Review: Gramscian Readings of the Post-Cold War Transition

Author(s): David L. Blaney

Review by: David L. Blaney
Source: Mershon International Studies Review, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Oct., 1994), pp. 282-284
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The International Studies Association
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Mershon International Studies Review (1994) 38, 282-284

Gramscian Readings of the Post-Cold War Transition

Review by DAVID L. BLANEY
Department of Political Science, Macalester College

Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations. Edited by

Stephen Gill. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 300pp.,
$54.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

International society may be at a crucial turning point. Beginning with West-

phalia, the international system has operated as a society of sovereign states
without a centralized political authority. Yet, this society does possess organizing
norms, a system of law, a world economy, and perhaps law-imposing great
powers. Still, interactions are often competitive, organized principally as military
and economic competition among states. In the wake of the Cold War, many
argue that transnational and local processes and identities render the West-
phalian system obsolete. An interstate system is gradually being replaced by a
global civil society of individuals, NGOs, interest groups, ethnicities, social move-
ments, civilizations, and, though with much diminished status, states (Lipschutz,
1992: Ghils, 1992; Shaw, 1992). Though still lacking centralized political au-
thority, the anarchical quality of this new global society is mitigated by the
multiple, scattered, and increasing sites of political decision making, constituting
a system of international governance. While the eventual contours of this new
global civil society are not fully clear, contemporary "turbulence" is taken as
evidence of a definitive break with the previous international order (Rosenau,
1990; Rosenau and Czempiel, 1992).
It is at precisely this point of prospective historical transition that the Grams-
cian school of international relations theory situates itself. In Gramsci,Historical
Materialism and International Relations, Stephen Gill's introductory essay stakes
the reputation of a Gramscian approach on its capacity to illuminate the simul-
taneously "globalising" and "disintegrating" forces which constitute the "crisis"
of the post-war system (p. 5). Overall, judging by the ten essays in this collection,
this is a project with much promise, but also with a serious limitation.
The Gramscian interpretation of this transition has certain distinctive features.
It contends that we are seeing the emergence of a genuinely global political
economy, accomplished by the continuing internationalization of capital and
transnationalization of economic space. This globalization of capitalism has been
enabled and sponsored by international alignments of the political forces dom-
inant within major, especially European, states. These alignments, which have
formed around the leadership of a hegemonic power, have forged, imposed,
and legitimated the rules and values governing the international order. In the
post-war era, the mantle of hegemonic leadership has fallen on the United
States. (Hegemony itself has a longer history, as outlined in the essay by Giovanni
Arrighi entitled "The Three Hegemonies of Historical Capitalism".)
Although the Westphalian system has been a crucial pillar of the global spread
of capitalism, the transnational expanse of economic processes and the global

? 1994 The Mershon Center at the Ohio State University.

Published by Blackwell Publishers, 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4
1JF, UK.

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 DAVID L. BLANEY 283

power of capital now stand in opposition to the territorial demarcation of the

globe. Specifically, international capital exists as a power over-and-against the
state. Thus, global economic processes resist regulation or control by single
states. (See the essay on the structural power of capital by Gill and David Law).
This disjuncture between global economic processes and territorial political
authority signals the disintegration of American post-war hegemony, as well as
the decline of the Soviet Union, as Kees van der Pijl's essay on the collapse of
Soviet socialism makes clear. The decline of hegemony is a crisis of political
authority-a challenge to accepted values, norms, and identities-that is occa-
sioning a complex struggle amongst classes and class fractions about the nature
of global institutions and the future of capitalism as a basis for organizing
international economic life.
These authors make clear that this struggle is being fought on a shifting and
uncertain field. The attempts to restore capitalist hegemony on a new global
basis are torn between increasingly untenable national political bases, struggling
locales, and a (mostly unformed) global political life. The complexity of alliances
and the contradictory implications for identity are suggested in Cox's essay on
global governance and European integration, Augelli and Murphy's essay on
U.S. foreign policy in the Third World, Barry Gills' study of East Asia, and Otto
Holman's comparison of Latin America and East Europe. While the authors
wisely avoid the temptation to predict the outcome of current global struggles,
they stress both the power of international capital and the bases for resistance
to capital's domination.
The interpretation of the post-Cold War transition depicted in Gramsci,His-
torical Materialism and International Relations possesses several strengths. First,
Gramsci's notion of hegemony, stressing the intertwining of coercion and con-
sensus, and power and values involved in maintaining social order, appears as
a less elegant albeit more convincing understanding of international order than
prevalent neo-realist or neo-liberal theories, which obscure processes of legiti-
mation in international society as artifacts of power or interest. Second, the
Gramscian insistence on identifying the enabling conditions of capitalism and
its global extension reveals clearly the "historicity of capitalism." (See in partic-
ular the essay by Mark Rupert on capitalist alienation and reification, Cox's
important essay on hegemony and international relations and the critique of
international relations theory and U.S. foreign policy by Augelli and Murphy).
This theoretical move disallows viewing capitalism as a background condition
against which important explanations may be formulated, thereby strengthening
our capacity to see the way in which global capitalism has interacted with, and
continues to interact with, the interstate system to structure international society.
Third, the Gramscian analysis of this presumed period of transition serves as a
cautionary tale. The supposed collapse of sovereignty in the face of global
turbulence is said to open space for political creativity, for a fundamental re-
visioning of global social life. However, the Gramscian analysis makes clear that
this space is not empty. Rather, it is filled with the structures, relations, and
values of global capitalism, including the failing national and embryonic global
institutions of economic regulation and redress. While we can dispute the details,
we must avoid seeing the actors and the emerging political spaces for interna-
tional governance in a new global civil society as radically free from the deter-
minants of global capitalism and the interstate system.
While the Gramscian approach points us in the right direction in these re-
spects, it fails to take us completely to the desired destination. Despite its broad
political and ethical reading of hegemony, which opens a space for an analysis
of the state, this space is almost fully occupied by the logic of capitalism. The
nation-state is rendered too readily as the mere superstructure for emergent

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284 BookReviews

national capitalisms. The internationalization of the state is explained principally

as a function of the globalizing logic of capitalism, although that logic stretches
the state to the point where it "breaks"and a global superstructure of governance
becomes necessary. Although political orders are not merely a support but also
a basis for resistance to capitalism, this pattern of argument leads the Gramscians
to underestimate the fact that the state emerged within an already global milieu
and thus was internationalized froin its inception (Picciotto, 1990; Skocpol,
1979). Thus, the internal logic of the state system-its own purposes and pro-
cesses as a site of political community-is not given adequate stress. If the state
is not merely an extension of capitalism, it will not simply fall by the wayside as
superseded superstructure. A new global civil society can only be built upon
and out of the political economic space of the old international society of states,
as a response by actors which arise within the intertwined logics of capitalism
and the state system.
Gramscian Readings of the Post-Cold War Transition makes a valuable contribu-
tion to the scholarly literature as both an introduction to and an illustration of
the promise of a Gramscian approach to international relations. However, the
two introductory essays will be difficult for those less conversant with Gramsci.
Such readers are advised to begin with the essays by Cox on hegemony, and
Rupert since they introduce the Gramscian lexicon in a relatively straightforward
manner. The reader might then turn to Arrighi's fascinating and revisionist
reading of the history of hegemonies, Augelli and Murphy's chapter, and any
regional case which holds interest. Only then would I suggest reading the
introductory chapters by Gill, and the essay by Gill and Law on international
capital which provide a more encompassing picture of the Gramscian anti-
hegemonial project.

References
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the International System . International Social ScienceJournal 133:417-429.
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LIPSC:HuI/, RONmFN
Millennitum21:389-420.
PIc(:(i()o-O-,S(.. (1990) The Internationalization of the State. Review of Radical Political Ecnonoics
22:28-44.
ROSLNxt!, JAMES N. (1990) Turbulencc)in World Politics: A Theoryof Change and Continuity.Princeton:
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ROSEN:\A, JAMxxl: N. AN1) E. (. C/(zv.:X\'l. (1992) Governancewithout Government:Orderand Change in
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SHAW,MARI.IN. (1992) Global Society and Global Responsibility: The Theoretical, Historical and
Political .imits of 'International Society'. Millennium 21:421-434.
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