A challenging read, but essential for understanding international law and its relationship to imperialism, both theoretically and historically. He makes an original and convincing argument that the legal form itself, the law, is directly and fundamentally implied by the existence of commodities. Not only that, but he argues that the ownership of commodities, in the final analysis, is based on the ability to use force to control that commodity, and that violence is fundamental to the legal form, both within and between states.
Armed with this Marxist approach, he is able to explain why international law is law, despite the lack of an armed authority above the world's states to enforce it, which is a big theoretical dilemma that (bourgeois) political science majors and specialists in the field of International Relations (IR) have fruitlessly wrestled with for decades. He also explains why international law persists and why states continue to use it, despite the fact that it is routinely ignored by the dominant powers (the U.S., Israel, Russia, China, etc).
The book closes with the historical development of international law and shows how it is connected with the creation of the world market beginning in the late 1400s and the rise of capitalism as the planet's dominant economic system which completely altered political structures, morals, and ideological norms as it subordinated everything to its logic.
I plan on reading "Law and the Rise of Capitalism" by Madeleine Levy and Michael Tigar soon to help me understand this book.
