--- "Dennis Redmond" <dredmond@efn.org> wrote:
James writes:

> The marketplace relates to the first of these levels, that of private
> will.

There's nothing private or willful about the market. It's about who can
accumulate, and who ends up laboring on the silicon plantations. That's as
objective as it gets. The lash of the marketplace may feel subjective, but
it's delivered by totally objective processes.

-- DRR

I was summarising bourgeois arguments about the relation between the general will and the market.  The point that I was originally developing was that calling international law 'law' was a bit forced.  Perhaps I can try to make this argument more clearly.

There is a basis for constitutional law in the idea of the general will, which implies a collective subject of law. In international relations, there is no such collective subject or general will. Individual 'wills' of states may coincide, and they can make collective agreements (I gave the example of postal treaties).  A powerful state or alliance may impose its will on other states (trade talks, for example). But none of this adds up to a legitimate basis for international law. 

The justification of constitutional law through the general will can be challenged (indeed, it must be if we are to change it!), but to simply equate it to the market (or to see everything as pure power, like Schmitt and his new leftist fans) is too crude. At the international level, it really is just the projection of power.  At the national level, there is an ideological legitimation that needs to be unpicked. To say that they are the same thing implies to me a cynical resignation to power.

Returning to Dennis's point about the market, theories of the general will/social contract do indeed treat it as private, which by and large it is in our society (society does not pick out people and tell them individually that they can accumulate - they just do).  But I'm not endorsing this, or seeing market relations as subjective.  Indeed, I noted in my previous post that it was imperative to challenge the separation of economics and politics. But just saying it's all objective, willful and based on power relations does an injustice to the sophistication of these arguments and does not help in developing a serious critique. And only when we've developed a serious critique can we begin to subjectively act to give our ideas objective force (sorry, as soon as I get onto questions of will I start thinking in Hegel...).

I do like your description, 'laboring on silicon plantations'.  I shall steal it often.

--James