideas”, “whole and durable bonds of will” – and other entirely shameless things.

This philosophy of law is calculated to blunt the revolutionary class consciousness of the proletariat, and to reconcile it with bourgeois society and capitalist exploitation.

It is not without reason that the social fascists speak out as such zealous exponents of neo-Kantianism; it is not without reason that Social Democratic theorists on questions of law largely subscribe to neo-Kantian philosophy and re-hash the same Stammler in different ways.

In our Soviet legal literature, a rather wide dissemination has been achieved by bourgeois legal theories. In particular, there have been attempts to spread the idealist teaching of Stammler in the works of Pontovich and Popov-Ladyzhensky. The criticism and unmasking of this eructation is necessary for the purpose of eradicating this bourgeois ideological infection.

Thus, we know that the state is an historical phenomenon limited by the boundaries of class society. A state is a machine for the maintenance of the domination of one class over another. It is an organization of the ruling class, having at its disposal the most powerful means of suppression and coercion. Until the appearance of classes the state did not exist. In developed communism there will be no state.

In the same way as the state, law is inseparably tied to the division of society into classes. Every law is the law of the ruling class. The basis of law is the formulation and consolidation of the relationship to the means of production, owing to which in exploitative society, one part of the people can appropriate to itself the unpaid labour of another.

The form of exploitation determines the typical features of a legal system. In accordance with the three basic socio-economic formations of class society, we have three basic types of legal superstructure: slave-owning law, feudal law and bourgeois law. This of course does not exclude concrete historical national differences between each of the systems. For instance, English law is distinguished by many peculiarities in comparison with French bourgeois law as contained in the Napoleonic Code . Likewise, we do not exclude the presence of survivals of the past – transitional or mixed forms – which complicate the concrete picture.

However, the essential and basic – that which provides the guiding theme for the study of different legal institutions – is the difference between the position of the slave, the position of the serf and the position of the wage labourer. The relationship of exploitation is the basic lynchpin, around which all other legal relationships and legal institutions are arranged. From this it follows that the nature of property has decisive significance for each system of law. According to Lenge, the brilliant and cynical reactionary of the eighteenth century, the spirit of the laws is property.

5. Law as an historical phenomenon: definition of law

The appearance and withering away of law, similar to the appearance and withering of the state, is connected with two extremely important historical limitations. Law (and the state) appears with the division of society into classes. Passing through a long path of development, full of revolutionary leaps and qualitative changes, law and the state will wither away under communism as a result of the disappearance of classes and of all survivals of class society.

Nevertheless, certain authors, who consider themselves Marxists, adopt the viewpoint that law exists in pre-class society, that in primitive communism we meet with legal forms and legal relationships. Such a point of view is adopted for instance by Reisner. Reisner gives the term “law” to a whole series of institutions and customs of tribal society: marriage taboos and blood feud, customs regulating relationships between tribes, and customs relating to the use of the means of production belonging to a tribe. Law in this manner is transformed into an eternal institution, inherent to all forms of human society. From here it is just one step to the understanding of law as an eternal idea; and Reisner in essence leans towards such an understanding.

This viewpoint of course fundamentally contradicts Marxism. The customs of a society not knowing class divisions, property inequality and exploitation, differ qualitatively from the law and the statutes of class society. To categorize them together means to introduce an unlikely confusion. Every attempt to avoid this qualitative difference inevitably leads to scholasticism, to the purely external combination of phenomena of different types, or to abstract idealist constructs in the Stammlerian spirit.

We should not be confused by the fact that Engels, in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State , uses the expression “the eternal law”; or, that he cites, without particular qualification, Morgan’s description of the member of a tribal community as having “equality of rights”, and of a person violating tribal customs as having placed himself “outside the law”.

It is clear that the terms “right” and “law” are used here not in their direct sense, but by analogy. This does not mean, however, that in classless society we will be dealing only with purely technical rules. Such an argument was put forward by Stuchka in his dispute with Reisner. To assign the customs and the norms of pre-class society to the area of technology would mean to give the concept of technology a very extended and undefined sense. Marriage prohibitions, customs relating to the organization of the tribe, the power of the elders, blood feud etc. – all this of course is not technology and not technical methods, but the customs and norms of social order. The content and character of these customs corresponded of course to the level of productive forces and the production relationships erected on it. These social forms should be considered as a superstructure upon the economic base. But the basic qualitative difference between this superstructure and the political and legal superstructures of class society, consists in the absence of property inequality, exploitation, and organized class coercion.

While Marxism strives to give a concrete historical meaning to law, the characteristic feature of bourgeois philosophers of law is, on the contrary, the conclusion that law in general is outside classes, outside any particular socio-economic formation. Instead of deriving a concept of law from the study of historical facts, bourgeois scholars are occupied with the concoction of theories and definitions from the empty concept or even the word “law”.

We already saw how Stammler, with the help of scholastic contrivances, tries to show that concrete facts have no significance for the definition of law. We, however, say the opposite. It is impossible to give a general definition of law without knowing the law of slave-owning, feudal and capitalist societies. Only by studying the law of each of these socio-economic formations can we identify those characteristics which are in fact most general and most typical. In doing so we must not forget Engels’ warning to those who tend to exaggerate the significance of these general definitions.

For example, in Chapter VI of the first part of Anti-Dühring , having given a definition of life, Engels speaks of the inadequacy of all definitions because they are necessarily limited to the most general and simplistic areas. In the preface to Anti-Dühring , Engels formulated this thought still more clearly, indicating that “the only real definition is the development of the essence of the matter, and that is not a definition”. However, Engels at once states that for ordinary practical use, definitions which indicate the most general and characteristic features of a category are very convenient. We cannot do without them. It is also wrong to demand more from a definition than it can give; it is wrong to forget the inevitability of its insufficiency.

These statements by Engels should be kept in mind in approaching any general definition, including a definition of law. It is necessary to remember that it does not replace, and cannot replace, the study of all forms and aspects of law as a concrete historical phenomenon. In identifying the most general and characteristic features we can define law as the form of regulation and consolidation of production relationships and also of other social relationships of class society; law depends on the apparatus of state power of the ruling class, and reflects the interests of the latter.

This definition characterizes the role and significance of law in class society. But it is nevertheless incomplete. In contradistinction to all normative theories – which are limited to the external and formal side of law (norms, statutes, judicial positions etc.) – Marxist-Leninist theory considers a law as a unity of form and content. The legal superstructure comprises not only the totality of norms and actions of agencies, but the unity of this formal side and its content, i.e. of the social relationships which law reflects and at the same time sanctions, formalizes and modifies. The character of formalization does not depend on the “free will of the legislator”; it is defined by economics, but on the other hand the legal superstructure, once having arisen, exerts a reflexive effect upon the economy.

This definition stresses three aspects of the matter. First is the class nature of law: every law is the law of the ruling class. Attempts to consider law as a social relationship which transcends class society, lead either to superficial categorization of diverse phenomena, or to speculative idealistic constructs in the spirit of the bourgeois philosophy of law. Second is the basic and determinant significance of production relationships in the content that is implemented by law. Class interests directly reflect their relationship to the means of production. Property relationships occupy the prominent place in the characterization of a specific legal order. Communist society, where classes disappear, where labour becomes the primary want, where the effective principle will be from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs: this does not require law. The third aspect consists of the fact that the functioning of a legal superstructure demands a coercive apparatus. When we say that social relationships have assumed a legal expression, this means inter alia that they have been given a coercive nature by the state power of the ruling class. Withering away of the law can only occur simultaneously with the withering away of the state.

Relationships which have received legal expression are qualitatively different from those relationships which have not received this expression. The form of this expression may be different, as was indicated by Engels [5] ; it may sometimes be good and sometimes be bad. It may support the progressive development of these relationships or, on the contrary, retard them. Everything depends on whether power is in the hands of a revolutionary or a reactionary class. Here the real significance of the legal superstructure appears. However, the degree of this reality is a question of fact; it can be determined only by concrete study and not by any a priori calculations. Bourgeois jurists characteristically concentrate their attention on form, and utterly ignore content. They turn their backs on life and actual history. As Engels showed, “they consider public and private law as independent areas, which have their own independent development and which must and may be subjected to independent systematic elaboration by the consistent elimination of all internal contradictions.” [6]

Bourgeois jurists usually define law as the totality of norms to which a state has given coercive power. This view of law typifies so-called legal positivism. The most consistent representatives of this trend are the English jurists: of the earliest Blackstone (eighteenth century), and thereafter Austin. In other European countries legal positivism also won itself a dominant position in the nineteenth century, because the bourgeoisie either gained state power or everywhere achieved sufficient influence in the state so as not to fear the identification of law with statute. At the same time nothing was better for legal professionals, for judges, [and] for defence counsel since this definition fully satisfied their practical needs. If law in its entirety was the complex of orders proceeding from the state, and consolidated by sanction in the case of disobedience, then the task of jurisprudence was defined with maximum clarity. The work of the jurist, according to the positivists, did not consist in justifying law from some external point of view – philosophers were occupied with this; the task of the jurists did not include explaining from where a norm emerged, and what determined its content – this was the task of political scientists and sociologists. The role of the jurist remained the logical interpretation of particular legal provisions, the establishment of an internal logical connection between them, combining them into larger systematic units in legal institutions, and finally in this way the creation of a system of law.

The definition of law as the totality of norms is the starting point for supporting the so-called dogmatic method. This consists of using formal logical conclusions in order to move from particular norms to more general concepts and back, proceeding from general positions to propose the solution of concrete legal cases or disputes. It is obvious that the practical part of this role developing especially luxuriantly in the litigious circumstances of bourgeois society – has nothing in common with a scientific theory of law. Applications of so-called legal logic are not only theoretically fruitless, they are not only incapable of revealing the essence of law and thus of showing its connection with other phenomena-with economics, with politics, with class struggle – but they are also harmful and impermissible in the practice of our Soviet courts and other state institutions. We need decisions of cases, not formally, but in their essence; the state of the working people, as distinct from the bourgeois state, does not hide either its class character or its goal – the construction of socialism. Therefore, the application of norms of Soviet law must not be based on certain formal logical considerations, but upon the consideration of all the concrete features of the given case, of the class essence of those relationships to which it becomes necessary to apply a general norm, and of the general direction on of the policy of Soviet power at the given moment. In the opposite case a result would be obtained which Lenin defined as: “Correct in form, a mockery in substance.”

The denial of formal legal logic cultivated by the bourgeoisie does not mean a denial of revolutionary legality, does not mean that judicial cases and questions of administration must be decided chaotically in the Soviet state, systematically on the basis of the random whims of individuals, or on the basis of local influences. The struggle for revolutionary legality is a struggle on two fronts: against legal formalism and the transfer to Soviet soil of bourgeois chicanery, and against those who do not understand the organizational significance of Soviet decrees as one of the methods of the uniform conduct of the policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Thus, the law is the means of formulating and consolidating the production relationships of class society and the social relationships which are connected with them. In the legal superstructure, these relationships appear as property relations and as relations of domination and subordination. They appear, in particular, as relations of an ideological nature, i.e. as relations which are formed in connection with certain views and are supported by the conscious will of the people.

We shall not touch upon the question of the degree to which the legal ideology of the exploiting classes is capable of correctly reflecting reality, and in what measure it inevitably distorts it (representing the interest of the exploiting class as the social interest in order, legality, freedom etc.). Here, we merely emphasize the fact that without the work of legislators, judges, police and prison guards (in a word, of the whole apparatus of the class state), law would become a fiction. “Law is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing observation of the norms of law” (Lenin).

The conscious will – towards the formulation and consolidation of production and other relationships – is the will of the ruling class which finds its expression in custom, in law, in the activity of the court and in administration. The legal superstructure exists and functions because behind it stands an organization of the ruling class, namely the apparatus of coercion and power in the form of the army, the police, court bailiffs, prison guards and hangmen. This does not mean that the ruling class has to use physical force in every case. Much is achieved by simple threat, by the knowledge of helplessness and of the futility of struggle, by economic pressure, and finally by the fact that the working classes are in the ideological captivity of the exploiters. It is sufficient to mention the narcotic of the religious ideology of humility and meekness, or the genuflection before the idol of bourgeois legality preached by the reformist.

But the ultimate argument for, and the basis of, the legal order is always the means of physical force. Only by depending on them could the slaveowner of antiquity or the modern capitalist enjoy his right.

The attempts by certain bourgeois jurists to separate law from the state, or to contrast “law” and “force”, are dictated by the attempt to hide and conceal the class essence of law.

Often these proofs that law is independent of the state bear a truly laughable character. Thus, for instance, Stammler claims that he has proved this thesis relying on the fact that on a dirigible which flies over the North Pole, i.e. outside the sphere of action of any state power, the emergence of legal relationships is possible.

By such empty dogmatic chicanery the scientific question of the relationship of state and law is decided. Can one be surprised at Lenin’s sharp reaction to Stammler when he says that: “From stupid arguments, Stammler draws equally stupid conclusions.”

The dependence of law on the state, however, does not signify that the state creates the legal superstructure by its arbitrary will. For the state itself, as Engels says, is only a more or less complex reflection of the economic needs of the dominant class in production.

The proletariat, having overthrown the bourgeoisie and consolidated its dictatorship, had to create Soviet law in conformity with the economy, in particular the existence of many millions of small and very small peasant farms. After the victory of the proletarian revolution the realization of socialism is not an instantaneous act but a long process of construction under the conditions of acute class struggle.

From the policy of limiting its exploitative tendencies and the elimination of its front ranks, we moved to the policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class by widespread collectivization. A successful fulfilment of the first Five Year Plan; the creation of our own base for the technical reconstruction of the whole national economy; the transfer of the basic mass of the peasantry to collectivization; these events enabled the basic task of the second Five Year Plan to be:

the final liquidation of capitalist elements and classes in general, the full elimination of the causes of class differences and exploitation, the overcoming of the survivals of capitalism in the economy and the consciousness of the people, the transformation of the whole working population of the country into conscious and active builders of a classless society. [7]

At each of these stages Soviet law regulated and formulated production relationships differently.

Soviet law in each of the stages was naturally different from the law of capitalist states. For law under the proletarian dictatorship has always had the goal of protecting the interest of “the working majority, the suppression of class elements hostile to the proletariat, and the defence of socialist construction. Those individual Soviet jurists who considered law as the totality of norms (i.e. externally and formally) are not in a position to understand this. Finding identically formulated norms in the system of bourgeois and Soviet law, these jurists began to speak of the similarity between bourgeois and Soviet law, to search out “general” institutions, and to trace the development of certain “general” bases for bourgeois and Soviet law. This tendency was very strong in the first years of NEP. The identification of Soviet with bourgeois law derived from an understanding of NEP as a return to capitalism, which found expression in the Marxist ranks.

If NEP, as the Zinoviev opposition asserted at the XIVth Party Congress, is “capitalism which holds the proletarian state on a chain”, then Soviet law must be presented as bourgeois law, in which certain limitations are introduced, to the extent in the period of imperialism that the capitalist state also regulates and limits the freedom of disposition of property, contractual freedom etc.

Such a distortion in the description of NEP led directly to an alliance with bourgeois reformists in the understanding of Soviet law.

In fact, NEP “is a special policy of the proletarian state intended to permit capitalism while the commanding heights are held by the proletarian state, intended for the struggle between the capitalist and socialist elements, intended for the growth of the role of the socialist elements at the expense of the capitalist elements, intended for the victory of the socialist elements over the capitalist elements, intended for the elimination of classes and for the construction of the foundation of a socialist economy.” [8]

Soviet law as a special form of policy followed by the proletariat and the proletarian state, was intended precisely for the victory of socialism. As such, it is radically different from bourgeois law despite the formal resemblance of individual statutes.

Juridicial formalism, which conceives of nothing other than the norm and reduces law to the purely logical operation of these norms, appears as a variety of reformism, as a Soviet “juridical socialism”. By confining themselves only to the norm and the purely juridical (i.e. formal ideas and concepts), they ignored the socio-economic and political essence of the matter. As a result, these jurists arrive at the conclusion that the transformation of property from an arbitrary and unrestricted right into a “social function” (i.e. a tendency which is “peculiar to the law of the advanced”, that is, capitalist, countries), finds its “fullest” expression in Soviet legislation. Making this contention, the Jurists “forgot” such a trifle as the October Revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It is not only important to “read” the norm, but also to know what class, what state, and what state apparatus is applying this norm.

6. Law and production relationships

Production relationships form the basis of society. It is necessary to begin with these relationships in order to comprehend the complex picture presented by the history of mankind.

To search for the basic characteristic of society and social relations in an area other than production relationships means to deprive oneself of the possibility of a scientific understanding of the laws of development of social formations. However, it by no means follows from this that, according to Marx, only relations of production and exchange are social relations. Such a concept is a caricature of Marxism. The equation of social relations with production relations in this case is understood purely mechanically. However, a number of times Lenin noted that Marx’s great service was that he did not limit himself to the description of the economic “skeleton” of capitalist society, but that:

in explaining the construction and development of a definite social formation “exclusively” by production relations, he nonetheless thoroughly and constantly studied the superstructure corresponding to these production relations, which clothed the skeleton with flesh and blood. The reason that Das Kapital had such enormous success was that this book (“by a German economist”) showed the capitalist social formation as a living thing-with its everyday aspects, with the actual social phenomena essential to the production relations between antagonistic classes, with the bourgeois political superstructure protecting the domination of the capitalist class, with the bourgeois ideas of freedom, equality etc., with bourgeois family relations. [9]

Stuchka looks differently at the matter. In his opinion, Marx considered only relations of production and exchange to be social relations. But this would mean affirming that Marx limited himself to the “skeleton” alone, as if having indicated the basic and eventually determinant in social life and social relations he then passed by that which is derivative and requires explanation. However, more than once Marx directly points out the existence of social relationships which are not production relations but which merely derive from them and correspond to them. Characterizing revolutionary proletarian socialism in France in 1848, Marx wrote:

This socialism is the proclamation of the permanence of the revolution , a proclamation of the class dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessary transition toward the elimination of class differences altogether, toward the elimination of all production relations upon which these differences are based, toward the elimination of all social relationships corresponding to these production relations, toward a revolution in the entire world of ideas arising from these relationships. [10]

Nevertheless, Comrade Stuchka firmly defends his understanding of the term “social relationships”:

We proceed from social relationships; I emphasize the word “social”, for here my critics are desperately confused. I thus selected the word “social” and a whole chapter in my first book was dedicated to it only in the sense of relations of production and exchange (as Marx and every Marxist understands this). [11]

Proceeding from the equation of production and social relationships, Stuchka defined law as a “system (or order) of social relations corresponding to the interests of the ruling class and protected by its organized force”. In this definition, as he himself indicated, there was room only for the law of property and the law of obligations.

As earlier, so even now [he wrote] I consider basic law , law in general, to be civil law , understanding thereby the form of organization of social relationships in the narrow and specific sense of the word (i.e. relations of production and exchange). I consider that all the remaining areas of law are either of a subordinate or derivative character, and that only bourgeois law (subjecting to its influence all the remaining areas of law) created a legal state, or state law and criminal law, as an equivalent norm for crime and punishment, not even mentioning administrative, financial etc., and finally international law or even the law of war. [12]

The positions outlined in this excerpt contain a series of mistakes. There is no doubt that the formulation and conformation of social relationships to the means of production is basic to law. Proceeding from the economic basis, from different forms of exploitation, we differentiate slaveowning, feudal and capitalist systems of law. But, in the first place, it is incorrect to subsume the property relations of slaveowning or feudal society under the concept of civil, i.e. bourgeois, law as “law in general”. In the second place, state law may not be equated with the so-called Rechtsstaat of the bourgeoisie. If one takes this point of view then one must either deny the existence of a distinctive feudal state law, or show that despite the existence of a Soviet state we do have Soviet state law. At the same time, in other places in his textbook, Stuchka proceeds from the existence of different class systems of law: feudal, bourgeois, Soviet. Here he argues for a “general law” which is equated with the civil law of bourgeois society. At the same time state law is equated with the theory of bourgeois jurists of the so-called Rechtsstaat , and criminal law (i.e. formalized class repression) with the ideology of equivalent retribution.

The basic question – do relationships exist that enter into the content of law, which are not, however, relations of production and exchange? – is avoided by Stuchka; he cites the subsidiary, derivative etc. character of state, criminal etc. law. However, it is clear that the structure of family relationships, the formalization of class domination in the state organization, the formalization of class repression, all this is embraced by the different branches of law (family, state and criminal).

The content of this legal intermediary is the social and political relationships which, in the final analysis, are reducible to the same production relationships, but by no means correspond to them.

Stuchka’s subsequent definition of law suffers from the shortcoming that he limits the area of law merely to production relations. This definition also introduces confusion because it confuses law with economics. Proceeding from the indisputable position that not all which is stated in a norm (in a statute) is realized in fact, Stuchka has made the incorrect conclusion that law is indeed the very relation of production and exchange. Stuchka has therefore declared Marx’s teaching – that law is an ideological superstructure to be a tribute to the “volitional theory” of the old jurists.

Whoever has mastered the form of theorizing of Marx and Engels that capital, money etc., are social relationships, will at once understand my views on the system of social relationships. This will be hardest of all for a jurist for whom law is a purely technical and artificial superstructure, strangely enough, holding sway over its base. Even Karl Marx gave a small tribute to this concept when he spoke of law as an ideological superstructure. But Marx was raised on Roman law and in general on the juridic concepts of the 1830s, considering it an expression “of the general will” ( Volkswillen ), and he was [therefore] accustomed to its terminology. [13]

In conducting the struggle with the narrow, formal legal concept of law as a totality of norms, we cannot deny the real existence of the legal superstructure, i.e. of relationships formulated and consolidated by the conscious will of the ruling class. Only to the extent that this process of formulation and consolidation proceeds may one speak of law. To study law only as totality of norms means to follow the path of formalism and dogmatism. But to study law only as relationships of production and exchange means to confuse law with economics, to retard the understanding of the reciprocal action of the legal superstructure and its active role. At the same time as production relations are imposed on people regardless of their will, legal relationships are impossible without the participation of the conscious will of the ruling class. The teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin on law as an ideological superstructure needs no correction. Law cannot be understood unless we consider it as the basic form of the policy of the ruling class. In the later editions of The Revolutionary Role of State and Law , Stuchka supplemented his definition of law, developing the theory of the so-called three forms of law. The first, or in Stuchka’s words, the concrete form of law, is a legal relationship which corresponds to a production relationship and, with it, constitutes the base [or] reality. On the contrary, the two “abstract” forms – statute and legal ideology as Stuchka expresses it – are the essence of “the manifest superstructure”. [14]

This approach is also incorrect and non-dialectical. A legal relationship is a form of production relations because the active influence of the class organization of the ruling class transforms the factual relationship into a legal one, gives it a new quality, and thus includes it in the construction of the legal superstructure. This result is not achieved automatically by laissez faire , in the same way that prices are established under free competition. Even in the case of so-called customary law, the ruling class – through its special agencies, through the courts – ensures that the relations correspond to obligatory rules. This is all the more true with respect to the legislative creation of norms.

In particular, the revolutionary role of the legal superstructure is enormous in the transitional period when its active and conscious influence upon production and other social relationships assumes exceptional significance. Soviet law, like any law, will cease to exist if it is not applied. But the application of law is an active and conscious process by which the state apparatus plays the decisive role as a powerful weapon of class struggle. Would it be possible, for instance, to speak of Soviet law which did not somehow recognize the Soviet state, the Soviet agencies of power, Soviet courts etc.? It is clear that while an individual statute may be removed from the real legal order and remain a pious wish, concrete legal relationships may never be removed from the consciousness and will of the ruling class, may never be transferred from the superstructure to the base without parting from the heart of historical materialism.

From all that has been said above it is clear that the definition of law as a formal intermediary of the economy must be recognized as insufficient and incorrect. The different branches of law are connected differently with the economy; this must never be forgotten, and this is not expressed in the above-mentioned definition. On the contrary it can lead to the notion that the area of law is limited to property relationships alone. Then all the other types of law must be declared non-existent. Stuchka would, in fact, have had to reach this conclusion. But he speaks of criminal and state law, not entirely consistently with his other position, i.e. by referring to them he recognizes their existence.

There is no doubt that economics is at the base of political, familial and all other social relations. [15] But the election law of any capitalist country facilitates the economy differently from civil law or the Criminal Code. To try to force all the varied branches of law into one formula is to give preference to empty abstractions.

Law as a formal facilitation of social and (primarily) production relationships must be studied concretely. This study may not be replaced with ready citations from Hegel with respect to the “transformation of form into substance and substance into form”. The dialectical method, which teaches that every truth is concrete, becomes in this instance its own opposite-dead scholasticism, barren arguments and disputes on the theme that “form is not without content and content not without form”. However, the matter really consists of showing the role and character of law as form in specific and concrete branches of law and concrete historial conditions with a relation to concrete content. Only in this manner can the real relation of form and content be established and can one be convinced that it is far from identical in different instances. Often legal form hides economic content directly contrary to it (thus in the period when we conducted the policy of restricting the kulak, the leasing of a horse or tools by a poor peasant to a rich one often hid the sale of the first’s labour power to the second). A transaction of purchase and sale can hide the most diverse economic content. The same could be said about any other relationships within the so-called law of obligations. Here we meet with a phenomenon whose form is relatively indifferent to its content, but it is improper to conclude from this that in civil law we have a “faceless instrumentality” which must be used independently of the economic class content of the relationships which it implements. On the contrary, the significance of form is recognized only through content, through economics, through politics and through relations between classes.

Therefore, it is a flagrant error to equate law as an historical phenomenon – including various class systems – with the totality of those features of bourgeois law that derive from the exchange of commodities of equal value. [16] Such a concept of law minimizes the class coercion essential to bourgeois law, essential to feudal law and to all law. Law in bourgeois society serves not only the facilitation of exchange, but simultaneously and mainly supports and consolidates the unequal distribution of property and the monopoly of the capitalist in production. Bourgeois property is not exhausted by the relationships between commodity owners. These [owners – eds. ] are tied by exchange and the contractual relationship is the form of this exchange. Bourgeois property includes in a masked form the same relationship of domination and subordination which, in feudal property, appears chiefly as personal subordination.

This methodological mistake was related to the relegation of the class repressive role of law, and to an incorrect presentation of the relation between state and law (the state as the guarantor of exchange), and to mistakes in questions of morality (the denial of proletarian morality) and in questions of criminal law.

The attempts to distinguish between formal characteristics and abstract legal concepts expressing the relationship between commodity owners, and to proclaim this “form of law” as the subject of the Marxist theory of law, should be recognized as grossly mistaken. This paves the way to the separation of form and content, and diverts theory from the task of socialist construction to scholasticism.

The immediate relation, in practice, between the proletariat (as the ruling class) and law (as a weapon with whose help the tasks of class struggle at any given stage are decided) is in this case replaced by the abstract theoretical denial of the “narrow horizons of bourgeois law” in the name of developed communism.

From this perspective Soviet law is seen exclusively as a legacy of class society imposed on the proletariat and which haunts it until the second phase of communism. The abstract theoretical exposure of “bourgeois” law hides the task of the concrete analysis of Soviet law at different stages of the revolution. Accordingly, it gives insufficient concrete indication of the practical struggle against bourgeois influences, and against opportunist distortions of the Party’s general line on Soviet law.

The theoretical mistake of exaggerating the importance of market relations can be the basis for right opportunist conclusions about always preserving the bourgeois forms of law corresponding to private exchange. Conversely, to ignore exchange in considering the problems of Soviet law leads to “leftist” positions about the withering away of law which is now in the process of socializing the means of production, and about the withering away of economic accountability and the principle of payment according to labour, i.e. to the defence of the elimination of individual responsibility and wage egalitarianism.

Top of the page

1. K. Marx, Letter to Weydemeyer (March 5, 1852), MESW , vol.1, p.528.

2. V. I. Lenin, The Economic Content of Narodnism (1895), LCW , vol.1, p.419.

3. See Kellreiter’s article The State ;, in D. Elster et al. (eds), Handwörterbuch der Rechtswissenschaft (1923), Fischer, Jena, p.599.

4. V.I. Lenin, A Contribution to the History of the Question of Dictatorship (1920), LCW , vol.31, p.353.

5. F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1888), MESW , vol.3, p.371.

6. ibid. , p.371.

7. From a resolution of the XVIIth Party Conference (1932).

8. J. Stalin, The Fourteenth Congress of the CPSU (1925), Stalin: Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow (1954), vol.7, p.374.

9. V.I. Lenin, What the “Friends of the People” Are (1894), LCW , vol.1, pp.141-42.

10. K. Marx, The Class Struggles in France (1850), MESW , vol.1, p.282.

11. P.I. Stuchka, A Course on Soviet Civil Law (1927), Communist Academy, vol.1, p.13.

12. ibid. , pp.78-79.

13. P.I. Stuchka, The Revolutionary Role of Law and State (1921), Moscow, p.15.

14. ibid. (3rd edition); and P.I. Stuchka’s article Law in Encyclopaedia of State and Law, (1925-1927), vol.3, pp.415-430.

15. “The state and law are determined by economic relations. Of course, the same must be said of civil law whose role in essence consists of the legislative clarification of the existing economic relations between individuals which are normal in the given circumstances” F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1888), op. cit. p.370.

16. This erroneous conception was developed in E.B. Pashukanis, The General Theory of Law and Marxism (1927), 3rd edition. See also E.B. Pashukanis, The Situation on the Legal Theory Front , Soviet State and the Revolution of Law (1930), no.11-12; and For a Marxist-Leninist Theory of State and Law (1931) Moscow, where a critique of this mistaken conception is given.

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7.2.1: Practice Problems- The Gas Laws

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PROBLEM $\PageIndex{1}$

Sometimes leaving a bicycle in the sun on a hot day will cause a blowout. Why?

As temperature of a gas increases, pressure will also increase based on the ideal gas law. The volume of the tire can only expand so much before the rubber gives and releases the build up of pressure.

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{2}$

Explain how the volume of the bubbles exhausted by a scuba diver change as they rise to the surface, assuming that they remain intact.

As the bubbles rise, the pressure decreases, so their volume increases as suggested by Boyle’s law.

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{3}$

One way to state Boyle’s law is “All other things being equal, the pressure of a gas is inversely proportional to its volume.”

(a) What is the meaning of the term “inversely proportional?”

(b) What are the “other things” that must be equal?

The pressure of the gas increases as the volume decreases

amount of gas, temperature

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{4}$

An alternate way to state Avogadro’s law is “All other things being equal, the number of molecules in a gas is directly proportional to the volume of the gas.”

What is the meaning of the term “directly proportional?”
What are the “other things” that must be equal?

The number of particles in the gas increases as the volume increases

temperature, pressure

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{5}$

A spray can is used until it is empty except for the propellant gas, which has a pressure of 1344 torr at 23 °C. If the can is thrown into a fire (T = 475 °C), what will be the pressure in the hot can?

3.40 × 10 3 torr

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{6}$

What is the temperature of an 11.2-L sample of carbon monoxide, CO, at 744 torr if it occupies 13.3 L at 55 °C and 744 torr?

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{7}$

A 2.50-L volume of hydrogen measured at –196 °C is warmed to 100 °C. Calculate the volume of the gas at the higher temperature, assuming no change in pressure.

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{8}$

A balloon inflated with three breaths of air has a volume of 1.7 L. At the same temperature and pressure, what is the volume of the balloon if five more same-sized breaths are added to the balloon?

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{9}$

A weather balloon contains 8.80 moles of helium at a pressure of 0.992 atm and a temperature of 25 °C at ground level. What is the volume of the balloon under these conditions?

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{10}$

How many grams of gas are present in each of the following cases?

0.100 L of CO 2 at 307 torr and 26 °C
8.75 L of C 2 H 4 , at 378.3 kPa and 483 K
221 mL of Ar at 0.23 torr and –54 °C

7.24 × 10 –2 g

1.5 × 10 –4 g

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{11}$

A high altitude balloon is filled with 1.41 × 10 4 L of hydrogen at a temperature of 21 °C and a pressure of 745 torr. What is the volume of the balloon at a height of 20 km, where the temperature is –48 °C and the pressure is 63.1 torr?

1.2741 × 10 5 L or more correctly to 3 significant figures 1.27 × 10 5 L

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{12}$

While resting, the average 70-kg human male consumes 14 L of pure O 2 per hour at 25 °C and 100 kPa. How many moles of O 2 are consumed by a 70 kg man while resting for 1.0 h?

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{13}$

A balloon that is 100.21 L at 21 °C and 0.981 atm is released and just barely clears the top of Mount Crumpet in British Columbia. If the final volume of the balloon is 144.53 L at a temperature of 5.24 °C, what is the pressure experienced by the balloon as it clears Mount Crumpet?

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{14}$

If the temperature of a fixed amount of a gas is doubled at constant volume, what happens to the pressure?

Temperature and Pressure are directly proportional. Pressure will also have to increase (doubling).

PROBLEM $\PageIndex{15}$

If the volume of a fixed amount of a gas is tripled at constant temperature, what happens to the pressure?

Volume and pressure are inversely proportional. The pressure decreases by a factor of 3.

Contributors

Paul Flowers (University of North Carolina - Pembroke), Klaus Theopold (University of Delaware) and Richard Langley (Stephen F. Austin State University) with contributing authors. Textbook content produced by OpenStax College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 license. Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected] ).

Adelaide Clark, Oregon Institute of Technology

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The Gas Laws
Basically, this law describes the relationship between the temperature and volume of the gas. Mathematically, Charle's law can be expressed as, V ∝ T. Where, V = volume of gas, T = temperature of the gas in Kelvin. Another form of this equation can be written as, V 1 / T 1 = V 2 / T 2.
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Learn how the volume, pressure, temperature and amount of gas are related by the simple gas laws: Boyle's law, Charles's law and Avogadro's law. This chapter explains the concepts and equations of these laws with examples and exercises. You can also explore the related webpages for more information on gas properties and kinetics.
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This law states that at constant pressure, the volume of a given mass of an ideal gas increases or decreases by the same factor as its temperature (in Kelvin); in other words, temperature and volume are directly proportional. Stated mathematically, this relationship is. V 1 T 1 = V 2 T 2 V 1 T 1 = V 2 T 2.
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Derivation of the Ideal Gas Law. ERIC Educational Resources Information Center. Laugier, Alexander; Garai, Jozsef. 2007-01-01. Undergraduate and graduate physics and chemistry books usually state that combining the gas laws results in the ideal gas law.Leaving the derivation to the students implies that this should be a simple task, most likely a substitution.
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The court placed Vinatier in custody until Aug. 5. French researcher Laurent Vinatier pleaded guilty in a Moscow court to charges of failing to register as a foreign agent while collecting information on Russia's military. The court has placed him in custody until August 5, as reported by state news agency RIA.
Indian Medical Students Drown in Russian River
Four Indian medical students have drowned while swimming in a river in northwestern Russia, local law enforcement officials said Friday. The incident happened on Tuesday in the Volkhov River in ...
7.2.1: Practice Problems- The Gas Laws
PROBLEM 7.2.1.11 7.2.1. 11. A high altitude balloon is filled with 1.41 × 10 4 L of hydrogen at a temperature of 21 °C and a pressure of 745 torr. What is the volume of the balloon at a height of 20 km, where the temperature is -48 °C and the pressure is 63.1 torr? Answer. Click here to see a video solution.
Hungary sticks to Russian gas, US calls it 'dangerous addiction'
While countries in western Europe have made serious efforts to wean themselves off Russian gas since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, landlocked Hungary has been receiving 4.5 billion cubic ...
Russia Detains a French National Suspected of Collecting Military Data
The Russian state news agency TASS identified the detained individual, citing its sources in law enforcement, as Laurent Vinatier. The agency said Mr. Vinatier was employed as a consultant at the ...

The Gas Laws

Boyle’s Law

Gay-Lussac Law

Problems Related to Boyle’s Law

Charle’s Law

Problems Related to Charle’s Law

Problems Related to Gay-Lussac Law

Problems Related to Avogadro’s Law

Ideal Gas Law

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Ideal Gas Equation

Ideal Gas Properties and Characteristics

Gas Law Formula Table

Problems Related to Gas Law

Application of Gas-law

Frequently Asked Questions on Gas Laws

What are the rules followed by ideal gas?

What is the expression for ideal gas law?

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15 Gas Laws

Boyle’s Law: Volume and Pressure

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Boyle’s Law

History and Derivation of Boyle’s Law

“Boyle’s Law”: An introduction to the relationship between pressure and volume and an explanation of how to solve gas problems with Boyle’s law.

Charles’s and Guy-Lussac’s Law

V vs. T Plot and Charles’s Law

Extrapolation to Zero Volume

Why Do the Plots for Different Pressures Have Different Slopes?

“Charles’ Law”: Discusses the relationship between volume and temperature of a gas and explains how to solve problems using Charles’s law.

Definition of Avogadro’s Law

Significance of Avogadro’s Law

“Avogadro’s Law”: Practice problems and examples looking at the relationship between the volume and amount of gas (number of moles) in a gas sample.

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Introduction to Temperature, Kinetic Theory, and the Gas Laws

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Ukraine-Russia war latest: Vladimir Putin repeats warning he could send weapons to adversaries of the West

Evgeny Pashukanis

Introductory Note

CHAPTER I Socio-economic Formations, State, and Law

3. The class type of state and the form of government

4. The class nature of law

5. Law as an historical phenomenon: definition of law

6. Law and production relationships

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