Některé aktuální otázky socialistické zákonnosti v jednotných zemědělských družstvech

For the examination of questions concerning socialist legality an extremely great importance incombs to the method of social research, as to one of the results of an organic mutual relation between the socialist legal science and the socialist sociology. The method of social research requires the wielding of exact methods and techniques rendering possible the widest knowledge of the examined social phenomena, of certain instrumental statistical and mathematical methods and requires the mastership of quantifications of the social phenomena projected on the legal level and requires also the art of drawing the most exact general conclusions from the results of selective researches. The introduction of new, much more exact methods in legal science, event, in scientific work in the domain of State and Law, has a decisive importance from the point of view of the theoretical conclusions of monographic studies not only for the further development of the legal theory itself, but first of all for the emphasis, the conclusive force and the exactitude of the scientific arguments. The so called objective character of the backwardness of legal theory in relation to legal practice is being removed. The sociological methods represent this way an adequate instrument against the “leather” dogmatism, which is still somewhere maintaining its positions in some branches of legal science, against formalism and also against legal subjectivism, all them being remnants of the period of the personality cult. The social research, the adoption and enforcement of which have to contribute in a considerable way to raise the quality of scientific work, supposes a series of outmost fundamental organizational measures immediately in the scientific institutions, especially in the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and in the faculties of Law. As long as the scientific workers will have at their disposal for their theoretical work only basic documental materials (so profound these may be) and good specialist libraries, but will remain reduced to their proper ununified, unconcentrated and uncoordinated research campaigns, they will either never, or at least in the great majority of cases, not be able to come to items of information of outmost objectivity. Therefore it is necessary to resolve within the shortest possible term the problem of the organization of legal science in relation to social researches, as well as the problems of coordination of sociological processes, of sociological searches, of quantification, classification and assembling of different items of information. Even if in that respect the work will always remain a monographical work of an individual scientific worker who will fix the precise and detailed direction and aim and will draw the respective precise theoretical and practical conclusions, nevertheless a staff of research workers specialized in social research must always take part in the work in question. The present article, dealing with some problems of socialist legality in the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives, makes in certain respects use of results of social research; its basic materials are letters addressed by readers to the agricultural newspaper “Zemědělské noviny”. a) Socialist legality is the political method of putting into practice the dictatorship of the working class in alliance with the cooperative peasantry and the other class components of the socialist State and society. It involves, besides the necessary regulation of important concrete socialist relations by socialist law, also the application of the will of the governing working class, expressed in legal norms, that means the observance of socialist law and its rules by all its subjects. Law and legality, as two social categories mutually tied together, have to secure a uniform putting into practice of the policy of the socialist State. The violation of socialist legality in the State of the socialist type represents a social and juridical excess which is in absolute contradiction with the policy of the working class. The strength of socialist democracy consists precisely in the fact, that cases where for different reasons occur or occured such violations, are condemned and remedied not only in the sphere of law; the whole society deals with them publicly and removes the causes of such violations of legality. b) One of the causes of violations of socialist legality is the inadequate standard of legislative work, event, the inadequate standard of legal rules both as far as their content and their form are concerned. One of the greatest defaults in this respect is the exagerated number and the intricacy of legal rules and in consequence of it the fact that the regulation of different branches of our legal system is not clear enough. The article points to concrete phenomena of this sort in the legal system concerning the regulation of some basic relations in the agriculture, especially in the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives. The author of the article proposes a special form of publication of legal regulations and instructions, the leading idea of his proposal being the principle of separate publication of legal rules according to the different branches. A new technique of the evidence and of the filing up of legal norms by State organs and socialist organizations is also proposed in the article. c) In the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives the problem of socialist legality has a quite special character. The majority of legal rules of the agricultural cooperative law are put into practice in the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives by the way of cooperative democracy. The socialist State regulates by means of legal rules the fundamental principles and the most important socialist social relations in the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives, as well as their social edification and at the same time makes it possible for the members of the cooperatives, event, for the whole (collectivity of the cooperative, to decide and settle – under the active leadership of the State and its organs (principally of the administrations of agricultural production and of the national committees) – within the limits of these norms important questions concerning their social life by means of decisions taken by their organs, the decisions in question having the binding and general character of legal norms. This means the putting into practice of the principle of democratic centralism by the way of cooperative democracy. In the cooperatives this implies first of all the problem related to the activities of the members’ reunions, the problem of the juridical character of their decisions (resolutions or measures), event, the problem of their binding character in the moral, political and juridical sense, that means the problem of the qualified social importance of acts adopted by the collectivity of the cooperative as far as its relations to the State and its organs or to other socialist organizations and other subjects are concerned. d) A resolution adopted by a members’ reunion puts generally into concrete terms the content of an agricultural cooperative juridical relation; the acts of a members’ reunion operate not only within the cooperative in question, but in a series of cases also outside of the cooperative, as far as relations to other Unified Agricultural Cooperatives (principally relations of cooperation), to other socialist organizations (State Tractor Stations, State farms, buying combinations a.s.o.), to the State Bank and first of all to the State are concerned. In relation to the members of the cooperative the extraordinary importance of the resolution of a members’ reunion is stressed by the specific character of the membership as of one of the most essential juridical institutions, the cooperative membership being a complex juridical relation including a series of elements (the element of labour, of property, of participation of a member of the cooperative in the direction and in the administration of the Unified Agricultural Cooperative). The cooperative is not only an economic organization, but is also a social organization of the cooperative farmers and the resolutions of the reunions of its members have therefore to resolve very many questions related to the social activities of the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives. The resolution of a members’ reunion has, besides its juridical effects, also and at the same time a profound moral and political importance. The fundamental questions of cooperative life are settled in their complexity by the Act No. 49/1959 of the Collection of Laws, concerning the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives and by the model statutes of the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives. In accordance with their principles and their individual dispositions the cooperatives elaborate and adopt their proper statutes. The principles of the elaboration of the proper statutes by the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives are contained in the Decree No. 50/1961 of the Collection of Laws, concerning the elaboration of proper statutes by the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives, their approval and their registration. The article criticizes, invoking concrete examples taken from the results of research work, some very serious phenomena of violation of fundamental rules of agricultural cooperative law as far as the elaboration and the adoption of the cooperative statutes are concerned. The problems involved are principally the following ones: a) simplification of problems related to the proper statutes and at the same time simplification of the organizing work of State organs by the issuing of the so called “district model statutes“, which do not always in practice reflect correctly and exactly the proper problems of the district and of the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives of the district; b) the non-observance of time limits and terms fixed for the elaboration of the statutes of the cooperative, this non-observance of terms having its first causes already in the fixation of the legal terms in question (as for the last elaboration of statutes, the time limit expired the 5th December 1961, that means that the term fell into the final period of the economic year). This results in the fact that the respective work on the statutes is executed hurriedly, which does not contribute to the quality of the statutes and to a conscientious and effective participation of the members of the cooperatives in the elaboration of the statutes. Therefore it is proposed that the terms for the elaboration and the adoption of the proper statutes should be coordinated with the debates on the basic economical tasks of the cooperative at the end of the economical year in agriculture, that means with the adoption of the whole year productive and financial plan and with the approval of the global balance of the cooperative’s economy; c) one’ of the criticized phenomena as far as the hurried elaboration of proper statutes within short time limits is concerned, is the fact that the work on the statutes is simplified and that in practice only some partial questions concerning changes and amendments resulting from the model statutes are dealt with, without taking into account the problems resulting from a global regulation of social relations in the given cooperative by means of proper statutes, that means in a complex way; d) these problems are rendered still more difficult by the whole conception of the model statutes which contain in a series of cases dispositions of purely declaratory character. Conclusion: Cooperative democracy, as the method by which rules of the agricultural cooperative law are put into practice in the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives, cannot be imagined without an active part being played by the State organs, without their organizing activities and direction, that means without the fact being clear that cooperative democracy has its “raison d’etre” first of all as a consequence of the principle of democratic centralism. The mutual connexity of the principle of cooperative democracy with the principle of the direction by the State of the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives must necessarily lead to a consequent enforcement of socialist legality in the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives.