Consacrarea constituțională a inegalității în republicile comuniste românești

Abstract

During the 42 years of „official” communism, Romania had three successive constitutions (1948, 1952 and 1965), which served as the legal basis of the Soviet-style social, economic and political order. The main paradox of these texts was the constitutional enshrinement of inequality between citizens, despite the proclamation of their equality, the criteria for discrimination being private property and political capacity. Thus, the 1948 Constitution established for the first time the ‘qualitative’ difference between state property (generating general prosperity) and private property (susceptible to nationalisation); in the 1952 Constitution, the owners of private property came to be labelled exploiters and enemies of the people. Finally, the 1965 Constitution heralds the victory of socialist property, ignoring the crumbs of private property, which are harmless to the ‘working people’. From a political perspective, communist constitutions forge inequality on the basis of membership of the workers’/communist party (the leading political force of the whole society): citizens who have achieved advanced workers’ consciousness form the „vanguard detachment” of society; the others – of the second rank – must follow the communists, enrolled in the great Front of Socialist Democracy and Unity.

Keywords

• constitution
• political capacity
• inequality
• property