cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/19017

By Nikos Mottas

The widespread claim that recent imperialist bluntness, epitomized by the Trump doctrine, has “destroyed international law” rests on a false premise: that such a law ever existed as a binding, neutral framework above imperialism.

From a Marxist-Leninist standpoint, this belief is not an error of detail but a fundamental ideological illusion. Imperialism has never been restrained by international law. On the contrary, what is called “international law” has always been a secondary product of imperialist relations, tolerated only insofar as it served monopoly interests and discarded whenever it ceased to do so.

The present moment, marked by open treaty violations, contempt for institutions, and unapologetic coercion, does not signal a descent into barbarism. It signals the collapse of the ideological form through which barbarism was previously administered.

Any serious discussion must begin with the Marxist theory of law itself. Lenin, following Marx and Engels, rejected the liberal notion of law as a neutral arbiter. In The State and Revolution, he dismantles this illusion at its root:

“The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.”

And further:

“The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it creates ‘order’, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collision between the classes.”

Law, therefore, is not a universal moral code. It is a political instrument, inseparable from state power and class domination. What law does domestically for the bourgeois state, so-called international law does globally for imperialist powers: it legalizes domination, stabilizes exploitation, and disguises coercion as order.

There is no supranational authority standing above classes and states. There is only the world system of capitalism, and at its highest stage, imperialism.

Lenin’s masterpiece Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism provides the decisive theoretical framework. Imperialism, he explains, is not merely aggressive foreign policy but a structural phase of capitalism defined by monopolies, export of capital, and the division of the world among great powers.

Within this system, treaties and legal frameworks cannot be stable or binding. As Lenin demonstrated, agreements between imperialist powers are nothing more than temporary truces between wars.

And even more decisively he writes:

“Peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow out of wars; the one conditions the other, producing alternating forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle on one and the same basis of imperialist connections and relations.”

This passage alone renders the concept of a permanent, rules-based international legal order under imperialism theoretically impossible. If agreements are merely truces, then law is merely a momentary crystallization of force.

International law does not restrain imperialism; it registers its temporary balance.

The historical record fully confirms Lenin’s analysis. Imperialism has never hesitated to annihilate its own legal frameworks when they conflicted with strategic or economic interests. World War I destroyed every existing treaty system in the struggle for colonial redistribution. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki obliterated entire cities without any legal or moral justification. The Vietnam War involved systematic violations of humanitarian law on a massive scale. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was conducted without UN authorization. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 proceeded despite the absence of any legal mandate. The destruction of Libya in 2011 transformed a limited resolution into regime change and permanent chaos. Sanctions regimes in the 21st century institutionalize collective punishment of civilian populations in direct contradiction to proclaimed legal norms.

These are not exceptions. They are the normal functioning of imperialism.

For long periods, imperialism preferred to rule behind legal and humanitarian rhetoric. Institutions, courts, and treaties were useful tools for managing rivalries, disciplining weaker states, and integrating reformist forces into imperialist governance. Law functioned as ideological cement, not as restraint.

As Stalin emphasized, “the equality of nations under capitalism is a deceptive phrase”, since alongside formal equality there exists “actual inequality in economic and political development, inequality in strength”, an inequality that “determines everything.”

This is not cynicism. It is materialism.

What distinguishes recent imperialist conduct is not its content but its form. As contradictions sharpened — economic stagnation, intensified inter-imperialist competition, internal social polarization — the ideological value of legal language declined. Open coercion replaced ritualized justification.

Lenin warned against mistaking changes of form for changes of essence. In Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, he stressed that communists must judge governments not by their words or declarations, but by their deeds

Judged by deeds, imperialism today behaves exactly as it always has. What has changed is merely the degree of ideological camouflage.

This analysis must not removed into moral denunciation of one state or leader. Imperialism is not a national pathology; it is a global system. Multilateralism does not abolish imperialist domination — it coordinates it.

Lenin made this point unequivocally:

“The bourgeoisie of all countries is united against the proletariat, but this does not eliminate the struggle among the bourgeoisie of different countries for domination and for markets.”

Whether domination is exercised unilaterally or multilaterally is irrelevant to the oppressed. The substance remains exploitation, coercion, and subordination.

International law functions most efficiently against those without power. Liberation movements are criminalized. Independent economic policies are punished. Whole populations are sanctioned. Law becomes a weapon wielded selectively, binding the weak and dissolving before the strong.

This is not a betrayal of international law. It is its real content under imperialism.

Marxism-Leninism does not advocate a return to “respect for international law.” That demand presupposes that imperialism can be regulated ethically. Lenin rejected this outright. In Socialism and War, he stated unambiguously:

“So long as capitalism exists, wars are inevitable. Wars are a necessary and inevitable result of capitalism.”

Where war is inevitable, law cannot rule. The task of communists, therefore, is not to repair imperialist legality but to abolish the material conditions that render legality impossible: monopoly ownership, capitalist exploitation, and imperialist competition.

The exposure of imperialism’s naked face is not a loss for humanity. It is a gain in clarity. The collapse of legal illusions forces a confrontation with reality.

There is no international law under imperialism. In reality, there is only force, temporarily codified, and power, briefly legalized.

Only the overthrow of imperialism itself can make genuine equality between peoples possible. Until then, “international law” will remain what it has always been: the handwriting of the powerful — erased the moment it ceases to serve them.

* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.

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