Chapter 08

Marxism and Critical Theory

• Marxism is a distinct tradition in IR theory. It rejects the liberal world view of self-interested individuals and the realist world view of sovereign states and anarchy. It views both perspectives as limited and limiting and as characterized by conservative politics.

• Marxist tradition is a varied tradition building upon the dialectical social philosophy of Karl Marx. Its central focus is on providing a critical interpretation of capitalism as a historically produced form of social life to be challenged.

• Marxism advocates a relational and process-oriented understanding of human life. It sees humans as productive agents that in their interactions continuously remake their world and themselves.

• Human beings are seen as the producers and the products of historical processes. According to a dialectical perspective human agents sit within relatively enduring social structures that define the possibility of certain types of actions, although do not determine them. The agents through their actions reproduce or alter the social structures around them.

• The dialectical view of society challenges the empiricist approaches that study laws of social life.

• Marxism defines politics in a more extensive way than is usual. Politics is seen as struggle over the shaping the kind of world we live in and the kind of people we are.

• For Marx capitalism is not to be equated with markets or exchange, it is a form of social life in which human labour itself is bought and sold on the market. It is based on historically specific class relations between capital and wage labour. In capitalist systems workers sell their labour to members of the capital owning class.

• Marx believed that while capitalism is productive, it is also disabling, exploitative and undemocratic.

• It is disabling in distorting the possibilities for social self-determination by the exploited. Society under capitalism takes on the appearance of objective and natural social form.

• It is exploitative in that the owners of the means of production control the production process and expropriate its product, that is, the surplus value created by labour.

• It is undemocratic in that capitalism creates private social powers in the economic sphere, which are off the limits of democratic political accountability.

• Capitalism is not just an economic system, wider political and cultural forms of organization are implicated in the reproduction of capitalist way of life.

• One of the important contributions of Marxism is the study of imperialism. Theorists of imperialism argue that capitalist accumulation drove major capitalist countries into colonial expansionism, creating the potential for inter-imperialist rivalry on a global scale. Classical theories of imperialism were economically deterministic, that is argued that processes intrinsic to the economy determine the shape of social and political life.

• Western Marxism highlights the importance of consciousness, subjectivity, ideology and culture. It formed as a counterpoint to Soviet Marxism, economic determinism within Marxism and positivism as a school of thought. There are two key strands of Western Marxism: Frankfurt School critical theory and Gramsci's dialectic Marxism.

• Frankfurt School theorists were wary of the economic focus of Marxism but also the positivist claims to objective knowledge and instrumental reason. They emphasized that all theories are permeated by values and norms and have political implications for the social world.

• Gramsci also criticized economic determinism and positivism. Furthermore, he developed theory of hegemony. Hegemony is a form of political power that relies upon consent rather coercion. He used this notion to elucidate the way in which dominant groups rule societies through the articulation of social visions that serve their own interests.

• In IR certain key theorists have drawn upon the Marxist intellectual sources to construct critical theories of world politics. Ashley, for example, has advanced a critique of neorealist logic of explanation, while Cox has called into question prevailing forms of theorising world politics by contrasting problem-solving theory and critical theory.

• Case study. In explaining the War on Terror, Marxism and critical theory would point the student to understand the structures of global capitalism as well as the ideologies and agents situated within these structures. It would emphasize the capital driven nature of states’ actions in the global capitalist system and the need for states to maintain control of oil in order to maintain global capitalism.

• Case study continued. US foreign policy would be seen as directed by the US strategists’ perception of the relationship between capitalist free world and US global military power. War on terror should be understood in the context of ideology of economic security.

• Case study continued. Iraq war cannot be understood in isolation from capitalism in its historical form. From such a viewpoint, Iraq holds important oil reserves, a key requirement for maintenance of US power and global capitalist order.

• Marxism is not a mere domestic theory, nor a mere economic theory. It understands capitalism as a social form that entails political, cultural as well as economic relations and one that is not containable within states. Also, with the rise of Western Marxism, Marxism is no longer economically deterministic but deals with politics, culture and ideology much more widely.

• While some critical theorists have been pessimistic about Marxist transformative politics in the current era, the new social movements in the 21st century hold out some hope for opposition to capitalist globalization. These movements explicitly connect capitalism with US imperial power thus reinforcing the remaining relevance of Marxism and critical theory in world political explanation.

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Chapter 08

Marxism and Critical Theory