Hong Kong Baptist University

Lecture 4
International Relations
from 1945 Marxism and the Gramscian
Theory of Hegemony
HIST 3306
 Reminder
Book Review: due date on February 16th at 21:00 (Turnitin)
Remember: Your personal comments and opinion are the priority of the review;
also explain why you have chosen this book and its relevance in the context of the
IRs.
 Compulsory Readings
▪ Liberalism, Encyclopaedia of Political Science, Russell
Hardin New York University (Moodle)

▪ Alexander Wendt, Anarchy is what States Make of it:

The Social Construction of Power Politics, International
Organization , Spring, 1992, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Spring,
1992), pp. 391- 425) Moodle
Does the absence of centralized political authority force states to play competitive
power politics? Can international regimes overcome this logic, and under what
conditions? What in anarchy is given and immutable, and what is amenable to
change?...

I argue that self-help and power politics do not follow either logically or causally
from anarchy and that if today we find ourselves in a self-help world, this is due
to process, not structure…Anarchy is what states make of it…

A. Wendt, Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power
Politics, International Organization , Spring, 1992, 46 (2)
 …Competitive systems of interaction are prone to security "dilemmas," in which the
efforts of actors to enhance their security unilaterally threatens the security of the others,
perpetuating distrust and alienation…
A. Wendt, Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics, International
Organization , Spring, 1992, 46 (2), p. 407

… The principle of sovereignty transforms this situation by providing a social basis for
the individuality and security of states. Sovereignty is an institution, and so it exists only
in virtue of certain intersubjective understandings and expectations; there is no sovereignty
without another…
A. Wendt, Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics, International
Organization , Spring, 1992, 46 (2), p. 412
 …The process by which egoists learn to cooperate is at the same time a process of
reconstructing their interests in terms of shared commitments to social norms. Over
time, this will tend to transform a positive interdependence of outcomes into a positive
interdependence of utilities or collective interest organized around the norms in
question…

A. Wendt, Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics, International
Organization , Spring, 1992, 46 (2), p. 417
 Industrialization: The ‘Global’ Impact

▪ Revolution=Transformation=Alteration of Existence
▪ From Agriculture society to Industrial society
▪ Increase scale in human organization with power source of
production (waterpower, steam energy etc.)
▪ Industrial Revolution a global process: work methods and
organization, people’s life
▪ New social classes: industrialists, factory’s worker (including
women and children), middle-class, managers
▪ Slavery trade become gradually irrelevant
 The Features of the Industrial Revolution
▪ Technology and Organization of Production
▪ Main indicator: per capita productivity
▪ Concept of productivity was used to create inequalities in
standard of livings
▪ Massive dislocation of resources
▪ Life on the job; families as economic units and wage earners;
redefinition of childhood and child labor
▪ Redefinition of middle class: new specializations (manager)
▪ Intensification of class conflicts such as protests, riots and strikes

Physical suffering and moral agony did not deflect industrialization

Socialism before Marx: The Utopian Socialism

▪ The term ‘socialist’ appeared in the The London Co-operative

Magazine in 1827
▪ First experience: Robert Owen (industrialist) built the first
socialist factory at New Lanark in Scotland in 1820s. It
counted about 2,000 people of which about 500 orphans
▪ Proposal was to understand human nature rather than
following liberal capitalism, building good housing on site and
providing healthcare and education
▪ Against A. Smith’s liberalism, Owen asserted that living
cooperatively, individuals could provide mutual support and
achieve efficiencies in production processes
Robert Owen (1771-1858)
The rapid accumulation of wealth, from the rapid increase of mechanical and
chemical power, created capitalists who were among the most ignorant and
injurious of the population. The wealth created by the industry of the people,
now made abject slaves to these new artificial powers, accumulated in the hands
of what are called the monied class, who created none of it, and who misused
all they had acquired…

Robert Owen, The Life of Robert Owen: Written by Himself, London: Frank Cass,
1857, 128
New Lanark textile factory (UNESCO Cultural Heritage)
 10. Key concept: Traditional view of Marxism
Marxism:
- Economic argumentations
- Critical versus a conservative (static) liberal society
and previous form of Socialism (Utopians)
- Critical versus the society historically produced by
capitalism
- If the society is historically constructed, it can be
changed
- Humans continuously remake their world
- The current society is created by self-interest and
destined to disappear Karl Marx (1818-1883) Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
 A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old
Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar,
Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its
opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding
reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as
against its reactionary adversaries?...
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Pluto Press, 2008, 31
Historical Materialism and Factors of Production
▪ Society is a superstructure created by economic factors
▪ During Feudalism was land in the hands of nobility
▪ The evolution and transition to the new age has
proposed capital has a new factor of power
▪ Capital is in the hands of bourgeois
▪ The bourgeois have ended the struggle of feudalism
with the French Revolution
▪ Now is the time of bourgeois to be the exploiters and
the source of workers’ struggle
 Marxism and Capitalism
▪ Capitalism has created a society based on property (for a
few as a result of exploitation) and waged labor (for
many)
▪ Mean of production are currently in the hands of the
owners, while workers are compelled to sell their labor
▪ Capitalism is a source of endemic tensions and social
struggle
▪ Capitalism is exploitative
▪ Capitalism has failed to provide social self-determination
▪ Capitalism prevents transformative social alternatives
 The need for a change

▪ Capitalism is supported by the surplus value created by

labor
▪ Capitalists control the production process (through capital)
▪ State governments are structurally dependent on capitalists
▪ Governments are compelled to serve long-term interests
of capitalists
▪ Power is masked behind apparent ideals of equality
▪ Marxist expectation is a proletarian revolution that would
finally sweep capitalism
 The Concept of Surplus
▪ Workers receive a wage that is typically less than the value they
produce
▪ This difference between the value of labor and the value of the
goods produced is the surplus
▪ Accumulation of surplus value generates profits for capitalists
and accumulate wealth
▪ According to Marxism ‘surplus value’ leads to social inequality
and class struggle
▪ In a Communist society, instead, surplus value is collectively
owned and distributed for the benefit of all members of society
 Question

What are the strenghts and the weaknesses of the

Marxist ideology?
11. Key concept: Gramscian (Neo)Marxism

The birth of an international socialist society failed to

materialized. Instead in Western Europe, during the
interwar period, fascism emerged from the ashes of the
war
▪ Gramsci ideas of Marxism emerged from this failure
▪ Gramsci criticize economic foundation and historical
materialism of the traditional Marxist ideology
▪ Gramsci considers Marxism a social ‘call’ coming from
inside capitalism (his life experience in Turin)

Antonio Gramsci
 Brief Chronological Life
▪ Born in Cagliari on 22 January 1891
▪ Suffered ill health all his life
▪ Wins scholarship in Turin to study Literature, Latin, Greek, History
▪ In 1916 journalist for the Socialist Party and knew Mussolini as an editor of the ‘Avanti’
▪ In 1919 founds the journal L’Ordine Nuovo
▪ In 1921 splits from Socialist Party and founds the Italian Communist Party
▪ In 1922 attended the Comintern in Moscow where he met Julia, his future wife
▪ In 1924 elected in Parliament. After Matteotti’s assassination joins the protest against Mussolini
▪ In 1926 arrested in Rome. Condemned to twenty years imprisonment.
▪ On 27 April 1937 dies of cerebral hemorrhage ate the age of 46. His sister-in-law Tatiana
smuggle 33 notebooks from his prison and send them to Moscow.
▪ In 1948 published the first edition of the Prison Notebooks
We must stop this brain from working
for twenty years…

Prosecutor demand to the court during

Gramsci’s judicial process
 The Theory of Hegemony

▪ Theory of Hegemony explain the social reality as relying

more upon consent than coercion
▪ Dominant class proposes a social vision that claims to
serve the interests of all
▪ Such a vision divide and disable opposition
▪ Hegemonic power is promoted in forums of popular
culture, education, journalism, literature and art. It is a
cultural hegemony.
▪ Subordinated classes are led to consent by dominant
power. This make the use of coercive power
unnecessary
How to Challenge the (Cultural) Hegemonic Power
▪ The Hegemonic Theory denotes a top-down process in
which a narrow elite achieves a societal transformation
▪ Hegemony should be continuously challenged
▪ Only a long-term process of intellectual opposition and
not through the Bolshevik frontal assault can challenge
capitalism
▪ The alternative is a political culture that it is inspired by
people truly aware about their fundamental role for the
society
▪ Democratization of economic, political life for a post-
capitalist future
Collages Papers / Gramsci House
in Ghilarza
About Intellectuals:
…One of the most important characteristics of any group that is developing towards dominance
is its struggle to assimilate and to conquer “ideologically” the traditional intellectuals, but this
assimilation and conquest is made quicker and more efficacious the more the group in question
succeeds in simultaneously elaborating its own organic intellectuals…

Selection from the Prison Notebooks of A. Gramsci (the Intellectual, p.10, ed. 1971)
 The failure of (traditional) Marxism
The wide interest for Gramsci’s literature is derived by the
failure of traditional Marxism more evident after the end of the
Cold War:
▪ In (traditional) Marxism, the overthrow of capitalism should
be the result of an inevitable proletarian (r)evolution
predicted by the course of history (Darwin)
▪ The theory failed to materialize
▪ Marxism also failed to explain the nature of capitalist
domination and resilience (which Gramsci interprets)
▪ Marxist Historical Materialism and Economism is a
mechanical determination (capitalism destined to fail) that
Renzo Galeotti / Gramsci: The instead failed to materialize
Testimony - private collection,
Sheffield
 The Gramscian revolution
The importance of Gramsci is his reformulation of the
socialist strategy for the future
Gramsci proposes:
- a new intellectual and moral leadership
- the concept of collective will: a new popular religion
- new strategy of ‘war of position’ to become the State of
the working class
- Gramsci replaces Marxist Materialism with the theory of
Hegemonism
- Proposes a new concept of Socialism, not imposed by
the top but socially constructed from below
 Questions

Do you agree on the Gramscian concept of Hegemonism?

Can we assert that Gramsci was a Marxist?
 Gramsci: a Marxist?
▪ Gramsci is not a dogmatic Marxist
▪ G. refuses the idea of proletarian revolution by force
▪ G. considers revolutionary activities (propaganda etc.) as a
contribution in reorganizing the world
▪ Gramsci disagrees that capitalism’s contradictions will lead
to a successful proletarian revolution
▪ Contemporary (capitalist) hegemonism will not be
defeated by force, but through a long process of
intellectual work and culture involving the masses

Gramsci’s thinking represent the demonstration that

Marxism can evolve in History
 Gramscianism and IRs

▪ Gramsci made a substantial contribution to the theories of

IR. He shifted analysis and attention from revolutionary
force to the nature of domination
▪ Gramsci explored the process by which consent for a
socio-political system is produced through cultural
hegemony.

The hegemonic persuasion allows ideas and ideologies

of the dominant stratum to become widely accepted in
relations among countries
Is culture a true foundation of hegemonic power?
 Marxism in the Age of globalization

▪ Marxism asserts that globalization is a process created by

capitalism
▪ Capitalism needs expansion and resources to survive

▪ Capitalism’s objective is profit and not human needs

▪ More poverty in the world leads to capitalist’s exploitation of
cheap labor and more surplus
▪ Environmental degradation is the outcome of capital
accumulation
 Marxist ‘Global’ Revolution

▪ Capitalism is conflict-driven, crisis-prone and earth destroying

force
▪ Capitalism controls most of the powerful, wealthy countries
▪ Working people need to take over countries’ governance
▪ The international system as, it is now, is led by powerful capitalist
states exploiting the underdeveloped periphery subject to a
transfer of wealth (i.e., South America to North America)

Marxism’s objective in matters of IRs is to empower human

beings to govern collectively their common affairs
Key concept 12: World System Theory (I. Wallerstein)

Approach to economic development created by

intellectual. WST demonstrates the inability for periphery
countries to catch up to rich countries
▪ WST describes a system of production based on profit
appropriation and ownership

▪ The World Order divided into:

- Core system (Rich countries)
- Semi-Peripherical (Semi-industrialized)
- Peripherical (Poor countries)
 Compulsory Reading
✓ Simon Roger, Gramsci's Political Thought: An
Introduction/Hegemony Third Edition ed.
Lawrence & Wishart, 2015, p. 7 – 16 and 17 – 26

Suggested Reading
✓ Robin Varghese, Marxist World, Foreign Affairs, n.
4, August 2018
 Question

Has the Marxist ideology overcome the inevitability of

History? Your opinion.