IR2501 THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

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IR2501THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

• Lecture 13
• MARXISM

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HISTORICAL CONTEXT

• Russian Revolution
• Emergence of Socialist States
• The Cold War
• Fall of Communism

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THEORY AND PRACTICE

• Enlightenment Promise
• Progressive Theory of History
• Critique of Capitalism
• Building an Alternative Social Order

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THREE PRINCIPAL SOURCES

• German Philosophy
• Classical Political Economy
• French Socialism

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THREE SOURCES(Continued)

• German Idealism (Dialectical Method)
• Classical Political Economy (Theory of Surplus
  Value)
• Utopian Socialism (Scientific Socialism/Class
  Theory of Revolution)

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Key Figures of German Idealism

• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
• Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787)
• Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
• Critique of Judgment (1790)

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German Idealism(Continued)

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
• Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
• Science of Logic (1812, 1813, 1816)
• Philosophy of Right (1820)

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Three Central Questions in Philosophy

• Nature of Reality (Material or Ideal)
• Primacy Matter or Consciousness
• Relations between Material Reality and
  Consciousness

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Marxs Relation to German Idealism

• Dialectical Method
• 1. The determination of the concept out of itself
• 2. The contradictory nature and tendencies in
  each phenomenon
• 3. The union of analysis and synthesis

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Materialism

• Economic forces determine/condition ideology,
  forms of social consciousness, legal and
  political institutions

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Dialectical Materialism

• Superstructure
• IDEOLOGY, FORMS OF SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS, LEGAL
  POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
• (army, police, courts, bureaucracy)
• Mode of Production
• RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION
• (workownership/effective control)
• FORCES OF PRODUCTION
• (labour-powermeans of production)

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Utopian Socialism

• Critique of Capitalism
• Romantic View of the future
• Moral Doctrine

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Key Figures of Utopian Socialism

• Saint Simon (1760-1825)
• Robert Owen (1771-1858)
• Charles Fourier (1772-1837)

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Preliminary Remarks

• Capitalism and Social Life
• Historically specific form of social and economic
  organisation
• Contradictory Nature of Capitalism

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Classical Political Economy

• Central Focus Study of Capitalist Society
• Relations between commodities (exchange of one
  commodity for another)
• Marx (1818-1883) Relation between people
  mediated by exchange (Capital, 1967)

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Classical Political EconomyKey Figures

• Adam Smith (1723-1790), Wealth of Nations (1776)
• David Ricardo (1772-1823), Principles of
  Political Economy and Taxation (1817)
• Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), Introduction to the
  Principles of Morals (1780)
• John Baptiste Say (1767-1832), A Treatise on
  Political Economy (1803)
• John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Principles of
  Political Economy (1848)

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Two Elements

• 1. Human labour-power becomes a commodity. The
  wage worker sells labour-power to the capitalist
  (owner of the means of production land,
  factories, and instruments of labour).
• 2. The worker spends one part of the day covering
  the cost of maintaining herself/himself and
  her/his family, while the other part of the day
  s/he works without reward, creating for the
  capitalist SURPLUS-VALUE, the source of profit,
  the source of wealth of the capitalist class.

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Principal Contradictions

• Growing Inequality
• Impoverishment of the working class
• Increased class conflict
• Crisis of capitalism (Solution Imperialism)