Bhumics Week 7: The RBIO Part 4
I ended last week’s essay with a contingent critique of the juridical conception of the RBIO - the abdication of the Leviathan from its post. The problem of abdication points to a deeper issue: the rules-based order rests on shaky foundations that go beyond just who enforces the rules. To understand these structural weaknesses, we need to examine how the juridical framework itself may be fundamentally inadequate for governing global relations. One of the most incisive critiques comes from Marxist theory, which challenges the very premise that legal frameworks can create meaningful order without addressing underlying economic realities.
Conditions of Production
Let’s start with the Marxist critique of the juridical conception of society - that is, the idea that social relations can be understood primarily through laws, rights, and formal equalit. Marxists argue that any juridical conception is dependent on the material conditions of production that define each historical epoch. In Marx’s view, legal frameworks and the notion of rights are part of the ideological “superstructure,” arising from the underlying “base” of economic relations. Because these economic relations fundamentally determine how society is organized, Marxists argue that legal concepts such as equality, justice, and rights often serve to mask the real inequalities rooted in class divisions. Here’s Foucault on this very topic:
It appears to me, in fact, that if we analyze power by privileging the State apparatus, if we analyze power by regarding it as a mechanism of preservation, if we regard power as a juridical superstructure, we will basically do no more than take up the classical theme of bourgeois thought, for it essentially conceives of power as a juridical fact. To privilege the State apparatus, the function of preservation, the juridical superstructure, is, basically, to “Rousseauify” Marx. It reinscribes Marx in the bourgeois and juridical theory of power. It is not surprising that this supposedly Marxist conception of power as State apparatus, as instance of preservation, as juridical superstructure, is essentially found in European Social Democracy of the end of the 19th century, when the problem was precisely that of knowing how to make Marx work inside a juridical system, which was that of the bourgeoisie.
Within capitalist societies, law tends to uphold the interests of the ruling class by preserving property rights and legitimizing the existing mode of production. While the juridical lens presents society as one of formal equality before the law, Marxists stress that material inequalities under capitalism—such as unequal ownership of the means of production—undermine any substantive form of equality. By cloaking class domination in the language of rights and legal neutrality, the legal system can perpetuate exploitation, since workers are formally “free” while simultaneously compelled by economic necessity to sell their labor power to capitalists.
Thus, the problem with the juridical conception of society is that it misrepresents the root causes of inequality. It treats law and rights as if they existed in a vacuum, rather than as tools shaped by and serving particular class interests. True change, in the Marxist view, requires transforming the economic base itself—overturning the capitalist mode of production—rather than simply adjusting the legal superstructure that rests upon it.
The same arguments - more or less - hold between nations. For example, nations might be formally sovereign, but in practice, nations of the global south have been compelled by the IMF to change their economic policies overnight, India included. In recent years, the West in general and the US in particular, has used various economic instruments - sanctions, now tariffs, access to capital - as well as the role of the dollar as the global reserve currency, to exert asymmetric power.
So much for the conditions of production. What about the conditions of co-production?
Conditions of Co-Production
From a vantage point that probes the deeper economic foundations of international relations, a critique of today’s rules-based international order naturally reveals how global legal frameworks can obscure and even facilitate environmental exploitation. Conventionally, we’re told that shared rules and agreements promote fairness and cooperation. Yet when we scrutinize how these rules arise and operate in practice, it becomes clear that they often serve the interests of more powerful actors, legitimizing extractive economic structures at a planetary scale.
In many instances, rules and norms within international treaties and institutions treat the natural environment as a commodifiable resource. Rather than questioning the global appetite for growth and unchecked consumption, legal mechanisms such as trade agreements and property rights protocols tend to normalize practices that drive deforestation, pollution, and exorbitant carbon emissions. These frameworks often operate as though the environment were an external factor, easily regulated or exchanged, rather than a shared and vulnerable ecology essential to human survival.
Moreover, the rules-based international order’s focus on abstract fairness can mask deep inequities in how ecological burdens and benefits are distributed. Developing regions rich in resources frequently bear the brunt of extraction—whether through mining, logging, or the siting of polluting industries—while wealthier nations or corporations reap a disproportionate share of profits. Because existing treaties and market-based solutions frame this as a matter of lawful trade and investment, the structural imbalances remain unaddressed.
Central to this critique is the realization that societies across the world are inseparable from the ecosystems they inhabit. Climate change underscores this interconnectedness, as extreme weather and biodiversity loss imperil communities around the globe. Although the rules-based order has spawned various accords and organizations aimed at mitigating environmental harm, these instruments often lack the power—or the will—to tackle the underlying forces that drive resource depletion and pollution. A narrow focus on procedural norms treats all countries or actors as if they were on equal footing, even though some nations and communities are far more vulnerable to climate catastrophes. Consequently, the states and corporations most responsible for environmental damage often face minimal repercussions, while those with fewer resources to adapt or recover suffer the harshest impacts.
Another shortcoming lies in the tendency to view nature as an object for regulation. Tools like emissions trading or litigation over compliance with environmental standards can create the appearance of robust governance. Yet in many cases, these technical solutions do little to confront the relentless expansion of industries that degrade ecosystems. By foregrounding procedures, the rules-based order may inadvertently divert attention from the fundamental questions of how we organize production and consumption—and whether our emphasis on perpetual growth is itself unsustainable.
An alternate approach stresses that humanity and the natural world form an integrated whole, demanding a rethinking of the global rules that govern our common life. Rather than incremental fixes or negotiations that merely redistribute pollution or tinker with permissible emissions, this perspective invites us to challenge the economic and political assumptions that undergird the status quo. It suggests a global order founded on genuine stewardship of resources and an ethic of reciprocity, one in which neither labor nor the planet is treated as disposable.
By applying this broader lens, we see that the rules-based international order, while ostensibly championing stability and cooperation, can in fact perpetuate ecological harm and social inequities. Transforming these longstanding imbalances involves questioning not just the details of treaties or regulations but the foundational logic that drives global economic activity. Ultimately, real progress depends on moving beyond procedural equality and toward a profound shift in how we co-exist with each other—and with the planet that sustains us.
In short:
The contradictions in the RBIO thus emerges from within: it was always an order secured by American dominance, wrapped in talk of universal norms. The hope was that states would defer to common rules out of respect or fear, but as Machiavelli would predict, fear alone does not stabilize a system for perpetuity—especially if the hegemon itself ceases to believe in or benefit from the arrangement.
Beyond that, the RBIO itself offers only patchy responses to transnational crises: climate change, resource depletion, and global inequality. Formal treaties or the principle of sovereign equality cannot resolve structural imbalances when some nations retain disproportionate leverage via currency control, technology, and military alliances.
Bhumics attempts to expose these contradictions and shift the focus to genuinely planetary considerations, where ecological systems and human communities alike must factor into any new form of governance.
Conclusion: Declaration Time
I want to end this four-part essay (much longer than I had originally planned!), with some comments on a remarkable document, which is the American Declaration of Independence. It starts with the bold line:
when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
You can see that the Declaration of Independence starts with an evocation of the state of nature, which from Hobbes to Locke has already said that human beings in their original position (an anachronistic Rawlsian term), are separate and equal. But you can't stop with the realization of the state of nature. It's not enough to just recognize the equality of individuals. The state of nature by itself cannot guarantee freedom and liberty in society - you have to create a social contract that binds these people who have been reverted back to the state of nature, to being separate and equal, to come back together in a freshly constituted society.
That is the United States.
That's why the document says:
we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The declaration reaffirms the state of nature as the clean slate from which this new society will be constituted. But now that you have that clean slate, to secure them, they say:
to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That is the social contract, which the people of the United States are coming together to sign. The problem, of course, is that we may not be able to go back to an original position, to a state of nature of being free and equal before forming the social contract. But let us say you could. Let us say you could start afresh. Even then, our mechanisms of governance have to be robust in the complex systems sense of robustness, i.e., returning back to some homeostatic state when the system is perturbed.
There will always be forces that disturb the free and equal status - the forces of production, reproduction and coproduction. And therefore, whatever mechanism of order that you are going to create has to be able to take these three forces into account.
And that, I believe, cannot be done by the nation state. It can only be done at planetary scale, and that's why we need Bhumics.
Where Next? Crafting a Planetary Politics
So where do we go from here, now that liberal democracy and the post-Cold War illusions have suffered defeat? In a world where fear rules where hope once reigned, what remains? Is there a path beyond cynicism? I believe Bhumics offers at least the beginnings of such a path forward.
First, we must honestly acknowledge defeat. There's no resurrecting the old illusions of unstoppable liberal progress. We find ourselves entering an interregnum, a time between established orders where new monsters are likely to appear. Rather than cling to comfortable myths, we must face this reality clear-eyed.
From there, we can develop what I call a Positive Bhumics. Taking inspiration from Machiavelli's clarity, we must map how silicarbon structures shape power in our world, examining how states and corporations scramble for advantage in every ecological niche. This demands precise language—designing for physics, designing for minds—so we don't lose ourselves in empty rhetoric.
We must also embrace Speculative Bhumics. Like Thomas More before us, we need to imagine alternative futures that go beyond simply greening capitalism. The very meltdown of our old illusions can create space for articulating a genuine planetary ethic—one concerned not only with human wellbeing but with the fate of countless species, ecosystems, and the entire web of life that makes our world possible.
Finally, we must write and read as paupers. Rather than addressing the powerful with pleas and petitions, we should speak among ourselves, building solidarity from below by exposing illusions. Real political transformation—the kind that actually addresses climate change or fosters planetary justice—is unlikely to come from top-down benevolence. Instead, we must interpret the new planetary "princes" and unmask their strategies from a vantage point that refuses to be in thrall to them. Only by maintaining this critical distance can we hope to chart a truly different course.
Much environmental writing is about lamentation, about the forests cut and species made extinct, of a pristine Eden that was lost. Or complementarily, emphasizing our duty of care, of human responsibility towards nature as if it were our child. But nature is not our child. The Earth is immensely older and more powerful than us. Instead of a childlike or (equally problematic) mother-like imagination of the earth, let’s understand our situation as that of adults taking responsibility for our existence and of treating the earth as an ancient ancestor and a very powerful one at that.
Bhumics is Gaia gone adulting.
