"Sovereignty carries with it many rights, but killing and torturing
innocent people are not among them."
Madeleine Albright presenting the State Department's 1999 world survey on
human rights.
This statement comes nearest to a formula of Limited Sovereignty. It can be
compared to the Brezhnev Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty. Obviously the
stated ideals are different. What they share is a moral justification for
limiting state sovereignty.
I suggest this is not just an ideological battle. It is a reflection of the
fact that the development of the means of production limits the ultimate
relevance of the nation state.
A hegemonic power therefore has some logic in appealing, if it wishes, to
an overarching ideal with which to justify its interference in the internal
affairs of other countries.
I suggest this hegemonism must be fought on the merits of the case and not
on any abstract principle that national sovereignty is sacrosanct. There is
no materialist basis for such an approach.
Clearly we contest the bourgeois, fragmented and individualist version of
human rights that is promoted by US imperialism.
Eg we should not claim purely abstractly that the right of a doctor in Cuba
to fly the flag upside down is equivalent to the right of a tens of
thousands of children *NOT* to have to scrape a living out of the municipal
rubbish heaps of third world countries or by running dangerous lawless
errands for drug dealers, who may execute one of them periodically to
impose labour discipline.
But limited national sovereignty is here to stay.
Chris Burford
London
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