REVIEW 4

214 J • A . Ho B s o N / The Economic Taproot of Imperialism

goods at a price which covers the true cost of pro­ duction. The first result of the successful formation of a trust or combine is to close down the worse equipped or worse placed mills, and supply the en­ tire market from the better equipped and better placed ones. This course may or may not be at­ tended by a rise of price and some restriction of con­ sumption: in some cases trusts take most of their profits by raising prices, in other cases by reducing the costs of production through employing only the best mills and stopping the waste of competition.

For the present argument it matters not which course is taken; the point is that this concentration of industry in "trusts;' "combines;' etc. at once limits the quantity of capital which can be effectively em­ ployed and increases the share of profits out of which fresh savings and fresh capital will spring. It is quite evident that a trust which is motivated by cut-throat competition, due to an excess of capital, cannot nor­ mally find inside the "trusted" industry employment for that portion of the profits which the trust-makers desire to save and to invest. New inventions and other economies of production or distribution within the trade may absorb some of the new capital, but there are rigid limits to this absorption. The trustmaker in oil or sugar must find other investments for his sav­ ings: ifhe is early in the application of the combina­ tion principles to his trade, he will naturally apply his surplus capital to establish similar combinations in other industries, economising capital still further, and rendering it ever harder for ordinary saving men to find investments for their savings.

Indeed, the conditions alike of cut-throat com­ petition and of combination attest the congestion of capital in the manufacturing industries which have entered the machine economy. We are not here con­ cerned with any theoretic question as to the possi­ bility of producing by modern machine methods more goods than can find a market. It is sufficient to point out that the manufacturing power of a country like the United States would grow so fast as to exceed the demands of the home market. No one acquainted with trade will deny a fact which all American economists assert, that this is the condi­ tion which the United States reached at the end of the century, so far, as the more developed industries are concerned. Her manufactures were saturated with capital and could absorb no more. One after another . they sought refuge from the waste of competition in "combines" which secure a measure of profitable peace by restricting the quantity of

operative capital. Industrial and financial princes in oil, steel, sugar, railroads, banking, etc. were faced with the dilemma of either spending more than they knew how to spend; or forcing markets outside the home area. Two economic courses were open to them, both leading towards an abandonment of the political isolation of the past and the adoption of imperialist methods in the future. Instead of shut­ ting down inferior mills and rigidly restricting out­ put to correspond with profitable sales in the home markets, they might employ their full productive power, applying their savings to increase their busi­ ness capital, and, while still regulating output and prices for the home market, may "hustle" for foreign markets, dumping down their surplus goods at prices which would not be possible save for the profs itable nature of their home market. So likewise they might employ their savings in seeking investments · outside their country, first repaying the capital bor­ rowed from Great Britain and other countries for · the early development of their railroads, mines and manufactures, and afterwards becoming themselves a creditor class to foreign countries.

It was this sudden demand for foreign markets for manufactures and for investment which was avowedly responsible for the adoption of Imperial­ ism as a political policy and practice by the Repub­ lican party to which the great industrial and financial chiefs belonged, and which belonged to them. The adventurous enthusiasm of President Theodore Roosevelt and his_ "manifest destiny" and "mission of civilization" party must not deceive us. It was Messrs. Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan, and their associates who needed Imperialism and who fastened it upon the shoulders of the great Repub­ lic of the West. They needed Imperialism because they desired to use the public resources of their country to find profitable employment for their capital which otherwise would be superfluous ....

It is this economic condition of affairs that forms the taproot of Imperialism. If the consuming public in this country raised its standard of con­ sumption to keep pace with every rise of productive powers, there could be no' excess of goods or capital clamorous to use Imperialism in order to find mar­ kets: foreign trade would indeed exist, but there

. would be no difficulty in exchanging a small surplus of our manufactures for the food and raw material we annually absorbed, and all the savings that we made could find employment, if we chose, in home industries ....

ROBERT w cox/ G" • LI . ramsc1,r egemony, and International Relations 215

Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations

ROBERT W. COX

Cox examines the implications of Antonio Gramsci's conce t of h . . storico) to Gramsci is decisive composed as t't . ·•b h " p egemony for IR. The historic bloc (blocco

. ' ts 0, ot structures and superst t " h b' . the sub;ective, respectively. Thus, Cox tells us we find in the " . . ~~c ures -t e o Jectiveand ships of the political, ethical, and ideological spheres of t. -~Zoe. te ;uxtaposttton and reciprocal relation­ the instrument of hegemony. Hegemony at the Internati:::~tl: wit t e economic sphere." _The bloc bec~mes the world economy exhibiting a dominant mod . vel extends beyond states. It ts an order within complex social relations connecting classes am e of roductton that_penetratesall countries. It also consists of mutually reinforcingso~ial political and eco on~ ttifferentcountries. World hegemony, therefore, consists of

' , nomtc s ructures One exp~ i d h . monyare international organizations Pros ect : ess on an mec amsm of world hege- to be at the national, not the internatf anal feve{ for the creation of counter-hegemonic blocks are most likely

Some time ago I began reading Gramsci's Prison f!~tebooks. In these fragments, written in a fascist pnson ~etween 1929 and 1935, the former leader of the Italian Communist Party was concerned with the problem of understanding capitalist societies in

. the 1?20s and. 1930s, and particularly with the meanmg of fascism and the possibilities of build1· ,.• C ng an a 1~ernative 1orm of state and society based on the working class. What he had to say centered upon !he state, upon the relationship of civil society to the_ state, ~nd upon the relationship of politics, ethics, a?d ~deology to production. Not surprisingly, Grams_c1 did ~ot have very much to say directly about mternat10nal relations. Nevertheless I found !hat Gramsci's thinking was helpful in understand­ mg_ the meaning of international organization with which I was then principally concerned. Particularly useful was his concept of hegemony, but valuable

. _also~ere several concepts which he had worked out for himself or developed from others. This essay sets forth my understanding of what Gramsci meant by hegemo~y and these related concepts, and suggests how_ I thmk they may be adapted, retaining his es­ s~ntial meaning, to the understanding of problems ~f _world order. It does not purport to be a critical stµdy of Gramsci's political theory but merely a

derivation ~om it of some ideas useful for a revision of current mternational relations theory.1 ...

Gramsci and Hegemony

Gramsci's c?ncepts were all derived from history­ b?th from ~1s own reflections upon those periods of history which he thought helped to throw an ex­ planatory light upon the present, and from his person.al experience of political and social struggle. These mcluded the workers' councils movement of the _early 1920s, his participation in the Third Inter­ ?at1onal, and his opposition to fascism. Gramsci's ideas have always to be related to his own historical context. Moreove_r, pe :vas constantly adjusting his concepts to specific historical circumstances. The c~ncepts cannot usefully be considered in abstrac­ tion from their applications, for when they are so abstracted diffe~ent usages of the same concept appear to ~ontam c~~tradictions or ambiguities.2 A concept, m Gramsci s thought, is loose and elastic and at~ains preci~ion only when brought into con­ tact ~1th a particular situation which it helps to explam, a contact which also develops the meaning o~ th~ ~oncept. This is the strength of Gramsci's h1stonc1sm and therein lies its explanatory power.

' ·RobertW C "G · H· · ox, ramsci, egemony, and International Relation " · R b to World Order (Cambridge UK· Cambridge U . . p s m o ert W. Cox and Timothy J.Sinclair,Approaches

. . ' · mvers1ty ress, 1996), 124-41. Reprinted by permission.

' ii

Ro B ER T W. co X / Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations R O B E RT W. COX / Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations216 217

other classes from those in which it had n~t. I? north­ the leadership and supportive basis for an alterna­The term "historicism" is however, frequently mis­ particularly apposite to the period of the New ern Europe, in the countries whe~e capitalism had tive to fascism. Where Machiavelli looked to the in­

understood and criticized by tho~e _who seek a Economic Policy before coercion began to be ap­ first become established, bourgeois hegemo~y was dividual prince, Gramsci looked to the modern more abstract systematic, umversalistic, and non- plied on a larger scale against the rural population.) most complete. It necessarily involved co~cessions ~o prince: the revolutionary party engaged in a contin­

historical form ofknowledge.3 . In western Europe, by contrast, civil society, subordinate classes in return for acqmescence m uing and developing dialogue with its own base of Gramsci geared his thought consisten~ly to_ the under bourgeois hegemony, was much more fully bourgeois leadership, con~essions which co~ld lead support. Gramsci took over from Machiavelli the

practical purpose of political actio~. In h~,s priso~ developed and took manifold forms. A war of ultimately to forms of social democracy which pre­ image of power as a centaur: half man, half beast, a

writings, he always referred to Manosm as the p~i­ movement might conceivably, in conditions of ex­ serve capitalism while making it more acceptable t_o necessary combination of consent and coercion. 8 To

losophy of praxis:'4 Partly at least, one m~y surmise, ceptional upheaval, enable a revolutionary van­ workers and the petty bourgeoisie. Be~~use t~eir the extent that the consensual aspect of power is in it must have been to underline the practica~ revolu­ guard to seize control of the state apparatus; but hegemony was firmly entrenched in clVll society, the forefront, hegemony prevails. Coercion is always

tionary purpose of ph~lo_sophy: Partly too,_ it would because of the resiliency of civil society such an the bourgeoisie often did not need to run the sta~e latent but is only applied in marginal, deviant cases.

have been to indicate his mtention to c~ntri~ute to a exploit would in the long run be doomed to failure. themselves. Landed aristocrats in England, Junkers m Hegemony is enough to ensure conformity of be­

lively developing current of thought: given impet~s Gramsci described the state in western Europe (by Prussia, or a renegade preten~er to the mantle of havior in most people most of the time. The Machi­by Marx but not forever circumscribed by Marx s which we should read state in the limited sense Napoleon I in France, could do it for ~hem so long as avellian connection frees the concept of power (and

k Nothing could be further from his mind than of administrative, governmental, and coercive ap­wor . · f h these rulers recognized the hegemomc s~~ucture_sof of hegemony as one form of power) from a tie toMarxism which consists in an exegesis o t e paratus and not the enlarged concept of the state civil society as the basic limits of their political act~on. historically specific social classes and gives it a wider :acred texts for the purpose of refining a timeless set mentioned above) .as "an outer ditch, behind which

This. perception of hegemony led Gramsci. to applicability to relations of dominance and subordi­ there stands a powerful system of fortresses andof categories and concepts. enlarge his definition of the st~te. When the admm­ nation, including, as will be suggested below, rela­ earthworks:' istrative, executive, and coercive apparatus of gov­ tions of world order. It does not, however, sever

Origins of the Concepts of Hegemony ernment was in effect constrained by the hege_mony power relations from their social basis (i.e., in the In Russia, the State was everything, civil society of the leading class of a whole social f~r.mat10n, it case of world-order relations by making them into was primordial and gelatinous; in the West,There are two main strands leading to the Grams­ became meaningless to limit the defimtion of the relations among states narrowly conceived), but there was a proper relation between State and cian idea of hegemony. The first ran fro~ the debates state to those elements of government. To be mean­ directs attention towards deepening an awareness of civil society, and when the State trembled a within the Third International concernmg the _strat­ . ful the notion of the state would also have to this social basis. sturdy structure of civil society was at once

egy of the Bolshevik Revolution and the creatl?~ of mg ' l' · 1 t revealed.10include the underpinnings of the po itic~ struc ure a Soviet socialist state, the second from the writmgs in civil society. Gramsci thought of thes_e m concrete

of Machiavelli. In tracing the first strand, so~,e War of Movement and War of Position Accordingly, Gramsci argued that the war of move­ historical terms: the church, the educational system,

commentators have sought to contrast ?r~msci s ment could not be effective against the hegemonic the press, all the institutions which ~elped to create In thinking through the first strand of his concept of

thought with Lenin's by aligning Gramsci w~th t_he state-societies of western Europe. The alternative in people certain modes of behavi?r an~ expec­ hegemony, Gramsci reflected upon the experiences idea of a hegemony of the proletariat and Lenm with strategy is the war of position which slowly builds tations consistent with the hegemomc social orde~. of the Bolshevik Revolution and sought to deter­a dictatorship of the proletariat. Other comment~­ up the strength of the social foundations of a new For example, Gramsci argued that the Masomc mine what lessons might be drawn from it for the

tors have underlined their basic agreement.s_What is state. In western Europe, the struggle had to be won lodges in Italy were a bond amongst the g~vernment task of revolution in western Europe.9 He came toimportant is that Lenin referred to the_ Rus~ian pro­ in civil society before an assault on the state could officials who entered into the state machmery after the conclusion that the circumstances in western

letariat as both a dominant and a dir~ctm? cl~ss, achieve success. Premature attack on the state by a the unification of Italy, and therefore must be con­ Europe differed greatly from those in Russia. To

dominance implying dictatorship and dir~ction im­ war of movement would only reveal the weakness of sidered as part of the state for the purpose of assess­ illustrate the differences in circumstances, and the

plying leadership with the consent of allied classes the opposition and lead to a reimposition of bour­ ing its broader political structure. The hegemo~y of consequent differences in strategies required, he had ( notably the peasantry). Gramsci, ~n effect, took o~er geois dominance as the institutions of civil society a dominant class thus bridged the con~entlo~al recourse to the military analogy of wars of move­ reasserted controf. an idea that was current in the _circles of the Third categories of state and civil society, categories which ment and wars of position. The basic difference be­International: the workers exercised hegemony over The strategic implications of this analysis are

the allied classes and dictatorship over enemy retained a certain analytical usefulness ?utceased to tween Russia and western Europe was in the relative clear but fraught with difficulties. To build up the correspond to separable entities in reality. , strengths of state and civil society. In Russia, the classes. Yet this idea was applied by the Third Inter­ basis of an alternative state and society upon the

As noted above, the second strand leadmg to administrative and coercive apparatus· of the state national only to the working class _and expre~sed the leadership of the working class means creating alter­

the Gramscian idea of hegemony came all the way was formidable but proved to be vulnerable, while role of _the working class in leadmg an alliance of native institutions and alternative intellectual re­ from Machiavelli and helps to broaden even further civil society was undeveloped. A relatively small

Workers peasants, and perhaps some other groups sources within existing society and building bridges > • h 6 the potential scope of application _of t~e conce~t. working class led by a disciplined vanguard was able

potentially supportive of revo~uti~na~y_c ange._ between workers and other subordinate classes. It Gramsci had pondered what Machiavelli had writ­ to overwhelm the state in a war of movement andGramsci's originality lies m his givmg a twist to means actively building a counterhegemony within ten especially in The Prince, concerning the prob­ met no effective resistance from the rest of civil

this first strand: he began to apply it to the bour­ an established hegemony while resisting the pres­ le~ of founding a new state. Machiavelli, in the society. The vanguard party could set about found­

geoisie, to the apparatus or me~hanism~ of h~ge- sures and temptations to relapse into pursuit of in­ fifteenth century, was concerned w~th fin~ing the ing a new state through a combination of apply­

of the dominant class.7 This made it possible cremental gains for subaltern groups within themony . . .. leadership and the supporting s?Cial basis fo\ a ing coercion against recalcitrant elements and. for him to distinguish cases m which the bour?emsie framework of bourgeois hegemony. This is the united Italy; Gramsci, in the twentieth century, with building consent among others. (T~is analysis was had attained a hegemonic position ofleadership over line between war of position as a long-range

·I ·«

I

218 Ro BERT w. Co X / Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations

revolutionary strategy and social democracy as a policy of making gains within the established order.

Passive Revolution

Not all western European societies were bourgeois hegemonies. Gramsci distinguished between two kinds of societies. One kind had undergone a thor­ ough social revolution and worked out fully its con­ sequences in new modes of production and social relations. England and France were cases that had gone further than most others in this respect. The other kind were societies which had so to speak imported or had thrust upon them aspects of a new order created abroad, without the old order having been displaced. These last were caught up in a dialec­ tic of revolution-restoration which tended to be­ come blocked as neither the new forces nor the old could triumph. In these societies, the new industrial bourgeoisie failed to achieve hegemony. The result­ ing stalemate with the traditionally dominant social classes created the conditions that Gramsci called "passive revolution;' the introduction of changes which did not involve any arousal of popular forces.11

One typical accompaniment to passive revolu­ tion in Gramsci's analysis is caesarism: a strong man intervenes to resolve the stalemate between equal and opposed social forces. Gramsci allowed that there were both progressive and reactionary forms of caesarism: progressive when strong rule presides over a more orderly development of a new state, re­ actionary when it stabilizes existing power. Napoleon I was a case of progressive caesarism, but Napoleon III, the exemplar of reactionary caesarism, was more representative of the kind likely to arise in the course , of passive revolution. Gramsci's analysis here is vir­ tually identical with that of Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: the French bourgeoisie, unable to rule directly through their own political parties, were content to develop capitalism under a political regime which had its social basis in the peas­ antry, an inarticulate and unorganized class whose virtual representative Bonaparte could claim to be.

In late nineteenth-century Italy, the northern industrial bourgeoisie, the class with the most to gain from the unification of Italy, was unable to dominate the peninsula. The basis for the new state became an alliance between the industrial bour­ geoisie of the north and the landowners of the

south-an alliance which also provided benefits for petty-bourgeois clients (especially from the south) who staffed the new state bureaucracy and political parties and became the intermediaries between the various population groups and the state. The lack of any sustained and widespread popular participa­ tion in the unification movement explained the "passive revolution" character of its outcome. In the aftermath of World War I, worker and peasant occu­ pations of factories and land demonstrated a strength which was considerable enough to threaten yet insufficient to dislodge the existing state. 12

There took place then what Gramsci called a "dis­ placement of the basis of the state" towards the petty bourgeoisie, the only class of nationwide ex­ tent, which became the anchor of fascist power: Fascism continued the passive revolution, sustain­ ing the position of the old owner classes yet unable to attract the support of worker or peasant subal­ tern groups.

Apart from caesarism, the second major feature of passive revolution in Italy Gramsci called trasformismo.It was exemplified in Italian politics by Giovanni Giolitti, who sought to bring about the widest possible coalition of interests and who dominated the political scene in the years preceding fascism. For example, he aimed to bring northern industrial workers into a common front with indus­ trialists through a protectionist policy. Trasformismo worked to co-opt potential leaders of subaltern social groups. By extension trasformismocan serve as a strategy of assimilating and domesticating po­ tentially dangerous ideas by adjusting them to the policies of the dominant coalition and can thereby obstruct the formation of class-based organized opposition to established social and political power. Fascism continued trasformismo.Gramsci interprets the fascist state corporatism as an unsuccessful attempt to introduce some of the more advanced industrial practices of American capitalism under the aegis of the old Italian management.

The concept of passive revolution is a counter­ part to the concept of hegemony in that it describes the condition of a non.hegemonic society,-one in which no dominant class has been able to establish a hegemony in Gramsci's sense of the term. Today this notion of passive revolution, together with its components, caesarism and trasformismo,is partic­ ularly apposite to industrializing Third World countries.

ROBERT W. COX/ G · H ramsc,, egemony, and International Relations 219

Historic Bloc (Blocco Storico)

~ram~ci attributed the source of his notion of the h1stonc bloc ( blocco storico) to Georges Sorel, though Sorel never used the term or any other in precisely the sense Gramsci gave to it 13 Sorel di'd ho . . · , wever, in- terpret revo~ut10nary action in terms of social myths through w?1ch people engaged in action perceived a

' confrontation ?ftotalities-in which they saw a new order challengmg an established order. In the course of a cataclysmic event, the old order would be over­ thr~wn as a w~o~e and the new be freed to unfold.14 ~ile Gra~sc1 did not share the subjectivism of this v1s10n, he did _share the view that state and society to~eth~r co~stituted a solid structure and that revo- lution implied the development within it of another structure strong enough to replace the first E h .

, M h h . c omg arx, e t ought this could come about only when

the ~rst had exhausted its full potential. Whether domma?t or emergent, such a structure is what GramSCI called an historic bloc.

F~r Sorel,. social myth, a powerful form of collect1~e subjectivity, would obstruct reformist tendencies. These might otherwise attract workers away f~om revolutionary syndicalism into incre­ ~entahst trade unionism or reformist party poli­ tics. The myth_ was a weapon in struggle as well.as a !ool for analysis. For Gramsci, the historic bloc sim-

: Iiarly had a revolutionary orientation through its stress on the unity and coherence of sociopolitical order~. It was an intellectual defense against co­ optat1on by trasformismo.

The hi~to~ic bloc is a dialectical concept in the se~se that its. mteracting elements create a larger umty. _Gramsc1 expressed these interacting elements s?met1mes as the subjective and the objective, some­ times as superstructure and structure.

Structures and superstructures form an "h' t . bl ,, Th . 1s one

oc. . at is to say the complex contradictory ?nd discordant ensembleof the superstructures

eco~omism'.' or a narrowly economic interpretation of history), ideas and material conditions are always bound together, mutually influencing one another and not reducible one to the other. Ideas have to b; under~too_d in relation to material circumstances. ~atenal c1rcumstances include both the social rela-

, tions and the physical means of production. Super­ structures of ideology and political organization s~ape the development of both aspects of produc­ tion and are shaped by them.

:'11h~storic bloc cannot exist without a hege­ mon~c social cl~ss. Where the hegemonic class is the dommant class m a country or social formation the s~ate (in ?ramsci's enlarged concept) maintains c~he­ s~on and identity within the bloc through the propaga­ tion of a ~ommon culture. A new bloc is formed when a subordinate class (e.g., the workers) establishes its hegemony over other subordinate groups (e.g., small f~mers, marginals). This process requires intensive dialogue between leaders and followers within the would-?e hegemonic class. Gramsci may have con­ curred m th_e Leninist idea of a vanguard party which takes upon itself the responsibility for leading an im­ mature working class, but only as an aspect of a war of mov~me~t. Because a war-of-position strategy was reqmred m the western countries, as he saw it, the role o~ the partJ:' s~ould be to lead, intensify, and develop d1alo~e w1thm the working class and between the working class and other subordinate classes which could be brought into alliance with it. The" lin " . . mass e as ?mo billzat10n. techniq~e once developecl by the C~m~se <?ammumst Party is consistent with Gramsci's thmking 1n this respect.

. I~tellectuals play a key role in the building of an h1~tonc bloc. Intellectuals are not a distinct and rel~ ativel~ classless SOfial stratum. Gramsci saw them as orgamcally co~nected with a social class. They per­ form the_ funct10n of developing and sustaining the me~tal _image~, technologies, and organizations

is ~e reflection of the ensembleof the social relat10ns of production. is

The ju~t~position and reciprocal relationships of .· the_ ~ohti~al, ethical, and ideological spheres of ~cti".1ty with the economic sphere avoid reduc­

• omsm._It avoids ~educing everything either tot econom.~cs (~con?m1sm) or to ideas (idealism). In y GramSCIs h1stoncal materialism (which he '· · careful t d · · . wasf O 1stmgmsh from what he called "historical ,..,

wh1c~ b1~d together the members of a class and of ?n histonc bloc into a common identity. Bourgeois mtellect~~ls did this for a whole society in which the bourge01s1e was hegemonic. The organic intellectu- ?ls of the w?rking class would perform a similar role m the creat10n of a_ne:W historic bloc under working- class hegemony w1thm that society. To do. this they woul~ ha_ve to evolve a clearly distinctive culture, ?rgamz?t1on, and technique, and do so in constant mteraction with the members of the emergent block. Everyone, for Gramsci, is in some part an

220 Ro B E RT w. co X / Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations •

Ro B E RT W. co X / Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations 221

intellectual, although only so~e perform ful~- . the social function of an mtellectual. In this

time . " 11 f task, the party was, in his conception, a co ec ive intellectual:' h

In the movement towards hegemony and t e creation of an historic bloc, Gramsci di~tinguished ~ee levels of consciousness: the econom1co-corpo~ative, which is aware of the specific interests of a particu!ar group; the solidarity or class conscio~sness, whtch extends to a whole social class but rema~ns at ~ purely economic level; and the hegemonic, which b~mgs the interests of the leading class into harmony with those of subordinate classes and incorporate~ these_ other interests into an ideology expressed m umversa~ terms.16 The movement towards hegemony, Gramsc1 says is a "passage from the structure to the sphere of the 'complex superstructures:' by which he means passing from the specific interests of a gro~p or ~lass to the building of institutions and elabor~t10~ of ~de-

1 . If they reflect a hegemony, these mst1tutions o og1es. . h ill and ideologies will be universal in form, I.e., t ~y~ not appear as those of a particular class, and will g1~e some satisfaction to the subordinat~ gr?ups while not undermining the leadership or vital mterests of the hegemonic class.

Hegemonyand International Relations

We can now make the transition from what Gramsci said about hegemony and related ~oncepts to the implications of these concepts for mterna­ tional relations. First, however, it is useful to l~ok at what little Gramsci himself had ~o say_ about m:er­ national relations. Let us begin with this passage.

Do international relations precede or follow (logically) fundamental social relations? The~e can be no doubt that they follow. Any orga~IC innovation in the social structure, ~hrough its technical-military expressions, mo~1fies ?rgan­ ically absolute and relative relat10ns m the international field too.17

By"organic" Gramsci meant that which is structural, long-term, or relatively perma~,ent, as opp?sed to the short-term or "conjunctural. He was say~ng that basic changes in international power relati~ns or world order, which are observed as changes m the military-strategic and geopolitical b~lance, ~an be traced to fundamental changes in social relations.

Gramsci did not in any way bypass th~ state or diminish its importance. The state rema_med for him the basic entity in international relat10ns and the place where: social conflicts take_ place-t?e place also, therefore, where hegemom~s of soc~al classes can be built. In these heg~m.omes of s~e1al classes, the particular charactensttcs of nat1~ns combine in unique and original ways. The ~orking class, which might be considered to ~e m~erna­ tional in an abstract sense, nationalizes itself m the process of building its hegemony. The emergence of new worker-led blocs at the national le~el would, in this line of reasoning, precede any bastc restruc­ turing of international relations. However, t?e state, which remains the prima~y focu~ of. social t gle and the basic entity of mternational rela-

s rug · · 1 d ·ttions, is the enlarged state which me u es I s own social basi:s. This view sets aside a narrow_ or sup~r­ ficial view of the state which reduces it, for m­ stance, to the foreign-policy bureaucracy or the state's military capabilities.

From his Italian perspective, Gramsci had a keen sense of what we would now call depend~ncy. What happened in Italy he knew was mar~edly m~uenced by external powers. At the purely fore1gn-pohcy le~el, great powers have relative freedom to de~e~mme their foreign policies in response to domestic mter­ ests; smaller powers have less ~uto~omy.1s The eco­ nomic life of subordinate nations is pen~trated ~y and intertwined with that of powerful n~t1~ns. This is further complicated by the e~stence ~1thm cou~­ tries of structurally diverse reg10ns which have dis­ tinctive patterns of relationship to external fo~ces.19 .

At an even deeper level, those states which are powerful are precisely those which have undergone a profound social and economic revolution an~ have most fully worked out the consequence~ of this revolution iµ the form of state and of social rela~ tions. The French Revolution was the case Gramsc1 reflected upon, but we can think of the ~evelopme~t during the Cold War of U.S. and Soviet power m the same way. These were all nation-based de~elop­ ments which spilled over national boundaries to become internationally expansive phenomena. Other countries have received the impact of these developments in a passive way, an instance of w~at Gramsci described at the national level as a passive revolution. This effect comes when the impetus ~o change does not arise out of a "vast local economic

development ... but is instead the reflection of in­ ternational developments which transmit their ide­ ological currents to the periphery."20

The group which is the bearer of the new ideas, in such circumstances, is not an indigenous social group which is actively engaged in building a new economic base with a new structure of social rela­ tions. It is an intellectual stratum which picks up ideas originating from a prior foreign economic and social revolution. Consequently, the thought of this group takes an idealistic shape ungrounded in a do­ mestic economic development; and its conception of the state takes the form of"a rational absolute."21 Gramsci criticized the thought of Benedetto Croce, the dominant figure of the Italian intellectual estab­ lishment of his own time, for expressing this kind of distortion.

Hegemonyand World Order

Is the Gramscian concept of hegemony applicable at the international or world level? Before attempting to suggest how this might be done, it is well to rule out some usages of the term which are common in inter­ national relations studies. Very often "hegemony" is used to mean the dominance of one country over others, thereby tying the usage to a relationship strictly among states. Sometimes "hegemony" is used as a euphemism for imperialism. When Chinese po­ litical leaders used to accuse the Soviet Union of "hegemonism;' they seem to have had in mind some combination of these two. These meanings differ so much from the Gramscian sense of the term that it is better, for purposes of clarity in this chapter, to use the term "dominance" to replace them.

In applying the concept of hegemony to world order, it becomes important to determine when a period of hegemony begins and when it ends. A pe­ riod in which a world hegemony has been estab­ lished can be called hegemonic and one in which clominance of a nonhegemonic kind prevails, non­ hegemonic. To illustrate, let us consider the past century and a half as falling into four distinguishable periods,roughly.221845-1875, 1875-1945, 1945-1965, and 1965 to the present.•

The first period ( 1845-75) was hegemonic there was a world economy with Britain as its center. Eco­ nomic doctrines consistent with British supremacy but universal in form-comparative advantage, free

trade, and the gold standard-spread gradually out­ ward from Britain. Coercive . strength . underwrote this order. Britain held the balance of power in Europe, thereby preventing any challenge to hegemony from a land-based power. Britain ruled supreme at sea and had the capacity to enforce obedience by peripheral countries to the rules of the market.

In the second period (1875-1945), all these fea­ tures were reversed. Other countries challenged British supremacy. The balance of power in Europe became destabilized, leading to two world wars. Free trade was superseded by protectionism; the gold standard was ultimately abandoned; and the world economy fragmented into economic blocs. This was a nonhegemonic period.

In the third period, following World War II (1945-65), the United States founded a new hege­ monic world order similar in basic structure to that dominated by Britain in middle of the nineteenth century but with institutions and doctrines ad­ justed to a more complex world economy and to national societies more sensitive to the political repercussions of economic crises. Sometime from the later 1960s through the early 1970s it became evident that this US-based world order was no longer working well. During the uncertain times which followed, three possibilities of structural transformation of world order opened up: a recon­ struction of hegemony with a broadening of polit­ ical management on the lines envisaged by the Trilateral Commission; increased fragmentation of the world economy around big-power-centered economic spheres; and the possible assertion of a Third World-based counterhegemony with the concerted demand for the New International Economic Order•as a forerunner.

• In Production, Power, and World Order, three successive structures of world order are substituted for the peri­ odization given above, based on the dialectical relation of production, forms of state, and different configurations of world order. These three structures are: ( 1) the liberal international economy (1789-1873); (2) the era of rival imperialisms (1873-1945); and (3) the neoliberal world order (post-World War II). See Robert W. Cox, Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 107-109.

222 . Ro B ER T w. co X / Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations ROBERT W. COX/ Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations 223 On the basis of this tentative notation, it would

appear that, historically, to become hegemonic, a state would have to found and protect a world order which was universal in conception, i.e., not an order in which one state directly exploits others but an order which most other states ( or at least those within reach of the hegemony) could find compatible with their interests. Such an order would hardly be conceived in inter-state terms alone, for this would likely bring to the fore oppositions of state interests. It would most likely give prominence to opportunities for the forces of civil society to operate on the world scale ( or on the scale of the sphere within which hegemony prevails). The hegemonic concept of world order is founded not only upon the regulation of inter-stat.e conflict but also upon a globally conceived civil society, i.e., a mode of production of global extent which brings about links among social classes of the countries en­ compassed by it.

Historically, hegemonies of this kind are founded by powerful states which have undergone a thorough social and economic revolution; The rev­ olution not only modifies the internal economic and political structures of the state in question but also unleashes energies which expand beyond the state's boundaries. A world hegemony is thus in its beginnings an outward expansion of the internal (national) hegemony established by a dominant so­ cial class. The economic and social institutions, the culture, the technology associated with this national hegemony become patterns for emulation abroad. Such an expansive hegemony impinges on the more peripheral countries as a passive revolution. These countries have not undergone the same thorough social revolution, nor have their economies devel­ oped in the same way, but they try to incorporate elements from the hegemonic model without dis­ turbing old power structures. While peripheral countries may adopt some economic and cultural as­ pects of the hegemonic core, they are less able to adopt its political models. Just as fascism became the form of passive revolution in the Italy of the interwar period, so various forms of military-bureaucratic regime supervise passive revolution in today's pe­ ripheries. In the world-hegemonic model, hegemony is more intense and consistent at the core and more laden with contradictions at the periphery.

Hegemony at the international level is thus not merdy an order among states. It is an order within a world economy with a dominant mode of production

which penetrates into all countries and links into other subordinate modes of production. It is also a complex of international social relationships which connect the social classes of the different countries. World hegemony can be described as a social struc­ ture, an economic structure, and a political structure; and it cannot be simply one of these things but must be all three. World hegemony, furthermore, is ex­ pressed in universal norms, institutions, and mech­ anisms which lay down general rules of behavior for states and for those forces of civil society that act across national boundaries, rules which support the dominant mode of production.

The Mechanisms of Hegemony: InternationalOrganizations One mechanism through which the universal norms of a world hegemony are expressed is the interna­ tional organization. Indeed, international organiza­ tion functions as the process through which the institutions of hegemony and it~ ideology are devel­ oped. Among the features of international organiza­ tion which express its hegemonic role are the following: ( 1) the institutions embody the rules which facilitate the expansion of hegemonic world orders; (2) they are themselves the product of the hegemonic world order; ( 3) they ideologically legit­ imate the norms of the world order; ( 4) they co-opt the elites from peripheral countries; and (5) they absorb counterhegemonic ideas.

International institutions embody rules which facilitate the expansion of the dominant economic and social forces but which at the same time permit adjustments to be made by subordinated interests with a minimum of pain. The rules governing world monetary and trade relations are particularly signif­ icant. They are framed .primarily to promote eco­ nomic expansion. At the same time they allow for exceptions and derogations to take care of problem situations. They can be revised in the light of changed circumstances. The Bretton Woods institutions pro­ vided more safeguards for domestic social concerns like unemployment than did the gold standard, on condition that national policies were consistent with the goal of a liberal world economy. The current system of floating exchange rates also gives scope for national actions while maintaining the principle of a prior commitment to harmonize national policies in the interests of a liberal world economy.

. I~t~rnational institutions and rules are ener ally Initiated by the state which establishes theg he - mony. At the very least they must have that sta;;; supp?rt. The dominant state takes care to secure the acqmescence_of_.oth.erstates according to a hierarch of powers w1thm the inter-state structure of he e! ::;;~~:~ second-rank countries are consul;ed I e1r support is secured. The consent of at east some of the more p . h

Iicited F I . . . enp era1countries is so- . orma partlc1pat10n may be weighed 1· c

vor ofth d · n 1a­ .M e ommant powers as in the International

onetary Fund and World Bank, or it may be on a one-s~ate-o~e-~ote basis as in most other ma'or i - ternational mstitutions. There is an i·nc IJ n t f · fl 10rma struc- uorl~t? iln udence reflecting the different levels of real

p I ica an economic p h' hfor al d ower w IC underlies the m proce ures for decisions.

I Iternational institutions perform an ideologi- ca ro e as well. They help define I' . . for states and I ·f . ~o icy gmdelmes

. eg1 imate certam institutions and ~ractices at the national level. They reflect . hons fav bl h onenta-

. ora e to t e dominant social and ~om1c f~rces. The Organization for Econo:~~ m~op;ra~10n and Development, in recommending

ol;e ar~sm: en_dorsed a dominant consensus of ~nei ~hmking m the core countries and strength­ fl f t :~ who wer~ determined to combat in-

a wn dis way agamst others who were more concerne about unempl ThLabor o · . oyment. e International . t ~gam~at1on, by advocating tripartism, legit­ m:i,a es t e social relations evolved in the co tnes as_ the desirable model for emulation. re coun-

Ehte talent from peripheral count . . opted int · t . nes 1s co-

_om ernat1onal institutions in the f :asformtsmo.Individuals from peripheral :~n~;;e: wi~:~t t~?m?co~e to international institution;

e I ea o working from within to chan e the system, are condemned to work within th t g of pa · . es ructures

1ss1ve revo ution. At best they will h I t £ elements of "modernization" to the peri;ler;::t~; ~~~~~ th:e are consistent with the interests of estab­ sorbs it powers. Hegemony is like a pillow: it ab-

. o~s and sooner or later the would-be assailant will find it_ comfortable to rest upon. Onl wherle rbepredsentation in international institutions i~ firm y ase upon an f ul .chall . ar ic ate social and political bloc e:g~ to hegemony-upon a nascent historic

. . n counterhegemony-could partici ation ~?~~areal threat. The co-optation of outstanding in-

1v1 uals from the peripheries renders this less likely.

Trasformismoalso absorbs potent1'all . he · 'd Y counter-

gemomc I eas and makes these idea . . w'thh · · . · - s consistent

I egemomc doctrme. The notion of self- 1·£ b · - · re 1ance . or examp e, 1 egan as a challenge to the world

economy by advocating endogenously determined ,autonomous development. The term h b.t £ d . as now- een ra~~ orme to mean support by the agencies of the

wor _economy for do-it-youtself welfare ro­ g~ams m the peripheral countries. These progr~ms aim t?enable the rural populations to achieve self­ suffic1~ncy,to stem the rural exodus to the cities d to ~~h1eve th_e~eby a' greater degree of social' ::d political stab1hty. a~ongst populations which the wf rld. e~o~omy Is mcapable of integrating. Self- . re iance m its transformed meaning becomes com­ flementary to and supportive of hegemonic goals wr the world economy. ·

Thus, one tactic for bringing about change in the structure of world order can be ruled tt I 'll . . OU as a to- a I us1on. There is very little likelihood f f. . . o awaro

mo~ement at the mternational level through which ~ad1cals _would seize control of the superstructure of mternat10nal institutions. Daniel Patrick M 'h no~ithstan~ing, Third World r;idicals do ::~o:~ trol mtern_at1onal institutions.h Even if they did, the cou~d achieve nothing by it. These superstructure~ are madequately connected with any popular politi­ cal b~se. They _are connected with the national hege­ ~omc cl~sses m the core countries and, through the mtermedia~ of these classes, have a broader base in th_ehsechountn~s. In the peripheries, they connect only wit t e passive revolution. ·

The Prospects for Counterh~gemony

Wo~ld ?rde~s-t9 rerurn to Grams~i's statement cited earlier m this essay-are grounded . . I I .A · . . m soc1a re atwns

s1gmficant structural change in world ord . . cordi I lik er 1s, ac-

1ng_ y, ~' y to b~ traceable to some fundamental. change m ~octal relations and in the national political o:ders w~1ch correspond to national structures of so- cial relations. In Gramsci's thinking· th' Id . . .b 'th , 1s wou come a out WI the emergence of a new historic bloc. •

b . Moynihan was US ambassador to the UN d . h

Ct d'' .. unngte ar er a m_m1stration. He made speeches deplorin

tha: the Umted States :was :in opposition'; in the uJ wh_1chhe represented as being run. by a majori of Third World countries. See New York Times, Januartyy28 1976. . .· ,

224 RO 8 E RT w. co x / Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations

We ~ust shift the problem of changing world order back from international institutions to national societies. Gramsci's analysis ofltaly is even more vali? when applied to the world order; only a war of posi­ tion can in the long run, bring about the structural changes: and a war of position involves building up the sociopolitical base for change thr~ugh the cre­ ation of new historic blocs. The national context remains the only place where an historic bloc can be founded, although world-economy and world­ political conditions materially influence the prospects

for such an enterprise. The prolonged crisis in the world economy

( the beginning of which can be traced to the late 1960s and early 1970s) is propitious for some deve~­ opments which could lead to a counterhegem?~lC challenge. In the core countries, those_ pohc~es which cut into transfer payments to depnve social groups and generate high unemployment open the prospects of a broad alliance of the disadv~ntaged against the sectors of capital and labor wh~ch find common ground in international production a~d the monopoly-liberal world order. The policy basis for this alliance would most likely be post­ Keynesian and neomercantilist; In peripheral coun­ tries some states are vulnerable to revolutionary acti~n as events from lran to Central America sug­ gest. Political preparation of the population in suf­ ficient depth may not, however, be able_ to ~e~p _vace with revolutionary opportunity and this dimims~es the prospect for a new histori~ bloc. An effe_ctive political organization (Gramsci's modern pnn~e) would be required in order to rally the new working classes generated by international productio~ and build a bridge to peasants and urban margmals. Without this, we can only envisage a process where local political elites, even some which are the prod­ uct of abortive revolutionary upheavals, would entrench their power within a monopoly-liberal world order. A reconstructed monopoly-liberal hegemony would be quite capable o~ ~ractking trasformismo by adjusting t?m~ny va~ieties ~f na­ tional institutions and practices, mcludmg national­ ization of industries. The rhetoric of nationalism and of socialism could then be brought into line with the restoration of passive revolution under new guise in the periphery.

In short the task of changing world order begins with the long, laborious effort ~o build new historicblocs within national boundaries.

Notes This text was first published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies; vol. 12, no. 2 (Summer 1983), 162-175. An earlier version was presented to the Panel on Hegemony and International Relations, convened by the caucus for a New Political Science at the 1981 ~n~ual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, September 1981.

1. For citation here, I refer where possible to Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and trans. by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International P~~lisher~, 1971), hereafter cited as Selections.The full ~ntical ed~­ tion, Quaderni del carcere(Turin: Einaudi, 1975), 1s, cited as Quaderni.

2. This seems to be the problem underlying Perry Anderson's "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci;' New Left Review, no. 100 (Novem?er 1~76:-January ~;77), which purports to find incons1stenc1es m Gramsc1 s use of concepts.

3. On this point see E. P. Thompson, "The Poverty of Theory;' in his The Poverty of Theory and Other Ess~ys (London: Merlin Press, 1978), which repres~?t~ an his­ toricist position analogous to that of Gram~c1 s m opp~­ sition to the abstract philosophical Marxis~ of ~oms Althusser. For Althusser's position see "Marxism 1s not Historicism;' in Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capita~ trans. by Hen Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1979). . .

4. It is said that this was to avoid confiscation of his notes by the prison censor, who, if this is true, must have been particularly slow-witted. . , ,

5. Christine Buci-Gluckmann, Gramsc1et l etat. Une theorie materialiste de la philosophie (Paris: Fayard, 1975), places Gramsci squarely in the Leninist tradition. Hughes Portelli, Gramsci et le bloc histor(que ~Paris: Fayard, 1972), and Maria Antonietta Macc1occh1, Pou: Gramsci(Paris: Fayard, 1973), both contrast Gramsc1 with Lenin. Buci-Gluckmann's work seems to me to be more fully thought through. See also Chantal Mouffe and Anne Showstack Sassoon, "Gramsci in France ~nd Italy-A Review of the Literature;' Economy and Society, 6 1 (February 1977), 31-68. '6. This notion fitted well with Gramsci's assessm~nt

of the situation in Italy in the early 1920s; the working class was by itself too weak to carry the full bur~en of revolution and could only bring about the foundmg of a new state by an alliance with the peasant~y and_ some petty bourgeois elements. In fact, Gramsc1 considered the workers' council movement as a school for leade~­ ship of such a coalition and his efforts p~io_r to h~s imprisonment were directed towards bmldmg this coalition.

7. See Buci-Gluckmann, Gramsci et l'etat, 63.

I M MA N U E L WA L L E R STE I N / The Modern World System as a Capitalist World-Economy. 225

8. Machiavelli, The Prince, Norton Critical Edition, edited by Robert M. Adams (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 49-50; and Gramsci, Selections,169-170.

9. The term "western Europe" refers here to the Britain, France, Germany and Italy of the 1920s and 1930s. 10. Gramsci, Selections,238. 11. Gramsci borrowed the term "passive revolution" from the Neapolitan historian Vincenzo Cuocco (1777-1823), who was active in the early stages of the Risorgimento. In Cuocco's interpretation, Napoleon's armies had brought a passive revolution to Italy. 12. Buci-Gluckmann, Gramsci el l'etal, 121. 13. Gramsci, Quaderni,vol. IV, 2632. 14. See Sorel's discussion of myth and the "Napoleonic

battle" in the letter to Daniel Halevy which introduces .,his Reflections on Violence,trans. by T. E. Hulme (New York: Peter Smith, 1941). 15. Gramsci, Selections,366 16. Ibid., 180-195. 17. Ibid., 176. 18. Ibid.,264. 19. Ibid., 182. 20. Ibid., 116. 21. Ibid., 117. 22. The dating is tentative and would have to be refined by enquiry into the structural features proper to each pe­ riod as well as into factors deemed to constitute the

breaking points between one period and another. These are offered here as mere notations for a revision of historical scholarship to raise some questions about hegemony and its attendant structures and mechanisms.

Imperialism, which has taken different forms in these periods, is a closely related question. In the first, pax britannica,although some territories were directly administered, control of colonies seems · to have been incidental to rather than necessary for economic expan­ sion. Argentina, a formally independent country, had essentially the same relationship to the British economy as Canada, a former colony. This, as George Lichtheim noted, may be called the phase of "liberal imperialism." In the second period, the so-called "new imperialism" brought more emphasis on direct political controls. It also saw the growth of capital exports and of the finance capital identified by Lenin as the very essence of imperi­ alism. In the third period, which might be called that of the neoliberal or monopoly-liberal imperialism, the in­ ternationalizing of production emerged as the preemi­ nent form,. supported also by new forms of finance capital (multinational banks and consortia). There seems little point in trying to define some unchanging essence of imperialism, but it would be useful to describe the structural characteristics of the imperialisms which correspond to successive hegemonic and nonhegemonic world orders.

The Modern World System as a Capitalist World-Economy

IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN

Professor Wallerstein outlines key concepts and propositions associated with the capitalist world-system. A present-day Marxist scholar, Wallerstein sees capitalism as best understood as a global, system-wide phenom­ enon. We like this presentation of his work because it is a formal, succinct statement of his theoretical under­ standing of capitalist world-economy.

The world in which we are now living, the modern world-system, had its origins in the six­ teenth century. This world-system was then lo­ cated in only a part of the globe, primarily in parts of Europe and the Americas. It expanded over time to cover the whole globe. It is and has always been a world-economy. It is and has always be.en a

capitalist world-economy. We should begin by explaining what these two terms, world-economy and capitalism, denote. It will then be easier to appreciate the historical contours of the modern world-system-its origins, its geography, its tem­ poral development, and its contemporary struc­ tural crisis.

I,,

)mmanuel Wallerstein,World-SystemsAnalysis:An Introduction (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 23-41. Reprinted , . ~y permission.