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Western societies, including France.67 Probably, insofar as Hardt and
Negri s work draws (eclectically, of course) on Marxism, it also
clearly fits into this picture.
An early Marxist theory of ultra-imperialism at the beginning of
the twentieth century proposed that a peaceful adjustment of the rela-
tions of production (including international relations) to the world-
wide forces of production was possible. Karl Kautsky thought this
adjustment could be brought about by capitalism itself. Capitalism
would go through an additional state, which would see an aggran-
dizement of the policy of cartels into a foreign policy. This phase of
ultra- or super-imperialism involving the union of imperialists across
the globe would bring to an end their struggles with one another. The
notion, in other words, of a co-operative effort in the Grotian tradi-
tion enabling a joint exploitation of the world by internationally
merged finance capital . . . 68
However, writing at the end of 2002 and in the late spring of 2003
respectively, Todd and Harvey consider present US foreign and con-
sequently international law policy do indicate a very firm intention to
resist any loss of power and prestige. The US is evidently willing to
accept open conflict with other powers. For both authors, American
actions are necessitated by the internal contradictions of its political-
military and economic-social relations, above all, with its allies.
Political relations with its allies have broken down because this is
the wish of the US. Political and military will have to be asserted to
compensate for economic and social weakness within the US.
Economic structures shape the agenda of contemporary international
law in the following respects. Most importantly, the US realises that
its economic pre-eminence in the global system is seriously threatened
in the medium term. Its economic dependence on its Western allies,
particularly Japan and the European Union, means that it feels com-
pelled to choose issues on which to exercise its political power in a
primarily coercive military dimension in order to force an acknow-
ledgement of its supremacy.69
This is where the exact nature of the evidence Todd and Harvey
adduce to arraign the US is interesting. Presumably the poststructur-
alist view of the global penetration of capital discourse means that
it is impossible to speak of independent agency in international
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Marxism and International Law 183
relations. In this sense the US does not exist as an entity, and, ipso
facto, can hardly have a plan of world domination. The US is decon-
structed as having no essence prior to international society.
Intentionality is a mere effect of discourse and not a cause in its own
right. Following Saussure s linguistic structuralism, meaning stems
from relations of difference between words rather than reference to
the world, in this case the consciousness of individuals.70 Todd s
French discourse of critique of the US is, perhaps, embedded in rela-
tions of French hostility to the US which may be traced back to
Roosevelt s treatment of de Gaulle in North Africa in the winter of
1942 43. That opposition itself may be traced back into the mists of
time. Wittgenstein has called mentalism the belief that subjective
mental states cause actions. Instead, we merely ascribe motives in
terms of public criteria which make behavior intelligible. Therefore,
it is better for social scientists to eschew intentions as causes of actions
and focus on the structures of shared knowledge which give them
content.71 This would place Todd firmly within a huge literary indus-
try of French anti-Americanism.
Capitalism is a discourse that produces resistances, because it has
to strive to absorb and exclude its other, whatever is not capitalist.
Harvey has no difficulty with using postmodern political theory
to describe the workings of capitalism.72 Capitalism can be said nec-
essarily to create its own other. It can make use of some non-
capitalist formation or it can actively manufacture its other. There is
an organic relation between expanded reproduction and the often
violent processes of dispossession that have shaped the historical
geography of capitalism. This forms the heart of his central argument
about accumulation by dispossession.73 However, Harvey objects to
placing all struggles against dispossession under some homogenising
banner like that of Hardt and Negri s multitude that will magically
rise up to inherit the earth . . . 74 Wendt makes a similar objection to
poststructuralism, or what he calls wholism in social theory. He
argues that no matter how much the meaning of an individual s
thought is socially constituted, all that matters for explaining his
behavior is how matters seem to him. In any case, what is the mech-
anism by which culture moves a person s body, if not through the
mind or the self. A purely constitutive analysis of intentionality is
inherently static, giving us no sense of how agents and structures
interact through time . . . 75 Individuals have minds in virtue of inde-
pendent brains and exist partially in virtue of their own thoughts.
These give the self an auto-genetic quality, and are the basis for what
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184 Philosophy of International Law
Mead calls the I, an agent s sense of itself as a distinct locus of
thought, choice and activity Without this self-constituting substrate,
culture would have no raw material to exert its constitutive effects
upon, nor could agents resist those effects . . . 76
So the vital distinction that the historian has to struggle to make is
between the following two styles of argument. Wittgensteinians say
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