International Law and the Struggle for the Future: Historicizing Agenda 2030 for Radical Critique of International Legal Ideology

Abstract

This paper addresses the UN’s ‘Agenda 2030’ from a historical-materialist perspective, interrogating its potential to effectively ‘transform our world’ in the face of the ‘crisis of the future’. It explores the ideological dimensions of the international legal form, critically reflecting upon the role of international lawyers in the reproduction of global capitalist relations, on the limits of international law as an instrument of social transformation and of the Agenda as a roadmap to a ‘better future’. Specifically, it demonstrates how the a-historical and depoliticized legal language of the Agenda conceals and legitimises the inherently ‘unsustainable’ logics of value and capital accumulation. Finally, the paper denounces the Agenda’s ideology of Progress, pointing to its epistemological ‘blindspots’ and proposing a reclaiming of utopian and revolutionary thinking in order to rescue international legal theory’s capacity to imagine a different future and act towards a new mode of sociability and human-nature relationship.