ABSTRACT
The Western legal system relies on the concept of individual responsibility. Standing behind that is a theory of liberal individuality that has been attacked by Marxists as well as many other relational theorists. Yet there seems to be great difficulty in rescuing individual responsibility from the chasm into which it plunges once the secure guards of liberal individuality are removed, and it is recognised that social relations have determined the individual. The Soviet Legal Code swiftly assumed very conventional dimensions once the radical implications of a Marxism that omitted any theory of personality were sidelined. This chapter, based on Sève’s own work, including what he wrote about the subject, aims to show how TSS can have significant implications for how individual responsibility is conceived and executed under current conditions. It also places this in the context of the current debate about criminal responsibility and relational individuality.
