A diverse range of actors, from practitioners and academics to civil society groups and activists, appear to see hope in international law for the advancement of their causes. This paper examines whether this optimism is well-founded. It explores whether international law can serve as an agent of social change, and whether it can accommodate radical changes in social order. It begins by exposing a formalist stance that is immanent to much ‘legal activist’ discourse. It then explores links between this mode of jurisprudential thought and idealist epistemology. Drawing from the philosophy of Theodor Adorno, and in particular his notion of ‘identity-thinking’, it uncovers structural connections between formalism, idealism, law, and economy that call into question international law's socially-transformative potential. The perspective advanced in this paper falls somewhere between the polarities of opportunity and impasse, seeking to acknowledge the importance of legal strategies in safeguarding the disenfranchised, while remaining alive to their potential dangers and limitations.

The question of international law's role in progressive politics has become increasingly important. This is reflected in an upsurge in scholarship dealing with international law's relationship to imperial power and its progressive potential. There has also been an increase in the number of Marxist accounts of international law, with China Miéville's Between Equal Rights being particularly important. Miéville's book is very pessimistic as to the progressive potential of international law. This article contests Miéville's claims by examining his accounts of legal subjectivity, violence, and indeterminacy, and argues that international law's content is open to progressive appropriations. However, the ‘form’ of international law limits its ability to criticize systemic or structural problems, so that it has very little transformative potential. A progressive politics of international law must therefore take advantage of content without falling foul of form. The article finally enquires whether in some extraordinary situations international law might be transformative.

The New Stream of critical international legal theory has been a welcome corrective to theory-blindness in international law, but it is limited by its philosophical idealism. The materialist philosophy of Marxism, by reference to political–economic contexts and conflicts, can better explain many of the New Stream's insights. The pioneering jurisprudence of Evgenii Pashukanis shows that many ‘traditional’ Marxist theories of law are limited and limiting. A reformulation of Pashukanis's ‘commodity-form’ theory shows that contra claims that the rule of law is characterized by peaceful coexistence, the unequal political violence of imperialism is intrinsic to the international system and to international law.