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SEPTEMBER 18, 2026 "Laws of Motion or Law in Motion? On Capitalism and the Law"
Abstract: In recent years, after a long absence, the term ‘capitalism’ has returned to public debate. Triggered in part by the 2008 financial crisis, the long austerity which followed and political movements contesting both, capitalism has become a central element in describing the world and how it needs to change.  Alongside this, the uneven results of capitalisms’ crises have helped undergird new attention to its relationship to race and racialisation.

These developments have been matched in the academy, including – perhaps surprisingly – the field of law. The rise of the Law and Political Economy movement, and an increased prominence of the term ‘racial capitalism’ in legal scholarship are testament to this. Yet, though such work frequently invokes ‘capitalism’ as a term, it also often - implicitly or explicitly - operates in opposition to the perhaps most famous account of capitalism: that of the Marxist tradition. Most significantly, many of these contemporary accounts do not address the ‘laws of motion’ which Marxists have argued are central to capitalism. More often, they stress the contingency and historicity of capitalism, often with a focus on law’s role in constructing many different capitalisms.

This talk offers an alternative to this. I begin by sketching an account of capitalism rooted in the insights of the Marxist tradition. On this account, in order to truly understand capitalism we need to think about capitalism’s internal logic and – crucially – its ‘laws of motion’. These ‘laws of motion’  are crucial in dictating the actions of actors in a capitalist system, and dictating the limits that these actors face. In the talk I outline how these laws of motion have been conceptualised and understood. Following on from this I examine Marxist accounts of law and legal theory more broadly, in order to demonstrate the relationship between law and capitalist accumulation at both the general level and in terms of specific conjunctures. In particular, I seek to demonstrate how such approaches are able to explain the changing nature of law and its relationship to processes of capitalist accumulation. In this way, I argue that whilst capitalism is indeed protean and historically contingent, it is nonetheless structured by systematic imperatives.

Ultimately, I argue, this understanding of capitalism helps us to navigate the shape that capitalism and law in particular conjunctures. It does by focusing on the way in which the systematic imperatives of capital accumulation ultimately condition and limit what is possible in any given moment. Such a position, I argue, has crucial consequences for understanding the political possibilities offered to us by law in transforming the world.

Robert Knox is Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool School of Law. Knox's research interests broadly encompass the relationship between law and the political-economic structures of capitalism. He has specific expertise on public international law, particularly on its relationship to race and empire; public law, with a focus on its relationship to neoliberalism, and legal theory, especially critical and Marxist approaches to the law. Knox has taught Law and Social Justice, Principles of International Law, Public International Law, and International Law and Current Affairs.

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