Marxism

• Key figures: Karl Marx, Lenin, Antonio Gramsci (classic), Robert Cox and Immanuel Wallerstein (modern).

• Key idea: Economics structures political and social relations.

• History: After the end of the Cold War, Marxist studies of IR are reinvigorated.

Core Tenets of Marxist Theory

• Totality

• Materialist Conception of History

• Liberal state is oppressive

• Class is the unit of analysis

• Action and Emancipation

Orthodox Marxism in World Politics

• Maximisation of interests through creation of norms.

• It accepts that the state simply represents the ruling classes (inside-out approach)

• States accept hegemony because they can then rule over their own proletariats.

• In the long run, contradictions will bring the whole system down. Liberation in sight.

World System Theory

• Key Figures: Lenin (classic) and I. Wallerstein (modern).

• Key Concepts: Core and Periphery.

• Overarching logic: capitalism drives international politics

World System Theory II

• Wallerstein introduces the concept of Semi-Periphery.

• The Hegemon is not the one who has military strength, but the one who has the primacy of productive efficiency.

• The system is doomed to collapse for 7 reasons.

World System Theory III-Some of the Reasons -

• Increasing social and economic gap between countries and within countries.

• Acute environmental problems.

• Failure if Liberalism as an ideological project.

• Emergence of anti-systemic forces

Criticism

• The liberal state is NOT the representative of a small elite.

• Consensus around norms derives from beliefs not hegemony.

• Marxism failed as an ideological project.

• Look at the system not at the domestic structure (Neo-Realism).