Other Critiques of Sovereignty

After a rather lengthy discussion on the pluralists’ criticism of sovereignty, we may now turn to some other trends or approaches, which besides being critical to the state and sovereignty also, at times, reject the necessity of state and sovereignty. These criticisms may involve: (i) pluralistic arguments based on groups like professional and economic associations by the Guild socialists; (ii) class arguments based on trade unions by Syndicalists; (iii) rule of the proletariat like Marxists; (iv) arguments in terms of interest-based feeling of individual by Modern individualists; and (v) arguments based on denial of any authority by anarchists. Their criticism of the State implies a denial or dilution of sovereignty. In fact, our taking up these approaches as criticism of sovereignty is premised on the fact that they share a common theme of ‘opposition to a centrally constituted authority’ i.e., the state. Pluralists, Guild socialists, Syndicalists, Anarchists and Modern Individualists and Marxists approaches, all share the same theme, though in different degrees.