Author: Gautam Bhatia
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Counter-tendencies and the Separation of the Economic and the Political in China Mieville’s Between Equal Rights
Introduction China Mieville’s Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law is a fully-fleshed out application of Evgeny Pashukanis’s commodity-form theory to the domain of public international law. In order to do this, Mieville has to address the following challenges: first, given that the commodity-form theory takes the contract (and the contractual dispute) as…
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The Double Movement and the Legal Form in Alan Norrie’s Crime, Reason and History
Introduction In Law and Marxism, Evgeny Pashukanis argued that the legal subject created by law is a mirror of the abstract individual under capitalism. The primary powers of this abstract individual are to enter into contracts with other, formally equal, individuals, and to own (and alienate) property. This has important political consequences that we shall…
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“Theft is Property!: Dispossession and Critical Theory,” by Robert Nichols
[Theft is Property was the first book discussed by the Tebhaga Readers Collective, between July – September 2026. This review, authored by Gautam Bhatia, draws on the collective’s discussions.] Introduction: Three Ideas Rob Nichols’ Theft is Property! begins with the following provocation: settler-colonialism involves the violent rupture of indigenous peoples from the historical lands on…
