Gramsci, Machiavelli and international relations

Political Quarterly

Volumn 76, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 341-349

  Femia, Joseph ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 24944472113     PISSN: 00323179     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-923X.2005.00692.x     Document Type: Review

References (31)

1. Adam Morton, who is associated with this 'school', finds such labels inaccurate, going so far as to claim that there is 'no Neo-Gramscian "school" in IPE'. He prefers to speak of 'divergent neo-Gramscian perspectives'. I fear that he is fighting a losing battle. The neo-Gramscians do indeed exhibit the characteristics of a 'school'. They (favourably) cite one another's work, gather together at colloquia and conferences, produce thematic collections of scholarly papers and evidently share certain basic assumptions. No one has ever argued that there can be no significant differences among the 'members' of a school; witness the 'Frankfurt School', which managed to encompass both Adorno and Fromm. Morton is rightly concerned about the dysfunctional traits that may afflict a school - self-confirming authority, exclusiveness, conventional thinking - but one does not avoid them by simply changing a label. 'The sociology of theorising and Neo-Gramscian perspectives: the problem of "school" formation in IPE', in A. Bieler and A. D. Morton (eds), Social Forces in the Making of the New Europe: The Restructuring of European Social Relations in the Global Political Economy, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2001, especially pp. 41, 27.
2. R. D. Germain and M. Kenny, 'Engaging Gramsci: international relations theory and the New Gramscians', Review of International Studies, vol. 24, 1998, p. 5.
3. S. Gill, 'Epistemology, ontology and the "Italian school" ', in S. Gill (ed.), Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 22.
4. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. and ed. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1971, p. 171 (hereafter SPN).
5. W. Robinson, 'Capitalist globalization and the transnationalization of the state', in M. Rupert and H. Smith (eds), Historical Materialism and Globalisation, London, Routledge, 2002, p. 210.
6. Gill, 'Epistemology, ontology and the "Italian school'", p. 25.
7. D. Held, 'Democracy: from city-states to a cosmopolitan order?', Political Studies, special issue on Prospects for Democracy, vol. 40, 1992, p. 32.
8. R. W. Cox, 'Gramsci, hegemony and international relations: an essay in method', Millennium, vol. 12, 1983, pp. 162-75.
9. Gramsci, SPN, p. 12. In his discussion of 'Fordism', Gramsci suggests that America is an exceptional society where hegemony is 'born in the factory' (as opposed to civil society). Because of the non-existence of 'fossilised' social strata with 'fossilised' thought-processes, of 'viscous parasitic sedimentations left behind by past phases of history', America has found it easy to organise production on rational lines and dispense relatively high wages. Hence, the 'psycho-physical adaptation' of workers to the new industrial structure requires little in the way of ideological intervention. The ultimate aim is to 'elaborate a new type of man suited to the new type of work and productive process', but for now, according to Gramsci, the main mechanism of adaptation is the pay packet. However, he seems to shift his ground in the very next paragraph, doubting whether this 'structural' form of persuasion can really be described as hegemony: 'Up to the present . . . there has not been, except perhaps sporadically, any flowering of the "superstructure" [in America]. In other words, the fundamental question of hegemony has not yet been posed.' The implication of this remark is that hegemony is indelibly associated with the superstructure (that is, civil society in the special Gramscian sense). Ibid., pp. 285-6.
10. Ibid., pp. 182, 350.
11. Cox, 'Gramsci, hegemony and international relations', pp. 170-1.
12. Gramsci, SPN, p. 374.
13. Ibid., pp. 240-1.
14. It seems to me that Neo-Gramscians, such as Cox, do not recognise any such limits. To be fair, they cannot really be described as 'abstract' internationalists. Cox, for example, insists that 'the task of changing world order begins with the long, laborious effort to build new historical blocs within national boundaries'. This does indeed sound Gramscian. Yet he boldly speaks of his goal, 'hegemony at the international level', as 'a complex of international social relationships which connect the social classes of the different countries'. 'World hegemony', he continues, is 'expressed in universal norms, institutions and mechanisms which lay down general rules of behaviour for states and for those forces of civil society that cut across national boundaries' ('Gramsci, hegemony and international relations', pp. 174, 171-2). Cox seems to be in little doubt that the 'world order' can be transformed; he does not share the belief, implicit in Gramsci, that cultural difference can impose an impenetrable barrier to the unfolding of a global economic logic.
15. A. Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, vol. III, ed. V. Gerratana, Turin, Einandi, 1975, p. 1710.
16. Ibid., p. 1564.
17. Gramsci, SPN, p. 465.
18. Ibid., p. 341.
19. Ibid., p. 130.
20. Ibid., p. 172.
21. Ibid. One of course may wonder how 'realistic' this goal actually was, but Gramsci is adamant that the prevailing 'historical forces' made it possible if not inevitable.
22. I b i d.
23. I b i d.
24. Ibid., p. 241.
25. Ibid., pp. 172-3.
26. M. Rupert, 'Alienation, capitalism and the inter-state system: towards a Marxian/Gramscian critique', in S. Gill (ed.), Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, p. 83.
27. Ibid., p. 79.
28. Gramsci, SPN, pp. 144-5.
29. Ibid., p. 263.
30. Ibid., pp. 404-5.
31. A similar thesis is defended by M. A. Finocchiaro, who compares Gramsci's political theory to that of Mosca and finds remarkable similarities. See Beyond Right and Left: Democratic Elitism in Mosca and Gramsci, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1999, especially Chapter 4.