Approaches to IPE:

Marxism and Historical

Structuralism
PSR493 International Political
Economy
Instructor: Deniz Yükseker
Fall 2020
Week 6, Lecture 5

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 Lecture Outline
⚫ Common definitions / assumptions
⚫ Historical contexts and names
– Karl Marx
– Vladimir Lenin
⚫ After Marx and Lenin: Neo-Marxisms
– Dependency Theory
– World-Systems Perspective

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 Human nature and individual rights

⚫ Concept of human nature in

structuralist theory is not selfish or
aggressive (unlike in realist theory)
⚫ Human nature: social and cooperative
by nature

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Relations of production / class structure

⚫ (Economic) Structure determines everything else

⚫ Analysis of capitalism is centered around the
importance of social classes (see later slides for
definition)
⚫ Wealth versus Exploitation (see later slides for
definition)
⚫ Studies the dichotomy of capital versus labor
– National level: (bourgeoisie versus proletariat)
– Global level: (core versus periphery) determined by the
economic structure of capitalism
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 State and society

⚫ There is a link between the wealth and power of the capitalist

class and the government structures / actions
⚫ Variations of this theoretical perspective:
– State is a tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie (Marx and
Engels said so in «The Communist Manifesto»)
– State and bourgeoisie are intertwined with each other (e.g.
corporate executives become government leaders)
– State maintains relative distance from all classes, but
ultimately pursues the interests of the bourgeoisie (Marxist
state theory in the 1970s: Nicos Poulantzas)

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 Marx (1818-1883)
and Historical Materialism

⚫ A structural approach to
explaining history,
– linking wealth and conditions of
production
⚫ Forces of production determine QuickTime™ an d a
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relations of production possible

⚫ Economic structure determines
social, political, and cultural
institutions

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 Marx and Class struggle

⚫ Bourgeoisie versus proletariat: inequality

⚫ Inherently conflictual relations between classes
– Capitalist competition:
⚫ Exploitation of laborers
⚫ Less and less labor-intensive production (more and more capital-
intensive production)
⚫ Concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer numbers of capitalists
– Reserve army of laborers
– Impoverishment of the masses
⚫ Implications for competition:
– Not zero-sum (as opposed to mercantilism)
– Not positive-sum (as opposed to liberalism)
– Negative-sum

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 Marx: crisis tendencies of
capitalism

⚫ The law of falling rate of profit: Investment in

constant capital including labor saving technologies
(land, factory, machines, etc) means a decline in the
rate of profit.
⚫ The law of disproportionality: Capitalism is likely to
go into periodic crises because of the imbalance
between supply of goods and demand for goods
(overproduction or underconsumption)
⚫ The law of concentration: Increasing concentration
of wealth in the hands of a few / increasing inequality
of distribution.
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 Some concepts: social classes

Marx (and his friend and co-author Friedrich Engels)

define social classes in terms of the ownership of
means of production
Means of production: all the materials and properties
that can be used for producing goods and services

Bourgeoisie (capitalist class): owners of means of

production
Proletariat (working class): do not own any means of
production, and therefore, have to work for wages

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 Some concepts: exploitation

Marx argues that the bourgeoisie exploit the working

class.
Marx explains this according to the labor theory of
value.
Labor theory of value: the value of goods (not their
price!!!!!!) is based on the amount of labor that is used
for producing them.
Capitalists have to sell goods for more money (that is,
they have to make a profit) than the value of the labor
spent for producing them.
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 Exploitation, cont’d

Therefore, capitalists look for ways to cheapen the cost

of labor: they either develop «labor saving
technologies» or they refuse to increase workers’
wages even if productivity increases

Thus, as time passes, even though capitalists can

produce more goods using the same number of
workers in a given time (and therefore they increase
their revenues), they don’t increase workers’ wages in
the same proportion.
11 This is exploitation.
 Some concepts (cont’d)

⚫ Labor saving technologies

⚫ Labor-intensive production: production in
which the most important input is labor
⚫ Capital-intensive production: production in
which the most important input is capital

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 Lenin: Imperialism as Highest
Stage of Capitalism

⚫ Remember that Marx argued that capitalism had a crisis

tendency due to overproduction and/or underconsumption)
⚫ Lenin argued that, at the beginning of the 20th century,
advanced capitalist societies escaped economic crisis thanks to
their colonial conquests.
– Expanding investments
– New markets
– Cheaper resources
⚫ Imperial capitalism worked through creating dependencies in
the colonized places
– Production schemes
– Finance and indebtedness
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 Dependency Theories

⚫ “Development of underdevelopment”
(1960s)
– Andre Gunder Frank: metropoles and satellites
– Depencency on the metropole can only result in
underdevelopment in the satellites
– Zero-sum game
– Example:
⚫ Extractive industries were concentrated in satellite
countries, manufacturing industries in the metropole
– Solution: cut ties with the core
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 Dependency Theories

⚫ “Possibility of Dependent Development”

– Fernando Cardoso and Enzo Faletto
– Uneven relationship between the core and the
periphery
– Progress in the periphery may be achieved by
⚫ Attracting FDI
⚫ Participating in free markets and trade

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 World-Systems Perspective

Immanuel Wallerstein: Capitalism as a World-economy

(1970s and 1980s)
⚫ A single division of labor between
– Core
– Periphery
– Semi-periphery
⚫ Historical process
– European modernization
– Long history of colonial exploitation

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 Review

⚫ Marx’s perspective on social inequalities

⚫ Lenin’s perspective on imperialism
⚫ After Marx: dependency theory and world-
systems perspective

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