Marxism and international law: perspectives for the American (twenty-first) century?

Carty, A. 2004. Marxism and international law: perspectives for the American (twenty-first) century? Leiden Journal of International Law. 17 (2), pp. 247-270. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156504001815

TitleMarxism and international law: perspectives for the American (twenty-first) century?
AuthorsCarty, A.
Abstract

The watershed of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 calls for new approaches to the theory of international law. Hardt and Negri's Empire is a focal point for the broadly postmodernist New Approaches to International Law, which celebrates an infinite variety of resistances to oppressive structures. This book is itself in need of deconstruction. Post-structuralism must give way to a framework of analysis that accepts a place for agency, and with it, responsibility, alongside social structures. Contemporary Marxist critique of international relations, coming mainly from the field of geopolitical international history, can combine with social democratic critique of the international economic system to attach firm responsibility for the material economic woes of international society to the United States. The militarism of US foreign policy is, in a Marxist critique, primarily a function of US economic contradictions. Law plays a role here as a coercive instrument of the state. This state is capitalist in operating globally a system of accumulation by dispossession. Where necessary it reinforces its operations with violence. However, international law, as an expression of the equality of nations, especially in their social needs, is honoured in the breach by such dispossession and violence.

KeywordsImperialism and colonialism in international law, Marxism, postmodernist approaches to international law scholarship
JournalLeiden Journal of International Law
Journal citation17 (2), pp. 247-270
ISSN0922-1565
YearJun 2004
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156504001815
Publication dates
PublishedJun 2004

Related outputs

The Iraq invasion as a recent United Kingdom 'contribution to international law'
Carty, A. 2005. The Iraq invasion as a recent United Kingdom 'contribution to international law'. European Journal of International Law. 16 (1), pp. 143-151. https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chi109

The distance and contemporaneity in exploring the practice of states: the British Archives in relation to the 1957 Oman and Muscat incident
Carty, A. 2005. The distance and contemporaneity in exploring the practice of states: the British Archives in relation to the 1957 Oman and Muscat incident. Singapore Year Book of International Law. 9, pp. 1-11.

State and nation in the international law tradition: a history of French-German antagonisms and possible responses in the Spanish late medieval tradition
Carty, A. 2004. State and nation in the international law tradition: a history of French-German antagonisms and possible responses in the Spanish late medieval tradition. in: Stolleis, M. and Yanagihara, M. (ed.) East Asian and European Perspectives in the History of International Law Baden-Baden, Germany Nomos Verlag.

The Corfu channel case: and the missing admiralty orders
Carty, A. 2004. The Corfu channel case: and the missing admiralty orders. Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals: a practitioners' journal. 3 (1), pp. 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1163/157180301773732618

Permalink - https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/item/92zxy/marxism-and-international-law-perspectives-for-the-american-twenty-first-century


Share this

Usage statistics

101 total views
0 total downloads
These values cover views and downloads from WestminsterResearch and are for the period from September 2nd 2018, when this repository was created.