Kadish Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory: Anna Stilz, University of California, Berkeley

Lenin’s Theory of Self-Determination

Abstract 

In the Marxist tradition, V. I. Lenin is associated with the thesis that all nations have the right to self-determination. Although self-determination had earlier philosophical antecedents, Lenin was the first to advocate the principle to the international community, and—alongside Woodrow Wilson—it is partly owing to his efforts that the idea developed into a general principle of international law and came to be incorporated into the UN Charter.  My paper reconstructs Lenin’s theory of self-determination with an eye to answering three questions: first, why did Lenin think national self-determination would pave the way to global political unity on egalitarian terms?  Second, why did Lenin give special emphasis to the liberation of colonized peoples?  Third, how does socialist self-determination differ from liberal self-determination?  The paper shows that conflicting approaches to self-determination have been glossed over in international legal documents, and that historically there have been multiple, quite distinct conceptions of self-determination, underpinned by very different understandings of freedom and democracy.

About Anna Stilz, University of California, Berkeley:

Anna Stilz is Kernan Robson Professor of Political Science at University of California, Berkeley.  Prior to coming to Berkeley, she taught for fifteen years in the Politics Department and Center for Human Values at Princeton University.  Stilz is the author of Liberal Loyalty: Freedom, Obligation, and the State (Princeton 2009) and Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford 2019).  She is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of Free & Equal: A Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs.

About the workshop:

A workshop for presenting and discussing work in progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The central aim is to provide an opportunity for students to engage with philosophers, political theorists, and legal scholars working on normative questions. Another aim is to bring together people from different disciplines who have strong normative interests or who speak to issues of potential interest to philosophers and political theorists.

The theme for Spring 2025 is “Critics of Liberalism,” and we will host scholars working in Philosophy, Law, History, and Political Science. Our underlying concern will be the normative critiques of substantive liberal ideas from both the left and right, as well as staunch defenders of liberalism.

This semester the workshop is co-taught by Joshua Cohen and Desmond Jagmohan.