Soberania e acumulação de capital: uma análise crítica de Hugo Grotius, Pasquale Mancini e Hans Kelsen

Abstract

Sovereignty has been conceptualized in various ways throughout history. Despite this, it remains the most basic category of international law; expressing the acting plea of States, it was through the sovereignty that international law has developed since 17th century until the present day. This shows a distinction between sovereignty s content, I mean, its mode of manifestation, its concept, that changes in each historical period, of the one part, and, the other, international legal form expressed by sovereignty, which remains intact and that exists independently of content given, I mean, the place it occupies in international law. Through the analysis of sovereignty concept provided by three classical authors from different historical periods Hugo Grotius, Pasquale Mancini and Hans Kelsen this work aims to demonstrate the ideological character of each theory and, consequently, its inaccuracy. To do so, it was adopted the materialistic dialectical method, through which the production of ideas by the man should be observed within the limits of his existence s conditions and ideas produced as a conscious reflex of the real world. So, the right of superiority claimed by Grotius is observed within the limits of human existence conditions that was changing with the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and its meaning is extracted from the struggle between the Church and the monarchs who were centralizing power under themselves. Similarly, the nationality right of Mancini is observed under the existence conditions offered by the maturing of social classes of capitalism in Western Europe as a result of the Industrial Revolution, and its meaning is extracted from revolutionary struggles for national liberation that unfolded there. The essentially limited character of the sovereignty of Kelsen, in turn, is observed in the context of transition to imperialist era of capitalism, as a conscious reflex of developments experienced by international law in the late 19th and early 20th century, after the First World War. Thus, in addition to demonstrate the ideological character and the inaccuracy of the mentioned concepts, it s aimed to demonstrate that the content of sovereignty in each historical period analyzed finds its reason for being on the corresponding stage of capitalism development and that sovereignty legal form, i.e. the place it occupies in international law, is determined by the need of capitalism for an instrument which ensures the accumulation of capital, the sovereign State.