Augusto Delgado’s Reviews > Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law > Status Update

The Conclusion. The limitations of 'liberal cosmopolitanism' as its posits an extension of the traditional 'rule of law' in the international arena. The international rule of law is not counterposed to force and imperialism: it is an expression of it.
Finally there is an appendix reproducing Pashukanis's essay on international law.

Last chapter.
Imperialism predated the epoch of formal colonies, and has survived it.
Without imperialism could not exist international law. The coercive political violence -imperialism- is the very means by which international law is actually made in the modern international system. The Gulf War 90-91 evidenced that in the international legal system the very law of self-determination operates as imperialism.

States, Markets and the Sea is about how the modern capitalism international law evolved from the mercantilism of the seas that were used as an arena for the competition over the commodities looted and plundered from native America, Africa and Asia.
The analysis of mercantilism as central to the transition to capitalism... is constructed on that theory's dialectical formulations about the nature of commodity exchange

Came back to this interesting and, should I say, dense book. The fourth chapter deals with coercion and the legal form. It's based on the premise that the process is exchange and the content is commodity and as such there is a third factor -the bourgeois state- that applies coercion via violence to enforce the law; but how this extrapolates to the international scene and the legality of war is dealt in this chapter.

Well well well, this is not an easy reading, this is a bloody thesis! which requires full attention, note taking and so. Fear not, I will make it, because the concept is interesting and Mr Miéville will take us on a international law genesis trip along capitalism evolution, from a Marxist standpoint.