Building Anew 421It has been observed that, in considering relations within the socialist bloc,
socialist lawyers adopted a solidarist stance. Regarding the capitalist world,
matters were entirely diff erent. It was now widely accepted in Soviet and
Soviet- dominated circles that general international law was not socialist in
character. Rather, it was a means by which a certain degree of pragmatic co-
operation can be carried on with capitalist states— while always retaining the
thesis that, ultimately, the interests of the two blocs are incompatible.
A highly revealing insight into socialist thought was aff orded by a text-
book produced in the late 1950s under the auspices of the Soviet Institute of
State and Law (the foremost legal research or ga ni za tion in the country)—
with the ubiquitous Korovin as a principal contributor. Th e book was in-
teresting for the pointed criticisms that it directed against a number of
Western writers, with indications of where their errors lay. Th e Vienna
School was an obvious target, for its repudiation of the concept of state sov-
ereignty and its support for individuals as the true subjects of international
law. Solidarism was dismissed as “an unscientifi c thesis of inter- class soli-
darity.” Th at is, it was in error for its consensus ethos, which denied the
fundamental incompatibility of interests between working classes and capi-
talist classes. Furthermore, solidarists were accused of supporting calls
for world government and international police forces. American advocates
of solidarism naturally came in for heavy criticism. Philip Jessup and Clyde
Ea gleton were singled out as advocates of world government and interven-
tion, and thereby as apologists for imperialism. British writers were not spared.
Brierly was attacked for reducing sovereignty to a mere “invention of theoreti-
cians” and for thereby “introducing confusion into International Law.”
Th e sharpest barbs were directed at Lauterpacht. He was excoriated for
asserting that individuals, as well as states, are subjects of international law
and for his attempts “to legitimize international intervention in the internal
aff airs of States under the pretext of defending ‘basic human rights.’ ” His
editions of Oppenheim’s treatise were derided as completely ignoring Soviet
theory and practice, and as providing examples of “legal dogmatism and
ostentatious objectivism” in action. Another text from the mid- 1950s
placed Lauterpacht— along with Kelsen, Verdross, Potter, and Scelle— among
the “minstrels of the American imperialists.” If the tone of these various
attacks on Western writers was a bit sharp, much of the criticism was justi-
fi ed, in the sense that these writers actually did reject doctrinaire positivism.