Abstract
The ‘antagonistic’ relationship between globalization and the nation-state has always been at the heart of the debates in International Relations and International Political Economy (IR/IPE). Are nation-states unceasingly playing the major role in shaping the international politics, or is globalization taking over this role, leaving nation-states as obsolete? The orthodoxy of the ‘Realism versus Liberalism’ dichotomy manifests itself in this question as ‘states versus markets’. Bieler and Morton’s seminal work, Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis responds to this question unorthodoxly: neither. In fact, they diagnose the very ontology of this question as ‘externally’ constructed and they offer an alternative historical materialist account in which the relationality between the nation-state, geopolitics and globalization are conceptualized ‘internally’.
The authors borrow the concept of the philosophy of internal relations to apply it to the study of IR/IPE. They argue that the internal relationality holistically associates not only the relations of production, the state-civil society relations, and the conditions of class struggle but also global capitalism, global war, and global crisis with each other and with the international. Historical materialism’s dialectical understanding transcends the dichotomy of ‘states versus markets’ because it focuses on the forces of social struggle in the global political economy and it analyses capital’s connection to the interstates system of uneven and combined development, social reproduction, and ecological crisis.
In the first part, Conceptual Reflections, the authors take on the ‘agency versus structure’ and ‘material versus ideal’ problems in theorizing the study of international politics and they problematize the incompatibility between the notions. They argue that ‘the philosophy of internal relations enables an appreciation of agent-structure issues within a critical theory of world order’ (p. 27) and it ‘does not detach structure from superstructure but conceives their development as intimately bound together and related internally’ (p. 52). Following a critical review of the social constructivist and poststructuralist accounts, the authors propose a historical materialist position for both meta-theoretical considerations on class struggle and the materiality of ideas, as they go beyond the strategy of analytical dichotomies. The internal relations between structural conditions of capitalism and collective social class agency transcend the dualism and realize ‘agency in structure’. A combined method of the Marxian dialectical ontology and the Gramscian historicist epistemology divulges the internal relations between agency and structure.
Bieler and Morton deliver a Gramscian historical materialist account for the analysis of ‘base and superstructure’, or in particular ‘material and ideal’ as a challenge to the ‘economism’ criticisms. Gramsci’s holistic approach to hegemony, formulated in the concept of the ‘integral state’, allowing them to develop an international theory that works with dialectical unity and goes beyond the spatial separation of the state and civil society. The integral state, the dialectical combination of political society and civil society, represents a flawless example of how the philosophy of praxis is internally constructed. The integral state indicates not only the state-market, the state-civil society, base-superstructure, and material-ideal are internally related but also the national-international and the geopolitical-global are dialectically combined. This dialectical unity transcends the limits of ontological exteriority in methodological nationalism, the presumption that self-interest-oriented nation-states are the main actors in the making of the interstate system and a nation-state’s domestic and international affairs are mutually exclusive as the state’s external relations with civil society are limited to a certain territory. Bieler and Morton’s challenge to methodological nationalism does not only point out the Eurocentric nature of mainstream IR/IPE theories, it also reveals the limits of the neo-Weberian criticism on Eurocentrism.
In the second part, Thematic Considerations, the authors further elaborate their theoretical position, Gramscian Historical Materialism. They deliver three thematic discussions in three chapters in accordance with the title of the book: first, the expansion of capitalism through uneven and combined development, and passive revolution as ‘global capitalism’; second, the role of state and geopolitics as ‘global war’; and third, the conditions of exploitation and resistance as ‘global crisis’. Passive revolution is articulated through historical specificity of capitalist development and the formation of international states system. As mutually inclusive processes, the rise of capitalism and the emergence of modern state are historically developed through capitalist social property relations. Here we see how the relations between the state and the global political economy, and between the interstate system and globalization are realized internally within the unity of global capitalism and geopolitics. Finally, it is argued that race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality are internally constituted not only in the social relations of production, in other words, class struggle, but also in the geopolitics and the international. The authors expand on their discussion empirically in the third part, Empirical Interventions. This consists of three chapters, in accordance with the title of the book: the emergence of rising powers and the BRICS in the global political economy as ‘global capitalism’; the conditions of ‘new imperialism’ and the invasion of Iraq as ‘global war’; and the financial crisis in 2007–2008 and the Great Recession as ‘global crisis’.
Finally, in the conclusion section, the authors aim (1) to highlight the ‘topography of connected class struggles that bespeak the combined manner of radical ruptures of resistance’ and (2) to address ‘the spatial dynamics of class struggle . . . [and] . . . to demonstrate how the internal relationship of the three master themes of Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis are themselves internally related’ (p. 249). The authors successfully manage to combine all themes and topics discussed in the book under multiple forms of ‘double unity’ and cross-relational relationships, that is to say the spatiality of master themes are combined with the social factory.
Held and McGrew (2003) once identified two sides in, what they called, ‘the great globalisation debate’: ‘sceptics’ and ‘globalists’. As this year marks the centennial anniversary of the birth of IR as a formal discipline, it is crucial to rethink the ways we conceptualize relationship between globalization and the nation-state. Bieler and Morton’s cornerstone study not only develops a critical account that transcends the externally constructed dualisms, it also provides invaluable empirical insights. All in all, Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis is a masterpiece in the study of IR/IPE theories, globalization, international historical sociology and global political economy.