Disputing the geopolitics of the states system and global capitalism

This article was downloaded by: [University of Utah]On: 03 July 2014, At: 02:40Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Cambridge Review of International AffairsPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccam20

Disputing the geopolitics of the states system andglobal capitalismAdam David Morton aa University of NottinghamPublished online: 05 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Adam David Morton (2007) Disputing the geopolitics of the states system and global capitalism,Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 20:4, 599-617, DOI: 10.1080/09557570701680621

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09557570701680621

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccam20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/09557570701680621

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09557570701680621

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Disputing the geopolitics of the states system and globalcapitalism

Adam David Morton1

University of Nottingham

Abstract Alex Callinicos’s intervention in the debate on the geopolitics of the statessystem and capitalist modernity provides a crucial wake-up call to International Relationstheory and practice. Yet, within the contending positions he outlines disputing thepolitical economy of geopolitical conflict, inter-state rivalry and capitalist imperialism, theinsights of Antonio Gramsci are notably absent. This article contributes to the debate byelaborating how the theory of passive revolution reveals the political rule of capital,thereby internally relating the states system to capitalist modernity within a focus onuneven development. This concern is evident in Gramsci’s analysis of the labour process ofAnglo-Saxon capitalism and the geopolitics of the states system contained within hissurvey of ’Americanism and Fordism’. Theorization on the passive revolution ofcapital might then provide a fruitful basis from which an empirical research agenda onsocial development could be advanced with reference to post-colonial state formationprocesses.

The Italian bourgeoisie succeeded in organizing its state not so much through its

own intrinsic strength, as through being favoured in its victory over the feudal and

semi-feudal classes by a whole series of circumstances of an international

character (Napoleon III’s policy in 1852-60; the Austro-Prussian War of 1866;

France’s defeat at Sedan and the development of the German Empire after this

event).

– Antonio Gramsci, ‘Origins of the Mussolini Cabinet’, Letter to the Fourth

World Congress of the IIIrd International (20 November 1922).

1 Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 3rd International GramsciSociety Conference, ‘Antonio Gramsci: a Sardinian in the “vast and terrible world”’,Cagliari-Ghilarza-Ales/Sardinia, 3–6 May 2007; at the conference ‘Antonio Gramsci’srevolutionary legacy’, hosted by the journal International Socialism, London School ofEconomics, 12 May 2007; at the BISA Working Group on Historical Sociology and IRworkshop on ‘The postcolonial in world politics’, Queen Mary, University of London, 7June 2007; and at the 4th ECPR General Conference, Pisa/Italy, 6–8 September 2007. I amgrateful to all the participants across the events as well as to Sam Ashman, AndreasBieler, Peter Ives, John Hobson, Ray Kiely and Alf Nilsen for pointers and comments;and to Alexander Anievas and the three anonymous referees for the journal, whoprovided a tough reminder of some of the shortcomings of the argument. Theresponsibility for adequately (or otherwise) incorporating their insights into theargument is entirely my own.

Cambridge Review of International Affairs,Volume 20, Number 4, December 2007

ISSN 0955-7571 print/ISSN 1474-449X online/07/040599–19 q 2007 Centre of International Studies

DOI: 10.1080/09557570701680621

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

Introduction

Debate in international relations (IR) and international political economy (IPE)remains neglectful of historical-materialist insights into the relationship between thegeopolitics of the states system and capitalist modernity. An authority rarely raisedwithin historical materialist debate on the relationship between the geopoliticalcircumstances of the states system and capitalist modernity is Antonio Gramsci.More commonly, inspiration is drawn from the ground-breaking reading of LeonTrotsky’s understanding of the conditions of uneven and combined development inworld history and its impact on geopolitics (Rosenberg 2005, 2006; Teschke 2003;Trotsky 1936). A feature even less mentioned in IR and IPE is the spatial manner inwhich Gramsci envisaged the interaction between the states system and theinternational conditions of capitalist hegemony. Exceptionally, Edward Said (2000,467–470) has argued that Gramsci developed a critical consciousness that wasgeographical and spatial in its fundamental coordinates to the degree that hesituated class struggle over hegemony within ‘unequal geographies’. This reveals aspatial grasping of world history rooted in social relations and geographies ofcomplexly uneven development. Bob Jessop has added that ‘Gramsci wasextremely sensitive to issues of scale, scalar hierarchies of economic, political,intellectual and moral power, and their territorial and non-territorial expressions’.This has been articulated as taking a focus on the states system as nodal rather thandominant when analysing processes of state formation within global capitalism(Jessop 2006a, 31–32).

This article will dwell on such pointers by teasing out Gramsci’s contributionto understanding the geopolitics of capitalism with specific reference to debateson uneven development. This will entail highlighting an area of debate entirelymissing from Alex Callinicos’s overview of the contending positions on thepolitical economy of geopolitical conflict, inter-state rivalry, and capitalistimperialism. To recap, Callinicos (2007) posits a tripartite overview of thisliterature grouping together ‘transnationalists’ (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,William Robinson), ‘hegemonists’ (Leo Panitch and Sam Ginden), and ‘newimperialists’ (David Harvey, Peter Gowan). He includes himself in the latter stanceon the intersection of territorial and capitalist logics of power. Any categorizationof the literature is suspect to arbitrary division, oversight and simplification.However, it is my contention in this article that Gramsci’s theorizing of capitalistmodernity and his conceptualization of the states system therein offer asubstantial contribution to present debates on uneven development.

Moreover, Gramsci’s theorizing moves beyond IR debate as it is still miredwithin the distinct separation of the ‘two logics’ of inter-state geopolitics andcapitalist uneven development. Witness here Alexander Wendt’s stark andunremitting division of the relationship between the ‘logic of anarchy’ and the‘logic of capital’, with the latter bracketed due to its distinct developmentaldynamic (Wendt 2003, 494). It would therefore be remiss to argue that IR theory hassuperseded a focus on the logics of geopolitics and capitalism, or that there is a newdebate proceeding across constructivist or post-structuralist approaches on the roleof ideology, culture and norms in the international system (for example, Hobson2007). As argued elsewhere (Bieler and Morton 2008), there is no new debate herebut merely a reproduction of the separation of materialist and idealist realms innew guises, which is neglectful of historical materialism and its appreciation of the

600 Adam David Morton

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

internal relation of ideas as material social processes that surpass the deficits ofdiscourse without collapsing into economism. The task that remains is to thereforedemonstrate Gramsci’s relevance to theorizing the relationship between the statessystem and capitalism. My aim is to do so by showing how Gramsci can contributeto addressing the two factors that Hobson (2007) holds as central to a non-reductionist theory of the geopolitical system, by indicating: 1) how the statessystem constitutes the reproduction of capitalism; and 2) how class relations areshaped both by capitalism as a mode of production and by geopolitics. It isGramsci’s notion of passive revolution as an expression of the political rule ofcapital—emblematic in his focus on ‘Americanism and Fordism’—that promotesan understanding of the states system in its relationship to capitalist modernity.The theory of passive revolution captures such dynamics whilst also highlightingthe continued relevance of uneven development as a framing of social divisions inworld order. The specific structure of my argument falls as follows.

A thorough critique of the ‘transnationalist’ thesis of global capitalism developedby William Robinson (2003; 2004) has been elaborated elsewhere (Morton 2007a,140–150). Briefly, this covers three core problems with the theory of global capitalismand the transnational state in terms of understanding: 1) the historical relationshipbetween territorial states and capitalism; 2) the relationship between globalizationand uneven development; and 3) the spatial expression of capitalism andterritoriality. Space restrictions prevent revisiting these points in detail. Broadly,though, the position adopted as a result of the lines of critique just sketched is that‘capital remains a force that by preference seeks to occupy the interconnectionsbetween separate political jurisdictions’ (van der Pijl 2006a, 15). On this basis, thefirst main section elaborates the theory of passive revolution as an expression of thepolitical rule of capital, thereby focusing on the relationship between the statessystem and capitalist modernity to combine an appreciation of the world historicalcontext of uneven development and its connection to the formative influence ofstates. This proceeds through an analysis of Gramsci’s concern with the modernstates system and its relation to the emerging hegemony of Anglo-Saxon capitalismand colonial exploitation through his analysis of the geopolitical and sociologicalaspects of ‘Americanism and Fordism’. In contrast to the transnational state thesis, itwill be argued below that the theory of passive revolution provides a method ofanalysis that combines an appreciation of geopolitical and capitalist dynamics thatshape state formation processes. Within this method also lies an appreciation of thenodal spatiality of capitalism, or how different scales between places relate to oneanother differentially over time within the conditions of uneven development(Agnew 2003, 13). What is pivotal to this theory of passive revolution is theconstitutive role granted to geopolitics and capitalism within an historicalmethodology that can account for specific contexts of state formation.

The second main section then turns to discuss how internalizing amethodological understanding of passive revolution might assist in tracingconditions of social development within post-colonial states, where the impasse ofdevelopment has commonly been tied to state-led mechanisms that assisted in theemergence of capitalism to become the primary organ of primitive accumulationthrough elaborate institutions of public power, administration and nationalplanning. The point here is that internalizing the method of multi-scalar articulationencapsulated in the theory of passive revolution can assist in appreciating thereciprocal influence of specific spatial scales in understanding the states system in

Disputing the geopolitics of the states system and global capitalism 601

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

its dynamic with global capitalism. It is hoped that the theoretical abstraction acrossthe first section on passive revolution and ‘Americanism and Fordism’ will movethe focus towards highlighting empirical issues pertinent to post-colonial stateformation. The conclusion then raises a set of points about the theorization ofuneven development in general and the adequacy of Gramsci’s theorizing on thesubject-matter, more specifically, leaving a series of issues open to future debate.

Passive revolution, ‘Americanism and Fordism’ and the political rule of capital

‘Capitalism is a world historical phenomenon and its uneven development’,Gramsci (1977, 69) argued, ‘means that individual nations cannot be at the samelevel of economic development at the same time’. Gramsci understood issues ofuneven and combined development across 18th- and 19th-century Europeanhistory as a series of passive revolutions (see Morton 2005). To be precise, thetheory of passive revolution refers to how ‘restoration becomes the first policywhereby social struggles find sufficiently elastic frameworks to allow thebourgeoisie to gain power without dramatic upheavals’ (Gramsci 1971, 115,Q10II§61).2 As will be demonstrated in more detail with reference to ‘Americanismand Fordism’, the theory of passive revolution captures the political rule of capitalin terms of the intertwined aspects of the geopolitics of the states system and globalcapitalism rather than as separate logics. Moreover, it does so without reducing therole of capital to a simplified social character, or ‘ghost-walker’, as Monsieur leCapital, or mere thing falsely separated from Madame la Terre, thereby avoiding amystification of capitalism as a mode of production (Marx 1894/1984, 830).

The historical sociological implications of the theory of passive revolution intracing class struggles constitutive of ‘national’ processes of state formation withinthe causal conditioning of ‘the international’ have been developed in more detailelsewhere (Morton 2007b). The present discussion will tease out the key pointersof the concept in relation to furthering an understanding of the relationship of thegeopolitics of the states system to capitalism. The primary feature here is themanner in which passive revolution is able to capture comparative conditions ofclass formation within specific state formation processes and how these impact on,and are themselves influenced by, geopolitics and capitalist expansion.

Rooted in his writings on the crisis of the liberal state in Italy, Gramsci linkedthe notion of passive revolution to the spatial integration and transformation ofnational economies across Europe (Gramsci 1995, 330, Q10I§0; 348–350, Q10I§9).‘All revolutions, following the French Revolution’, notes Kees van der Pijl (1996,314), ‘would then be compelled to reduce structurally freedoms and the“spaciousness” of social infrastructures in order to sustain the attempt to catchup’. Following the post-Napoleonic restoration (1815–1848), Gramsci (1994a,230–233) regarded the tendency to establish ‘bourgeois’ social and political orderas something of a universal principle, but not in an absolute or fixed sense. ‘Allhistory from 1815 onwards’, wrote Gramsci, ‘shows the efforts of the traditional

2 Throughout this article, a specific convention associated with citing the Prisonnotebooks is adopted. In addition to giving the reference to the selected anthologies, thenotebook number (Q) and section (§) accompanies all citations, to enable the reader to tracethe specific collocation of the citations.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

classes to prevent the formation of a collective will . . . and to maintain “economic-corporate” power in an international system of passive equilibrium’ (Gramsci1971, 132, Q13§1). Moreover, ‘the “successive waves” [of class struggle] weremade up of a combination of social struggles, interventions from above of theenlightened monarchy type, and national wars—with the latter two predominat-ing’ (Gramsci 1971, 115, Q10II§61). This was indicative of mid-19th-centuryEuropean national unifications, during which people became (albeit active)ancillaries of change organized from above; whilst in other parts of the world suchunification processes would be mimetic. For, as Eric Hobsbawm (1975, 73, 166)puts it, in a statement that resonates with the force of Trotsky’s arguments onuneven and combined development, ‘countries seeking to break throughmodernity are normally derivative and unoriginal in their ideas, thoughnecessarily not so in their practices’.3 It is this divergence in the historicalprocesses of state formation within the conditions of uneven and combineddevelopment that is captured by the notion of passive revolution. Whilst passiverevolution is a counterpart to the condition of hegemony, ‘those states which arepowerful are precisely those which have undergone a profound social andeconomic revolution and have most fully worked out the consequences of thisrevolution in the form of state and of social relations’ (Cox 1983, 169).

But what Gramsci offers, perhaps uniquely, is recognition of both the internalfragmentation of Europe in terms of an east–west division and a realization of thenorth–south structuring of geography, territory, place and space (Moe 2002, 297).For instance, the former led to his famous formulation that, ‘In Russia [ie, the East]the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West,there was a proper relation between state and civil society, and when the statetrembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed’ (Gramsci 1971, 238,Q7§16). Whilst the latter led Gramsci to recognize that relations of production andstate formation are ‘further complicated by the existence within every state of severalstructurally diverse territorial sectors’ (Gramsci 1971, 182, Q13§17, emphasisadded). Notably this awareness was exemplified in his analysis of the ‘southernquestion’ concerning the terms of uneven development of the Mezzogiorno in Italy(Morton 2007a, 59–63). Linked to the concept of passive revolution, this realizationof different regional axes of development makes it possible to appreciate similar butdiscrete questions of ‘north/south uneven development’ characterized by theexpansion of capital and the emergence of the modern state (Hall 1986: 9). ‘Theconcept of passive revolution, it seems to me’, declared Gramsci (1996, 232, Q4§57),‘applies not only to Italy but also to those countries that modernise the state througha series of reforms or national wars without undergoing a political revolution of aradical Jacobin-type.’ The point is to appreciate specific outcomes within theformative conditions of the creation of modern states or ‘the fact that a state replacesthe local social groups in leading a struggle of renewal’ (Gramsci 1971, 105–106,Q15§59). It is this weakness in the modern function of state forms that then becomesthe analogue to state-building attempts elsewhere (Gramsci 1971, 110, Q15§11).

3 Trotsky (1936, 26) put it thus, ‘A backward country assimilates the material andintellectual conquests of the advanced countries. But this does not mean that it followsthem slavishly, reproduces all the stages of their past.’


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

Passive revolution is thus a portmanteau concept that reveals continuities andchanges within the political rule of capital. Processes that exemplify the inability of aruling class to fully integrate the producer classes through conditions of hegemony,when the leaders ‘aiming at the creation of a modern state . . . in fact produced abastard’ (Gramsci 1971, 90, Q19§28). Hence a situation when ‘more or less far-reaching modifications . . . into the economic structure of the country’ are made in asituation of ‘“domination” without that of “leadership”: dictatorship withouthegemony’ (Gramsci 1995, 350, Q10I§9; Gramsci 1971, 105–106, Q15§59). This mightbe because ‘the impetus of progress is not tightly linked to a vast local economicdevelopment . . . but is instead the reflection of international developments whichtransmit their ideological currents to the periphery—currents born of the productivedevelopment of the more advanced countries’ (Gramsci 1971, 116–117, Q10II§61,emphasis added). A geopolitical expression of such international developments inthe early 20th century was the expansion of capitalism through ‘Americanism andFordism’.

Americanism and Fordism

Gramsci presented ‘Americanism and Fordism’ as the outward expansion on aworld scale of a particular mode of production supported by mechanisms ofinternational organization. It was also intrinsically linked to aspects of modernculture or the variety of ‘artistic flowerings’ related to the American capitalistindustrial system (Gramsci 1992, 357–358, Q2§138; 1995, 256–257, Q15§30).A particularly personal cultural expression of such Americanism that Gramscipondered was the popularity that the toy Meccano had with his son, Delio, andwhether it would deprive children of an inventive spirit of their own (Gramsci1994b, 242, 276–277). An alternative expression was through literature and howAmerican ‘civilization’ was able at the time to remain self-critical byunderstanding its strengths and weaknesses through novels such as SinclairLewis’s Babbit (Gramsci 1985, 278–279, Q5§105; 279–280, Q6§49). The ideology ofAmericanism was therefore understood in its internal relation to the worldof Fordist production as a material social product rather than as a separate set ofcultural norms. This was manifest in both sociological and geopolitical dimensions.

At the sociological level, cultural features of Americanism conjoined withemergent patterns of Fordist production, which in turn marked the character andpredominance of United States geopolitics. As John Agnew (2005, 9, emphasesadded) has put it, ‘the place that comes to exercise hegemony [Americanism ]matters, therefore, in the content and form that hegemony takes [Fordism ]’.Gramsci’s formulation at the time therefore recognized the ‘transformation of thematerial bases of European civilisation’ induced by the ‘repercussion of Americansuper-power’ that resulted in ‘the superficial apish initiative’ of emulativeeconomic policies (Gramsci 1971, 317, Q22§15). Simultaneously, however, the roleof high wages within the ‘Fordian ideology’ of mass production affects a‘tempering of compulsion (self-discipline) with persuasion’ (Gramsci 1971,310–312, Q22§13). The phenomenon of hegemony springing forth from theconditions of Fordism mixes ‘coercion [that] has therefore to be ingeniouslycombined with persuasion and consent’ (Gramsci 1971, 310, Q22§13). American-ism is an ideology manifested in ‘cafe life’ that ‘can appear like a form of make-up,a superficial foreign fashion’, whilst capitalism itself (expressed by the character


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

and relationships between fundamental class relations) is not transformed, itsimply acquires ‘a new coating’ in the climate of Americanism (Gramsci 1971,317–318, Q22§15). This equally led Gramsci to directly consider how new methodsof discipline within the labour process were linked to 1) wider aspects of familialrelations; 2) the sexual division of labour; and 3) changing norms of identity(Morton 2007a, 102–105). What is key to unravelling Gramsci’s sociological takeon geopolitics, then, is that there is an overall growing analysis of the labourprocess inclusive of the economic function of reproduction linked to ‘United Statesworld expansionism’ that he envisaged as causally significant on the world stagein struggles over the ‘security of American capital’ (Gramsci 1996, 56, Q3§55).

At the geopolitical level, Gramsci focused on moving beyond an account thatsimply offered a ‘statesmen’s manual’ of geopolitics evident in the work of RudolfKjellen, which was explicitly criticized as an attempt to construct a science of thestate and of politics on the basis of taking state territoriality as a given (Gramsci1995, 195, Q2§39). The focus on ‘Americanism and Fordism’ instead embraced arealization of the changing geography and spatiality of power emerging in the 20th

century. At the forefront here was inquiry into ‘Fordism as the ultimate stage in theprocess of progressive attempts by industry to overcome the law of the tendency ofthe rate of profit to fall’, or capital’s contradictions (Gramsci 1971, 279, Q22§1).It could be said that ‘Americanism and Fordism’ was ‘one of the means immanent incapitalist production to check the fall of the rate of profit and hasten accumulation ofcapital-value through formation of new capital’ (Marx 1894/1984, 249).

Gramsci embedded the social conditions of the existing value of capital in‘Americanism and Fordism’ within a clear delineation of the geopolitics of thestates system and the uneven development of capitalism by distinguishingbetween 1) the group of capitalist states that formed the keystone of theinternational states system at that time [Britain, France, Germany, the US]; and2) those states which represented the immediate periphery of the capitalist world[Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Portugal] (Gramsci 1978, 408–410). Within theformer, ‘the global politico-economic system’ was more and more marked by‘Americanism and Fordism’ or what Gramsci explicitly referred to as ‘Anglo-Saxon world hegemony’ accompanied by the ‘colonial subjection of the wholeworld to Anglo-Saxon capitalism’ (Gramsci 1977, 81, 89). In Gramsci’s view, that iswhy the ‘uneven development’ of ‘capitalism is a world historical phenomenon’within which ‘the colonial populations become the foundation on which thewhole edifice of capitalist exploitation is erected’ (Gramsci 1977, 69–72, 302).Hence the need to give due regard to ‘the class struggle of the coloured peoplesagainst their white exploiters and murderers’ producing ‘cheap raw materials forindustry . . . for the benefit of European civilisation’ (Gramsci 1977, 60, 302).4

Further, Gramsci also thought it possible that ‘American expansionism [could] useAmerican negroes as its agents in the conquest of the African market and theextension of American civilisation’ (Gramsci 1971, 21, Q12§1).

Additionally, the late entrance of peripheral European societies into capitalistrelations meant that state forms were ‘less efficient’ in creating ideologicalmechanisms to defer the immediate consequences of economic crisis, so that the

4 This quotation is referred to in Slater’s (2004, 160) study of the geopoliticalunevenness of development intrinsic to colonial and post-colonial power relations.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

form of state transformation in such cases was circumscribed by ‘prevailingconditions within the international capitalist system’ (Gramsci 1975, 95; Gramsci1977, 128; Gramsci 1978, 408–410). Again, the issue of passive revolution issignificant here in relation to ‘the particular role the . . . state has always played inthe economy in substituting for so-called private enterprise’ (Gramsci 1995, 243,Q15§1). Concomitantly, the most favourable conditions for revolution may arise‘where the fabric of the capitalist system offers least resistance, because of itsstructural weaknesses’ in conditions of peripheral development (Gramsci 1978, 346).Gramsci therefore traced specific contexts in the expansion of both the geopoliticalsystem of states and capitalist uneven development.

These insights are most compellingly combined in Gramsci’s attempt to tracehow ‘the complex problem arises of the relation of internal forces in the country inquestion, of the relation of international forces, [and] of the country’s geo-politicalposition’ (Gramsci 1971, 116, Q10II§61). This involved analysing organic andconjunctural historical movements that were dealt with by the same concepts (seeFigure 1). Therefore, ‘relations within society’ (involving the development ofproductive forces, the level of coercion, or relations between political parties) thatconstitute ‘hegemonic systems within the state’ were inextricably linked to‘relations between international forces’ (involving the requisites of great powers,sovereignty and independence) that constitute ‘the combinations of states inhegemonic systems’ (Gramsci 1971, 176, Q13§2; Bieler and Morton 2003, 484–485).

Linking back to claims made earlier in this article, such elements comprise atheory of geopolitics capable of relating 1) the states system in constituting andreproducing capitalism and 2) class relations in constituting both capitalism as amode of production and geopolitics. This can be substantiated by, first,recognizing that historical materialism is marked by a philosophy of internalrelations (see Ollman 1976, 47), meaning in this case that geopolitical relationslinked to the states system are interiorized within the conditions of modernity aspart of the composition of capital. Put differently, in the modern epoch thegeopolitical states system is internally related to capitalist relations of production.Second, for Gramsci, this meant that the states system, embedded in conditions ofuneven development and linked to the differential position of states within thatsystem, has to be internally related to the subsequent expression of capitalism asmode of production through the expansion of ‘Americanism and Fordism’. Whatthis means is that through Americanism and Fordism the extra-economic aspectsof geopolitical competition are linked interactively to capitalism. This was moststarkly expressed in relation to Gramsci’s analysis of US attempts to organize theworld market to economically underpin its political hegemony.

Figure 1. Geopolitical relations and the passive revolution of capital


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

The world market, according to this tendency, would come to be made up of a seriesof markets—no longer national, but international (inter-state)(which would haveorganized within their own borders a certain stability of essential economicactivities, and which could enter into mutual relations on the basis of the samesystem. (Gramsci 1992, 351, Q2§125)

Additionally, developments such as colonialism, imperialism, nationalism orfascism inhering within specific forms of state have to be related to the overallsystem of states, with the latter obtaining a certain sense of autonomy from theworld market conditions of capitalism. This certain sense of autonomy is mostevocatively raised by Gramsci thus:

Is the cultural hegemony by one nation over another still possible? Or is the worldalready so united in its economic and social structure that a country, if it can have‘chronologically’ the initiative in an innovation, cannot keep its ‘political’ monopolyand so use such a monopoly as the basis of hegemony? What significance thereforecan nationalism have today? Is this not possible as economico-financial imperialismbut not as civil ‘primacy’ or politico-intellectual hegemony? (Gramsci 2001, Vol 5,64–65, Q13§26, author’s translation)

Gramsci thus highlights in ‘Americanism and Fordism’ capital’s attempt tomobilize effective responses to changing geopolitical developments within the statessystem, while at the same time asserting that ‘the whole economic activity of acountry can only be judged in relationship to the international market . . . and is to beevaluated in so far as it is inserted into an international unit’ (Gramsci 1995, 233,Q9§32). Hence, the social relations of production inherent to ‘Americanism andFordism’ retain a determining influence in shaping the ideology of liberalinternationalism due to the role of the ‘decisive nucleus of economic activity’ butwithout succumbing to expressions of economism (Gramsci 1971, 161, Q13§18).A constitutive theory of geopolitics is thus evident in the manner by which the statessystem is understood to reproduce capitalism through conditions of unevendevelopment, whilst the ‘close play of the class struggle’, through ‘Americanism andFordism’, links both the ‘development of international relations between states’ andthe ‘relations between various groups that form a class within a nation’ (Gramsci1975, 62). Therefore, ‘in the international sphere, competition, the struggle to acquireprivate and national property, creates the same hierarchies and system of slavery as inthe national sphere’ (Gramsci 1977, 69). Finally, the concept of passive revolutionstands as a causative factor within the states system linking both the reproduction ofcapitalism on a global scale, through its outward expression as ‘Americanism andFordism’, and responses within specific state forms. The most pertinent example fromGramsci’s time that substantiates this linkage was the fascist phenomenon (seeMorton 2007a, 71–72). It is in this manner that the concept of passive revolutionstands as a theory of the political rule of capital that, by extension, incorporatesgeopolitical competition within its frame of reference. This is what is meant whenDavid Harvey (2003, 101) notes that ‘the molecular processes of capital accumulationoperating in space and time generate passive revolutions in the geographicalpatterning of capital accumulation’. Put differently, instances of passive revolutioncan be understood through the method of incorporated comparison—(elaborated byPhilip McMichael (1990)—where the creation of the conditions for capitalist classconsolidation in specific state formation processes are understood as relatedmoments within the world market context of capitalism. Rather than constructing an


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

‘external’ relationship between ‘cases’ of passive revolution, ‘comparison becomesan“internal” rather than an “external” (formal) feature of inquiry, relating apparentlyseparate processes (in time and/or space) as components of a broader, world-historical process’ (McMichael 1990, 389).

New ‘north–south’ questions of uneven development

Whilst strewn across diverse writings, Gramsci’s underlying theory of geopoliticsand capitalist modernity offers a potential method of theory construction intracing how ‘the international situation should be considered in its nationalaspect’ (Gramsci 1971, 240, Q14§68; Morton 2007b). Overall, Gramsci posed hisapproach to understanding the relation of the geopolitical circumstances of thestates system and the role of capitalism in the following oft-cited question: ‘Dointernational relations precede or follow (logically) fundamental social relations?There can be no doubt that they follow . . . . However, international relations reactboth passively and actively on political relations’ (Gramsci 1971, 176, Q13§2).

The logic of the above theorizing is that there is an appreciation of the differentscales between geography, territory, place and space that may offer, through thetheory of passive revolution, the lineaments of an approach to understandingpost-colonial state formation and transformation. It reflects the need to identify ahierarchy of scales at which different policies might serve to anchor geopoliticalpriorities within specific spatial and geographical territorial forms (Jessop 2006a).Similar to recent spatially informed approaches to world politics, my argument isthat there is an historical approach within the theory of passive revolution that canrecognize the complex, intersecting effects of geographical representations andthe spatial distribution of material conditions on political practices that has utilityin understanding the post-colonial world (Agnew 2000). To elaborate withincurrent space restrictions, two themes will be briefly outlined within which thetheory of passive revolution can link distinct processes of state formation withinthe post-colonial world and associated forms of geopolitics to capitalist expansion.It should be stressed, however, that no crude application of Gramsci’s conceptsand principles is advocated. The approach consists, as noted in the introduction,of internalizing a method of thinking about the geopolitics of the state system, thehistory of state formation, and the expansion of modern capitalism in order tocapture the multi-scalar features of passive revolution (Morton 2007a, 35–38).

Post-colonial state formation has commonly emerged within a global division oflabour shaped by the expansion of capitalism and the uneven tendencies ofdevelopment. Following Ernest Mandel (1975, 46–81, 85–103), the conditionof uneven and combined development—involving uneven processes of primitiveaccumulation within combined capitalist and pre-capitalist modes of production—has contributed greatly to shaping state sovereignty and economic development inpost-colonial states. The uneven tendencies of development wrought by processes ofprimitive accumulation unfolded within the framework of an already existing worldmarket and international states system. This means that the international growth andspread of capitalism in post-colonial states occurs through ongoing processes ofprimitive accumulation. The latter classically entails the displacement of ‘politically’constituted property by ‘economic’ power entailing a ‘historical process of divorcingthe producer from the means of production’ generating propertyless individuals


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

compelled to sell their labour (Marx 1887/1996, 705–706). Yet, due to the presence of aterritorialized state framework, processes of primitive accumulation in the post-colonial world became heavily reliant on the state as the locus of capitalaccumulation. ‘Much has therefore depended on how the state has been constitutedand by whom, and what the state was and is able or prepared to do in support of or inopposition to processes of capital accumulation’ (Harvey 2003, 91). Following Marx’sreflections on state force within the colonial system as itself an economic power,Mandel pointedly notes that in these instances the state comes to act as the ‘midwifeof modern capitalism’ (Marx 1887/1996, 739; Mandel 1975, 54). ‘At the less developedstages of capitalist production . . . a large investment of capital for a long time, such asthe building of roads, canals, etc, are . . . not carried out on a capitalist basis at all, butrather at communal or state expense’ (Marx 1893/1986, 237; Harvey 1982/2006, 225).It is within this context of uneven and combined development and through thespecific class conflicts ascribed to processes of capital accumulation that the theory ofpassive revolution can be related to geopolitical concerns in the following ways.

The state in Africa?

According to Mahmood Mamdani, following independence, the African post-colonial state comprised a bifurcated political structure in which the formalseparation of the political and economic characteristics of modern capitalist stateswas compromised:

The colonial state was a double-sided affair. Its one side, the state that governed aracially defined citizenry, was bounded by the rule of law and an associated regimeof rights. Its other side, the state that ruled over subjects, was a regime of extra-economic coercion and administratively driven justice. (Mamdani 1996, 19)

The post-colonial state was therefore bifurcated due to the existence of a civilpolitical form of rule similar to that of modern capitalist states, based on law, andconcentrated in urban areas, as well as a customary form of power based onpersonalism, extra-economic compulsions and exploitation centred in ruralsociety and culture. The age of imperialism suffocated the process of primitiveaccumulation so that the state became the prime channel of accumulation servingas a ‘surrogate collective capitalist’, for instance in Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Zaire andSierra Leone (Young 2004, 31). At the same time, ‘the distortions of the state are notjust the result of the external dependence of African political systems. They alsoarise from the evolution of their internal stratification’ (Bayart 1986, 121). Hence,‘primitive accumulation . . . entails appropriation and co-optation of pre-existingcultural and social achievements as well as confrontation and supersession’(Harvey 2003, 146).

This is where Jean-Francois Bayart’s (2000) notion of ‘extraversion’ gainspurchase in appreciating the general trajectories of state formation shaped byhistorical patterns in the uneven and combined development of capitalaccumulation alongside the predatory pursuit of power and wealth tied toparticular state formation practices and social forms of organization in the post-colonial era. Specific struggles within sub-Saharan African states (Liberia, Rwanda,Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda) might then be interpreted as a modeof political production: a source of primitive accumulation that enables the seizureof the resources of the economy based on strategies of extraversion involving new


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

claims to authority and redistribution (Bayart 1993, xiii–xiv). For instance, rebelgroups in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, such as Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary UnitedFront (RUF), engaged in predatory forms of primitive accumulation through theseizure of resources such as conflict diamonds or Charles Taylor’s NationalPatriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), funded warfare through the seizure of thetimber, rubber and diamond trades (Szeftel 2000; Reno 1998). Also, in the late1990s, the rebel Alliance for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire, led by Laurent Kabila,played the diamond cartel De Beers against one of its rivals, America MineralFields, concerning diamond mining contracts as well as contracts to mine copper,cobalt and zinc. This arrangement is also somewhat mirrored by the interventionof the Ugandan Peoples’ Defence Force (UPDF) in the ensuing Congo war,through which some officers of the UPDF managed to institutionalize their privateinterests and benefit from the predatory pursuit of primitive accumulation whilstsimultaneously underwriting the Ugandan state’s compliance with debtobligations to creditors within the global political economy. Long-term aims ofstate-building, however, remain thwarted by the volatile balance sustained bythese competing factional interests in the Ugandan state (Reno 2002). Throughoutthese conditions of extraversion—the predatory pursuit of wealth and powerthrough primitive accumulation—there are connotations of the theory of passiverevolution that can be related to specific state formation processes in sub-SaharanAfrica (Bayart 1993, 180–192). This focus might thus offer a more historically richand nuanced political-economy approach to understanding so-called ‘failedstates’ (Bilgin and Morton 2002, 2004); the latter term itself propagated by foreignpolicy leaders and experts, state bureaucrats and theorists of statecraft (such asFrancis Fukuyama or Samuel Huntington) in an attempt to order geopolitics.

Passive revolutions of capital in Latin America?

Within formal or informal Western imperialism, Eric Hobsbawm has stated that:

. . . in the first instance, “Westernisation” was the only form in which backwardeconomies could be modernised and weak states strengthened. This providedWestern empires with the built-in goodwill of such local elites as were interested inovercoming local backwardness. This was so even when the indigenousmodernisers eventually turned against foreign rule. (Hobsbawm 2007, 27)

In Latin America, classic stratifications associated with uneven development havebeen evident in terms of agrarian capitalism; the creation of a local bourgeoisie inthe wake of dominant foreign capital; and the tendency to assume statist forms ofdevelopment through Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) induced by thedemands of accelerated capitalist production for the world market (Amin 1974,378–390). A formative influence on the structures of specific state formationprocesses in Latin America has thus been the geopolitical circumstances of thesystem of states. Additionally, the impact of foreign capital and the gradualinclusion of such states within the world market—or conditions of uneven andcombined development—meant that the state became the arbiter of class struggleand the necessary precondition for the furtherance of capitalism.

Robert Cox (1987, 209–210) has directly noted how such conditions of unevendevelopment have shaped social relations of production and mechanisms of capitalaccumulation within such social formations. The emergent state in Latin America


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

commonly reflected an impasse between social class forces; it was not itselfhegemonic, and so ‘initiated capitalist development as a passive revolution within anauthoritarian framework under state leadership for lack of any established bourgeoishegemony’ (Cox 1987, 218). Similarly, Kees van der Pijl (2006b, 17–21, 177–180) noteshow such ‘contender states’ have driven the convergence process through plannedaction, the mobilization of the social base and populist style national development,for instance in Mexico under Lazaro Cardenas (1934–1940), in Brazil under GetulioVargas (1937–1945) and in Argentina under Juan Peron (1944–1955).

At issue here, as Carlos Nelson Coutinho states (cited in Burgos 2002, 13–14), isthe need to ‘embrace the Gramsci . . . who researched the “nonclassical” forms ofthe transition to capitalist modernity (the problematic of the “passive revolution”)’.This means that the political rule of capital through passive revolutions—or state-led attempts of developmental convergence—often resulted in a ‘bastard birth’ of‘strikingly incomplete’ achievements besides the construction of a modern state(Anderson 1992, 115). Frequently in such cases, state formation literally became aprocess of etatisation involving transplanted political structures introduced,sometimes by force, as an imported form of political centralization (Badie andBirnbaum 1983, 74, 97–99). The theory of passive revolution can therefore belinked to the extension of capitalism through the social form of the modern state asa historical precondition for its consolidation and expansion. ‘To sharpen it’, statesPartha Chatterjee (1986, 30), ‘one must examine several historical cases of “passiverevolutions” in their economic, political and ideological aspects’.

One may begin this task in relation to Latin America by analysing the originalityand peculiarity of ‘national’ differences within specific state formation processeswhile displaying an awareness of how local processes of capital accumulationshaping state forms are embedded in wider geopolitical circumstances. Illustrativehere would be the outcome of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), understood asa passive revolution, which gave capitalism there a particular form consistent withauthoritarian dominance and hegemonic influence (Morton 2006). This approachto situating state formation processes within the geopolitics of world order mightnot only represent the type of class strategy undertaken in establishing andmaintaining the expansion of the state, but also the ways in which capitalism isforced to revolutionize itself whenever hegemony is weakened or a social formationcannot cope with the need to expand the forces of production.

Practices of passive revolution in the 20th century in alternative conditions ofdevelopment might then be traced where state mechanisms have been deployed toassist capitalist transformation. Pertinent here is the opportunity afforded throughthe notion of passive revolution to analyse, in the context of Latin Americandevelopment, both the restructuring of capitalism by social classes or the ‘counter-attack of capital’, and the articulation of ‘anti-passive revolution’ strategies ofresistance (Buci-Glucksmann 1979, 223, 232). It might then be possible to provideaccounts of the rise of neoliberalism as an accumulation strategy within the specificcontext of the 1970s, such as in Mexico led by the once-ruling InstitutionalRevolutionary Party (PRI), to highlight the survival and reorganization ofcapitalism through periods of state crisis (Morton 2003; Soederberg 2001). Withinsuch processes, analysis of how the system of territorial states is being modified byprocesses linked to globalization would be relevant as indicative of the currentphase of capitalism. But here the stress would be on the changing role of the state inrelation to global restructuring. Uneven development is understood as


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

consubstantial with the modern state through the internalization of neoliberalism(Bieler and Morton 2003, 485–489). More broadly, the manner in which social classforces in Chile have sought to normalize a ‘passive revolutionary’ path toneoliberalism during the Augusto Pinochet era, and then further neoliberalhegemony through the Chilean Socialist Party (PSCh), is pertinent (Motta 2008).Questions can also be raised as to whether the transformative politics of the so-called ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela sustained by Hugo Chavez, throughinitiatives such as the ‘dawn’ of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA),might constitute a hemispheric anti-passive revolution contestation of neoliberal-ism (Ellner and Hillinger 2004). As Chavez himself has stated, ‘I want to refer to thethought of Gramsci, to use his ideas, using the light of his thought, [so that] everydaywe understand better what is happening here today in Venezuela’ (Wilpert 2007).

Overall, an opportunity is provided through these moves to situate thegeopolitics of the states system and the uneven development of capitalism toexpose the active political class agents in the construction and reproduction of‘modernization’ as well as recognize crucial forms of contestation and resistance.

Concluding remarks: beyond uneven development?

Robert Brenner (2006, 92) has argued that US hegemony in the post-World War IIera was more evident in the regions of advanced capitalism, with interventionismin the ‘Third World’ marked more by ‘a maximum of force and a minimum ofconsent, a maximum of dominance and a minimum of hegemony’. Elsewhere,Ray Kiely (1995, 93) has conjectured that ‘development studies needs morecomparative analyses of class formation within specific localities . . . andto examine how these processes impact on, and are themselves influenced byglobal capital’.

It has been argued in this article that the theory of passive revolution as thepolitical rule of capital provides an approach to exploring such issues. The aboveargument has hopefully provided some substance to Kiely’s (1995, 95, originalemphasis) additional point that, just as Marx and Engels wrote about Germany andLenin and Trotsky wrote about Russia, then Gramsci too wrote about Italy in an‘attempt to concretize uneven development, not on the basis of an a priori logic ofcapital, but on the basis of the actions of human beings’ in the restoration andreconstitution of class power. Moreover, it has been argued that the theory ofpassive revolution has been unduly neglected by kindred arguments on therelationship between capitalism and the geopolitics of the states system. This isstark in Callinicos’s case given that, in elaborating his understanding of geopoliticalcompetition, he declares that ‘any Marxist analysis following this approach will beradically distinctive in that it sets the strategies, calculations and interactions of statemanagers in the context of the crisis tendencies and class conflicts constitutive ofcapitalism at any stage in its development’ (Callinicos 2007, 543, emphasis added).The fact that the theory of passive revolution has been neglected strips away some ofthe exclusivity of Callinicos’s radical distinction, particularly given that, as argued,it captures the uneven insertion of different territories into the capitalist worldmarket; the geographical reproduction of class and productive relations acrossspatial scales; and the persistence of geopolitical competition within conditions ofglobal capitalism. Moreover, through its focus on the class strategies of capitalist


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

consolidation within state formation processes, the theory of passive revolution isalso attentive to the micro-mechanisms of the states system within capitalism that, inprinciple, are so central to parallel approaches to capital accumulation and thestates system (Ashman and Callinicos 2006, 112–115; Callinicos 2007, 543).

More broadly, general conjecture on uneven development is faced with the meta-theoretical critique that Marxist concepts have proved incapable of consistentapplication to the subject matter of development studies. Most controversially, thishas been encapsulated in David Booth’s overview of development sociology inarguing that the complex and challenging issues of development in post-colonialsocial formations cannot be sufficiently grasped in terms of the dynamics anddifferential spread of capitalism through uneven and combined development.The problem of ‘picking off and lumping together’ specific structures within‘national’ state forms that are pitched within the generality of laws of unevendevelopment, it is argued, results in contorting state specificities to internationalcausal factors of world capitalism (Booth 1985, 774). The same argument about thesuppression of different types and stages of development within post-colonial stateforms—outside ‘core’ states of the global economy—could also be extrapolated tothose considerations of uneven and combined development that similarly accordpriority to international causal factors (Brenner 2003; Rosenberg 2005, 2006).The unfulfilled promise of theorizations on uneven and combined development is tocombine an appreciation of the generality of capitalism with a historical sociology oftransformations within specific forms of state (Kiely 2005, 33).

At issue here is whether theorizations of uneven development can capture thecommon and the distinct conditions that have faced the post-colonial state on aworld scale, whether that be inter alia state corporatist, state capitalist, neo-patrimonialist, developmentalist or rentier forms of state. This challenge couldequally unravel the relevance of Gramsci’s theorization of uneven development toconditions of state formation. However, it should be clear from the precedingargument that one cannot presume uniform developments either within or acrossdifferent regional state formation processes. On the contrary, the pressures of unevendevelopment are clearly mediated through different forms of state as nodal points ofnationally specific configurations of class fractions and struggles over hegemonyand/or passive revolution within accumulation conditions on a world scale.Gramsci’s contribution, therefore, to theorizing geopolitics and global capitalism isto appreciate the multi-scalar trajectory of specific state formation processes withingeneral tendencies on a global scale, thus encouraging a diligent empirical accountof uneven and combined development within historical and contemporary cases.

A factor also essential to note in Gramsci’s theorizing of the states system andcapitalism in its relation to the notion of passive revolution is his indebtedness towider Marxist influences. Significantly, this includes his much-overlookedintellectual and direct personal contact with Trotsky, notably at their meeting atthe Fourth Congress of the Communist International (held in Petrograd andMoscow, 5 November to 5 December 1922). Most prominent amidst their affinitiesand ambivalences is their analysis of ‘united front’ tactics shaping strategicthought and practice during the Third International; their concern over thegrowing bureaucratization of the Soviet Union and the limits of centralism withinproletarian democratization; their view that the Russian Revolution was suigeneris in many respects, and that revolutionary activity in advanced capitalistcountries in the West had to confront a different set of tasks; their understanding


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

of questions of culture and customs of civilization linking the role of literature andart in revolution; and, crucially, their comparable analysis of the fascistphenomenon as a highly particular form of capitalist reaction (Rosengarten1984–1985, 73). According to Giuseppe Fiori (1970, 159), who traced Gramsci’s lifesurrounding the Fourth Congress, ‘Gramsci was one of the few who were able tograsp the real novelty of fascism, the growing peril it represented, and therightness of the defensive tactic proposed by the International’. A point not lost onTrotsky himself, who acknowledged that:

The particular traits of fascism which spring from the mobilisation of the petit-bourgeoisie against the proletariat, the Italian Communist Party were unable todiscern. Italian comrades inform me that with the sole exception of Gramsci, theCommunist Party wouldn’t even allow the possibility of the Fascists’ seizing power(Trotsky 1932, 86, cited in Rosengarten 1984–1985, 75).

This underlines three issues for future discussion: 1) the importance of Gramsci’sunderstanding of fascism as a form of passive revolution relevant to the 20th

century; 2) the renewed merit in further assessing Gramsci’s convergences anddivergences with Trotsky on the question of fascism and its relationship to thetwin issues of passive revolution and uneven and combined development; and3) the importance of relating the concept of passive revolution to furthercontemporary changes in, and modifications of, the capitalist world order thatmight become the matrix of new changes. Such would be the dividends ofdeveloping further analysis of the relationship between Gramsci and Trotskywithin currents of historical materialist theory and praxis.

Finally, one could also query whether Gramsci considered the condition ofpassive revolution and uneven development in a manner that effectively combinedboth a political dimension and a value-theoretic dimension. Does Gramsci’s theoryof passive revolution and uneven development avoid collapsing into ‘softeconomic sociology’?5 Whether this charge is also evaded by wider contemporaryMarxist considerations of uneven and combined development is also open todebate. On this issue, the demarcation drawn by Gramsci between classicalpolitical economy and the ‘critical economy’ of historical materialism is significant(see Bieler and Morton 2003, 481–485; Jessop 2006c). As Gramsci counsels, ‘onemust take as one’s starting point the labour of all working people to arrive atdefinitions both of their role in economic production and of the abstract, scientificconcept of value and surplus value’ (Gramsci 1995, 168, Q10II§23). For Marx(1857–1858/1973, 704, original emphasis) the contradiction of capital and labour‘is the ultimate development of the value-relation and of production resting onvalue’. For Gramsci (1971, 402, Q7§18), ‘in economics the unitary centre is value,alias the relationship between the worker and the industrial productive forces’. It istherefore significant that Gramsci identified Volume III of the ‘critique of politicaleconomy’ (or Capital) to be the central ‘object of fresh study’ in order to establish theorganic importance of contradictions at the centre of the tendential law of the rateof profit to fall (Gramsci 1995, 431, Q10II§36; Gramsci 1971, 311–312, Q22§13; Marx1894/1984, 211–266). The reflections on absolute and relative surplus value, thestudy of the dynamic of socially necessary labour time, the observations on the

5 The phrase is Jessop’s (2006b, 163).


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

tendential law of the rate of profit to fall within ‘Americanism and Fordism’, andthus the conception of value and surplus value, all evident within Gramsci’stheorizing of capitalism and uneven development, are thus still to be unravelled.Whether doing so would further propel Gramsci’s theorization of geopolitics andthe states system within conditions of passive revolution and uneven developmentinto new historical materialist avenues remains substance for future debate.

References

Agnew, John (2000) Reinventing geopolitics: geographies of modern statehood [Hettner-Lecture2000] (Heidelberg: University of Heidelberg)

Agnew, John (2003) Geopolitics: re-visioning world politics, 2nd edn (London: Routledge)Agnew, John (2005) Hegemony: the new shape of global power (Philadelphia: Temple University

Press)Amin, Samir (1974) Accumulation on a world scale: a critique of the theory of underdevelopment,

translated by Brian Pearce (New York: Monthly Review Press)Anderson, Perry (1992) English questions (London: Verso)Ashman, Sam and Alex Callinicos (2006) ‘Capital accumulation and the state system:

assessing David Harvey’s The new imperialism’, Historical Materialism, 14:4, 107–131Badie, Bertrand and Pierre Birnbaum (1983) The sociology of the state, translated by Arthur

Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)Bayart, Jean-Francois (1986) ‘Civil society in Africa’ in Patrick Chabal (ed) Political

domination in Africa: reflections on the limits of power (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress)

Bayart, Jean-Francois (1993) The state in Africa: the politics of the belly, translated by MaryHarper, Christopher Harrison and Elizabeth Harrison (London: Longman)

Bayart, Jean-Francois (2000) ‘Africa in the world: a history of extraversion’, African Affairs,99:396, 217–267

Bieler, Andreas and Adam David Morton (2003) ‘Globalisation, the state and class struggle:a “critical economy” engagement with open Marxism’, British Journal of Politics andInternational Relations, 5:4, 467–499

Bieler, Andreas and Adam David Morton (2008) ‘The deficits of discourse in IPE: turningbase metal into gold?’, International Studies Quarterly, 52:1, forthcoming

Bilgin, Pinar and Adam David Morton (2002) ‘Historicising representations of “failedstates”: beyond the cold war annexation of the social sciences’, Third World Quarterly,23:1, 55–80

Bilgin, Pinar and Adam David Morton (2004) ‘From “rogue” to “failed” states?: the fallacyof short termism’, Politics, 24:3, 169–180

Booth, David (1985) ‘Marxism and development sociology: interpreting the impasse’,World Development, 13:7, 761–787

Brenner, Robert (2003) The boom and the bubble: the US in the world economy (London: Verso)Brenner, Robert (2006) ‘What is, and what is not imperialism?’, Historical Materialism, 14:4,

79–105Buci-Glucksmann, Christine (1979) ‘State, transition and passive revolution’ in Chantal

Mouffe (ed) Gramsci and Marxist thery (London: Routledge)Burgos, Raul (2002) ‘The Gramscian intervention in the theoretical and political production

of the Latin American left’, Latin American Perspectives, 29:1, 9–37Callinicos, Alex (2007) ‘Does capitalism need the state system?’, Cambridge Review of

International Affairs, 20:4, 533–549.Chatterjee, Partha (1986) Nationalist thought and the colonial world (London: Zed Books)Cox, Robert W (1983) ‘Gramsci, hegemony and international relations: an essay in method’,

Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 12:2, 162–175Cox, Robert W (1987) Production, power and world order: social forces in the making of history

(New York: Columbia University Press)Ellner, Steve and Daniel Hillinger (2004) Venezuelan politics in the Chavez Era: class,

polarisation and conflict (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers)


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

Fiori, Giuseppe (1970) Antonio Gramsci: life of a revolutionary, translated by Tom Nairn(London: Verso)

Gramsci, Antonio (1971) Selections from the prison notebooks, translated and edited byQuintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart)

Gramsci, Antonio (1975) History, philosophy and culture in the young Gramsci, edited by PedroCavalcanti and Paul Piccone (Saint Louis, Missouri: Telos Press)

Gramsci, Antonio (1977) Selections from political writings, 1910–1920, edited by QuintinHoare, translated by John Matthews (London: Lawrence and Wishart)

Gramsci, Antonio (1978) Selections from political writings, 1921–1926, translated and editedby Quintin Hoare (London: Lawrence and Wishart)

Gramsci, Antonio (1985) Selections from cultural writings, edited by David Forgacs andGeoffrey Nowell-Smith, translated by William Boelhower (London: Lawrence andWishart)

Gramsci, Antonio (1992) The prison notebooks, Vol 1, edited by Joseph A Buttigieg, translatedby Joseph A Buttigieg and Antonio Callari (New York: Columbia University Press)

Gramsci, Antonio (1994a) Pre-prison writings, edited by Richard Bellamy, translated byVirginia Cox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Gramsci, Antonio (1994b) Letter from prison, Vol 1, edited by Frank Rosengarten, translatedby Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Columbia University Press)

Gramsci, Antonio (1995) Further selections from the prison notebooks, translated and edited byDerek Boothman (London: Lawrence and Wishart)

Gramsci, Antonio (1996) The prison notebooks, Vol 2, translated and edited by Joseph AButtigieg (New York: Columbia University Press)

Gramsci, Antonio (2001) Cuadernos de la carcel [Prison notebooks] (Mexico City: Ediciones Era)Hall, Stuart (1986) ‘Gramsci’s relevance for the study of race and ethnicity’, Journal of

Communication Inquiry, 10:2, 5–27Harvey, David (1982/2006) The limits to capital (London: Verso)Harvey, David (2003) The new imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press)Hobsbawm, Eric (1975) The age of capital, 1848–1875 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)Hobsbawm, Eric (2007) ‘Who controls the world now that the age of empire is dead?’, The

Observer, 3 June, 27Hobson, John M (2007) ‘Back to the future of “one logic or two?” or forward to the past

of “anarchy versus racist hierarchy?”’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 20:4,581–597

Jessop, Bob (2006a) ‘Gramsci as a spatial theorist’ in Andreas Bieler and Adam DavidMorton (eds) Images of Gramsci: connections and contentions in political theory andinternational relations (London: Routledge)

Jessop, Bob (2006b) ‘Spatial fixes, temporal fixes and spatio-temporal fixes’ in Noel Castreeand Derek Gregory (eds) David Harvey: a critical reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing)

Jessop, Bob (2006c) ‘Gramsci as a proto- and post-regulation theorist’ in Bob Jessop andNgai-Ling Sum (eds) Beyond the regulation approach: putting capitalist economies in theirplace (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar)

Kiely, Ray (1995) ‘Marxism, post-Marxism and development fetishism’, Capital & Class,55, 73–101

Kiely, Ray (2005) ‘Capitalist expansion and the imperialism-globalisation debate:contemporary Marxist explanations’, Journal of International Relations and Development,8:1, 27–57

Mamdani, Mahmood (1996) Citizen and subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of latecolonialism (London: James Currey)

Mandel, Ernest (1975) Late capitalism, translated by Joris De Bres (London: Verso)Marx, Karl (1857–1858/1973) Grundrisse, translated by Martin Nicolaus (London: Penguin)Marx, Karl (1887/1996) Capital, Vol I, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected works, Vol

35 (London: Lawrence and Wishart)Marx, Karl (1893/1986) Capital, Vol II (London: Lawrence and Wishart)Marx, Karl (1894/1984) Capital, Vol III (London: Lawrence and Wishart)McMichael, Phillip (1990) ‘Incorporating comparison within a world-historical perspective:

an alternative comparative method’, American Sociological Review, 55:3, 385–397


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

Moe, Nelson (2002) The view from Vesuvius: Italian culture and the southern question (Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of California Press)

Morton, Adam David (2003) ‘Structural change and neoliberalism in Mexico: “passiverevolution” in the global political economy’, Third World Quarterly, 24:4, 631–653

Morton, Adam David (2005) ‘The age of absolutism: capitalism, the modern states-systemand international relations’, Review of International Studies, 31:3, 495–517

Morton, Adam David (2006) ‘Mexican revolution, primitive accumulation, passiverevolution’, paper presented at the 31st Annual Conference of the British InternationalStudies Association (BISA), University of Cork/Ireland, 18–20 December

Morton, Adam David (2007a) Unravelling Gramsci: hegemony and passive revolution in theglobal political economy (London: Pluto Press)

Morton, Adam David (2007b) ‘Waiting for Gramsci: state formation, passive revolution andthe international’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 35:3, 597–621

Motta, Sara C (2008) ‘The Chilean Socialist Party (PSCh): constructing consent anddisarticulating dissent to neoliberal hegemony in Chile’, British Journal of Politics andInternational Relations, 10:1, forthcoming

Ollman, Bertell (1976) Alienation, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)Reno, William (1998) Warlord politics and African states (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner)Reno, William (2002) ‘Uganda’s politics of war and debt relief’, Review of International

Political Economy, 9:3, 415–435Robinson, William (2003) Transnational conflicts: Central America, social change and

globalisation (London: Verso)Robinson, William (2004) A theory of global capitalism: production, class and state in a

transnational world (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press)Rosenberg, Justin (2005) ‘Globalisation theory: a post-mortem’, International Politics, 42:1,

2–74Rosenberg, Justin (2006) ‘Why is there no international historical sociology?’, European

Journal of International Relations, 12:3, 307–340Rosengarten, Frank (1984–1985) ‘The Gramsci-Trotsky question (1922–1932)’, Social Text,

11, 65–95Said, Edward (2000) ‘History, literature and geography’ in Edward Said (ed) Reflections on

exile and other literary and cultural essays (London: Granta)Slater, David (2004) Geopolitics and the post-colonial: rethinking north–south relations (Oxford:

Blackwell Publishing)Soederberg, Susanne (2001) ‘From neoliberalism to social liberalism: situating the national

solidarity program within Mexico’s passive revolutions’, Latin American Perspectives,28:3, 102–123

Szeftel, Morris (2000) ‘Between governance and underdevelopment: accumulation andAfrica’s “catastrophic corruption”’, Review of African Political Economy, 27:84, 287–306

Teschke, Benno (2003) The myth of 1648: class, geopolitics and the making of modern internationalrelations (London: Verso)

Trotsky, Leon (1932) What next? Vital questions for the German proletariat, translated by JosephVanzler (New York: Pioneer Publishers)

Trotsky, Leon (1936) The history of the Russian revolution, Vol 1 (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd)van der Pijl, Kees (1996) ‘A theory of transnational revolution: universal history according

to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and its implications’, Review of International PoliticalEconomy, 3:2, 287–318

van der Pijl, Kees (2006a) ‘A Lockean Europe?’, New Left Review, II:37, 9–37van der Pijl, Kees (2006b) Global rivalries from the cold war to Iraq (London: Pluto Press)Wendt, Alex (2003) ‘Why a world state is inevitable’, European Journal of International

Relations, 9:4, 491–542Wilpert, Gregory (2007) ‘Chavez dimisses international disapproval of Venezuela’s media

policy’, 4 June, ,www.venezuelanalysis.com. , accessed 13 June 2007Young, Crawford (2004) ‘The end of the post-colonial state in Africa? Reflections on

changing Africa political dynamics’, African Affairs, 103:410, 23–49


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f U

tah]

at 0

2:40

03

July

201

4

Documents

Disputing the geopolitics of the states system and global capitalism