290 A Positive Century (1815–1914)abstract jurisprudential considerations. His work arose less out of doctrinal
dissatisfaction with natural law and positivism, and more out of extrapola-
tion from existing trends in the real world. In his own words, his outlook
was “concrete and practical.” He was, in fact, dismissive of the old “ratio-
nalist cosmopolitanism” of the eigh teenth century. Th e mission of inter-
national law, he maintained, was not to build “cloud castles” but rather
“mountain tops... resting upon an immovable and massive foundation”— a
foundation, that is, of practical, material interests in the real world. At the
same time, he was careful to distinguish his “positive internationalism” (as
he called it) from “attempts artifi cially to create a world state.” He envis-
aged that states would retain their sovereignty— but would, at the same time,
be drawn ever closer together into ever denser webs of cooperation. It was, in
a manner of speaking, a vision that was positivist in spirit but (crucially)
without the pluralistic ethos of positivism.
Lawyers of the positivist persuasion, by virtue of their scientifi c outlook,
could look with approval on this technocratic ambition. Jellinek, for example,
was familiar with Stein’s work and wrote warmly of the promise that it held.
Stein’s concept of international administration, he stated in 1882, could point
the way to “a higher form of development” of international law— one that
looked beyond the forging of po liti cal ties, which by their nature were “always
very precarious.” Th e various public international unions, he maintained,
“promise to open up an exciting perspective for the future of international
law, both in theory and practice.”
Th e So cio log i cal Approach
Th e other variant of solidarism, the so cio log i cal one, had at its core an insis-
tence on seeing law as a product of social and economic forces in the real
world. It is therefore best characterized as the international- law counterpart
of so cio log i cal jurisprudence in general legal philosophy. Th e role of law,
in this view, is chiefl y the allocation of resources or the provision of ser vices
and not the exposition and defense of abstract rights. Law is regarded as
part of a more general program of identifying and meeting the concrete so-
cial and economic needs of communities and their members. To this wing
of solidarist thought, as to the technocratic one, the idea of interdependence
is fundamental.