Should we put our faith in the legal system?

The International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague—where Israel’s leaders should be in the dock

Prime minister Keir Starmer says he supports international law. Yet he has failed to condemn Donald Trump’s outrageous kidnap of Nicolas Maduro. This rules-based system failed to prevent the genocide in Gaza, the atrocities in Sudan and thousands of other violent conflicts.

So should Marxists care about international law?

Marxists do not simply dismiss the law as a con perpetrated by the capitalist system.

Karl Marx studied the philosophy of law early in his career. Many radicals at the time saw perfecting the law as a way of making society fairer and more equal.

While writing for a radical newspaper in 1842, Marx published several articles condemning a new law which deprived the poor of their right to collect wood.

Marx recalled how writing about the wood-theft law shifted his focus from abstract pure politics to economic conditions as he developed his socialist ideas.

New laws and statutes enabled capitalism to present itself as a rational system that rejected the arbitrary rule of lords and kings.

The legal system that developed in the 19th century used the language of individual rights. But it was shaped by the need to protect new sources of wealth, including colonial plunder and enslavement.

In the same year that Marx wrote about the woodcutters, the British government imposed the Treaty of Nanking on China as British warships threatened the city. The treaty made it legal for Britain to grab Hong Kong.

For Marxists, the law does not embody abstract principles and eternal ideals. International law developed out of maritime and merchant law, which regulated market relations across national borders.

The state claims that we are all equal before the law. Individuals are very different in terms of their wealth and power, but the appearance of equality and fairness legitimises the system.

The legal system is integrated into the capitalist state. It claims to stand above class antagonisms, but in practice it defends the rich and powerful.

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Frederick Engels addressed the new ruling class, “Your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by economic conditions of existence of your class.”

Internationally, the law defends the interests of the major powers who have the economic and military power to enforce their will on the world.

International conventions on human rights proliferated after the Second World War. They were shaped by revulsion to the horrors of war.

But conventions and rules depend on nation states to implement them. The most powerful states will always determine which dictators are tolerated and supported and which countries become “rogue states”.

International law can never consistently prevent imperialist power—it is part of legitimising that power.

But Marxists take legal debates seriously. After the Russian Revolution, Marxist legal theorist Evgeny Pashukanis published The General Theory of Law and Marxism. Pashukanis called the “pure theory of law”, which argued that the law is separate from social relations, an “ideological phantasm”.

It was not good enough to complain about particular abuses, he argued. The law itself expresses class interests in ideological form. Opposing the workings of the legal system is part of demystifying class rule.

Society will not be reformed by the extension of existing legal rights, or perfecting legal systems. Socialism depends on the revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class.

The law matters. It can deprive us of civil liberties and expose imperialist violence. Resistance to unjust laws can make the system unworkable.

The best way to resist unjust laws and imperialist war is not in the courtroom—it is on the streets, whether that is in Minneapolis, Caracas or London.