to court until they secure a favourable decision; whereas a plaintiff who is poor often finds it necessary to abandon his suit on grounds of expense. The right of appeal secures an “equitable” decision only in this sense, that it secures a judgment in the interest of exploiting groups.
The unified popular law-court of the proletarian State reduces to a minimum the time which elapses from the moment when the case is brought before the court to the moment when it is finally decided. The law’s delay is greatly diminished, and if proceedings are still sluggish, this is only because all soviet institutions are imperfect during the first months and years of the proletarian dictatorship. But the general upshot is that the courts have been made accessible to the poorest and most unenlightened strata of the population; and they will become still more accessible as soon as the epoch of intensified civil war is over, and as soon as all the mutual relationships of the citizens of the republic have assumed a more stable character. “Inter arma leges silent” [in war time, the laws are in abeyance] the Romans used to say. But during the time of civil war the laws are not in abeyance as far as the workers are concerned. The popular law-courts continue to do their work, but it is impossible as yet for the whole population to realise the nature of the new courts of justice and rightly to appreciate their advantages.
During this era when the old society is being destroyed and the new society is being upbuilded, the popular courts have a gigantic task to perform. The process of change has been so rapid that soviet legislation has not been able to keep pace with it. The laws of the bourgeois-landlord system have been annulled; but the laws of the proletarian State have as yet merely been outlined, and will never be committed to paper in their entirety. The workers do not intend to perpetuate their dominion, and they therefore have no need for endless tomes of written laws. When they have expressed their will in one of the fundamental decrees, they can leave the interpretation and application of these decrees, as far as practical details are concerned, to the popular courts in