Investors versus Workers: A Class-Based Critique of International Investment Treaties

Bilateral investment treaties constitute an important instrument to facilitate global investment. Recent discussions in political theory have highlighted several normative concerns raised by bilateral investment treaties. One worry is that investment treaties undermine national self-determination as they grant investors far-reaching protections that can be legally enforced. Another worry is that the benefits and burdens entailed in bilateral investment treaties are distributed unfairly in a way that benefits investors at the expense of states and disadvantaged groups within states. Instead of critiquing bilateral investment treaties from a perspective of global (distributive) justice, in this article I develop a class-based critique. This involves a twofold departure. First, the article shifts the focus from distributions to the power relations that are built into the global capitalist economy and that come into sharp relief in the practice of global investment. Second, rather than focusing on the relation between states and investors, I claim that in a class-based critique the relation between workers and investors should take centre stage. I argue that bilateral investment treaties are effectively an instrument of class domination, insofar as they reproduce and increase the power of transnational corporations while at the same time decreasing the power of workers.