Global Justice and Social Conflict

Endorsements In his new book, Tarik Kochi makes a profoundly important contribution to the critique of liberal international law and order. Holding firm to the view that any account of global justice must by definition be an account of social conflict, Kochi shows the extent to which struggle is at the heart of global relations, and that recognizing this struggle must transform our understanding of liberalism and its law. Against liberalism's violence, Kochi develops an account of constitutional antagonism via an engagement with a diverse set of thinkers, ancient and modern. The outcome is a provocative and compelling argument for an egalitarian and democratic global constitutional order, one that draws upon the radical heritage of struggles for social liberation. -Mark Neocleous, Professor of the Critique of Political Economy, Brunel University London. In Global Justice and Social Conflict Kochi has achieved an exceptional clarity of critical thought in exploring and explaining the relationship between the claims of global justice, the liberal orderings of international law, and the power and violence of capital accumulation. At the centre of both our modern liberal inheritance, and the contemporary neo-liberal political settlement, argues Kochi, is a longstanding agonism between ethic of sociality and the utility of unsocial private property and commerce. This book charts some of the many responses to this concern. Alongside his reading of the liberal tradition, Kochi also draws out a reading of the Marxist tradition of the quest for justice. He provides an outstanding account of the contest between political public sociality and private gain, along with a clear-eyed understanding of the lure of the claims of any egalitarian and democratic global constitutional order and the relationship of those claims to political economic structures, and violence. By showing the depth of the contest between social ethics and private property Kochi does not so much open new worlds as make our present one intellectually visible. - Sundhya Pahuja, Director, Institute for International Law and the Humanities, University of Melbourne