p Besides political, legal relations, regulated by law, exist in society. Law is the totality of obligatory standards and rules of behaviour of people in society. These rules are expressed in corresponding laws which are safeguarded by the state and all its numerous instruments of compulsion and education.

p Law, like politics, arose with classes and the state. It is the will of the ruling class expressed in legal forms and it defends the political and economic interests of the ruling class.

p The history of antagonistic class society has known slave, feudal and capitalist law, each of which served the exploiters in their struggle against the exploited. Only socialist law expresses the interests of the working people 373 and is the true law of the people.

p People’s legal relations should be differentiated from their legal ideas and views which describe the attitude of people to the law of the given^^1^^ society and also their concepts of what is lawful and unlawful, obligatory or nonobligatory as applied to people, states and nations.

p Legal ideas and views bear a class character and express the interests of a definite class. In an antagonistic class society the legal ideas of the exploiting class prevail. In order to impose its will on the other classes the ruling class uses not only the state machine, but also legal ideas. By means of these ideas it tries to justify the law it has established, conceal its class character and present it as the law of the whole people, as the supreme expression of justice and good.

p Let us take capitalist society as an example. It has a system of law founded on the legal ideas of the bourgeoisie. The purpose of these ideas is to prove that society can have no fairer law than bourgeois law, that it is an embodiment of democracy, that the bourgeois court is impartial, etc. In reality bourgeois law protects capitalist property and serves to justify exploitation and the suppression of all progressive forces.

p With the appearance of the socialist state socialist law is born, the first law in the history of society which rules out class inequality of people.

p Socialist law and the legal ideas underlying it radically differ from the law and legal ideas of antagonistic class societies. They express the interests of the entire people, protect and help to consolidate the economic basis of socialism, socialist property, and teach Soviet people to observe the law and conscientiously do their duty. The socialist system is incompatible with lawlessness and contempt for the interests of the individual, and therefore the Soviet state and the Communist Party constantly reinforce socialist law and order and brook no attempts to violate it.

p Since the laws of socialist society fully correspond to the working people’s interests the absolute majority of Soviet citizens comply with them consciously and voluntarily, and the Soviet state applies measures of compulsion only against those who maliciously violate public order, embezzle social property or commit other crimes.

p As society advances to communism the role of the state as a force compelling the citizens to observe the law will diminish and its functions of preserving socialist law and order will be gradually transferred to public organisations. Their task will be not so much to find and punish the violators as to prevent violations and teach Soviet citizens to respect the law and consciously uphold it.

In future, as a result of the improvement in the people’s material and cultural standards, the rise in their social consciousness and organisation, all the conditions will be created for eliminating violations of the law and fully replacing criminal punishment by public reprimand and corrective education. With the complete victory of communism there will be no need for law. Law will naturally merge with the duties and rules of the communist way of life.