This paper develops a critique of two dominant approaches to radical legal theory: instrumentalism, which treats law as a neutral vessel serving class interests, and Quixotism, which pursues emancipatory ideals in complete abstraction to the concrete realities of social life. Drawing on Pashukanis’s form-critical theory, the paper argues that neither approach adequately grasps the structural role of the legal form in mediating capitalist domination. Against the emphasis on legal indeterminacy and exception – as exemplified in Kafka’s work and highlighted by Critical Legal Studies – form critique reveals law not as an empty vessel or site of exceptional arbitrariness but as a determinate structure dialectically intertwined with the capitalist mode of production. Informed by an anti-instrumentalist and anti-Quixotic stance, radical legal praxis must therefore navigate between reformist legalism and anarchist abstentionism, engaging law as a concrete terrain of struggle without mistaking partial legal victories for systemic emancipation. This risk is further compounded by the neoliberal juridification of social movements, which subjects resistant energies to the logic of capital. As long as capitalist social forms endure, so too will the contradiction at the heart of law – and no better law will dissolve it.
Linda Lilith Obermayr (2026) studied this question.