By Björn Elberling
I’m currently buried in the final stages of the dissertation, so instead of substantive posts, a couple of interesting links. Rob at Marxist law blog "Law and Disorder" has been posting quite a lot recently, including a number of posts on international law topics. Readers interested in leftist approaches to international law should check out his review of Bill Bowring’s The Degradation of the International Order? and the series of posts on a Conference on "New Approaches to Self-Determination" at the Centre for Colonialism, Empire and International Law.
Hey Rob,
I’m hoping to get “International Law on the Left” for a book review – sounds really interesting.
I’d love to read your essay. The question of the progressive potential of international law is obviously extremely interesting; and many otherwise great NAIL/Marxist/etc. books don’t really answer it all that well. Some final chapters (e.g. in Koskenniemi) read almost like an attempt to save international law(yers) from the consequences of the criticism so carefully laid out in the rest of the book (Mieville, of course, is the obvious exception in giving an unambiguously negative answer).
On leftist perspectives on international law, I think Bjorn has covered it fairly exhaustively. I would add that when we are talking about ‘left wing’ perspectives (as opposed to Marxist ones) it is sometimes difficult to pin down commonalities. This is because there isn’t necessarily any ‘methodology’ associated with the left broadly construed. So provisionally, I would suspect that we’d call ‘left-wing’ perspectives those which adopt the perspectives of those traditionally associated with the left (Third World states and people, oppressed races, subaltern classes etc.) or those who adopt the methodological conventions usually associated with the left (Marxism, critical theory etc.). It’s the sort of thing which really ought to be the subject of a blog post however.
Bjorn, have you gotten hold of the new Marks edited volume (International Law on the Left)? Although a lot of the stuff is taken from the Leiden Marxism symposium, there are some really interesting contributions, particularly Susan Mark’s introduction (which really is an excellent ‘introduction’ as to what Marxism can bring to international law) and her essay on ‘exploitation’.
Also, I’ve recently written an extended mediation on Mieville and the progressive potential on international law, if you want to take a look at that (and I’d love the feedback) in your next doctoral lull I can send it to you.
Hey Bjorn,
for those of us unfamiliar with international law, what exactly constitutes a left-wing perspective? I’ve always thought of the political spectrum as pertaining to issues of distribution of wealth and government services, and in some cases arguably “liberal” (in American terms) positions on social issues. Is it specifically a Marxist perspective? And how do the relations and means of material production affect the “superstructure” that is international law?