China and the philosophy of internal relations
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Abstract
Bieler and Morton’s Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis makes an important and timely contribution to the academic study of the international political economy.1 Based on the philosophy of internal relations, the book seeks to challenge the ‘ontological exteriority’ that is typically posited between key elements of the international system, such as ideas, the social relations of production, the workplace, the ‘social factory’, and the market, state and inter-state system. While the authors draw on a range of theoretical resources and approaches, it is the historical materialism of Antonio Gramsci that provides the key intellectual resource for the numerous theoretical interventions made in the book. For example, Gramsci’s critique of economism and statology provides the basis of an insightful intervention into the structure-agency debate by emphasising the intersections between the social relations of production and class struggle. Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and the integral state, on the other hand, provides the basis of an understanding of the material structure of ideology. As such, Bieler and Morton further strengthen the case for the relevance of Gramsci’s writings not just for the field of International Political Economy but for social theory more broadly. Any critical engagement with the book should thus recognise its ambition and scope. Yet, for all this dense theoretical discussion, it is the three empirical chapters on the rising powers, the Iraq war, and global financial crisis that provide the opportunity for the authors to demonstrate that theoretical framework centred on the philosophy of internal relations lives up to its potential in terms of offering novel and compelling explanations of contemporary international affairs. In my comments, therefore, I will reflect primarily on the chapter on rising powers, and as with the chapter itself, on the case of the rise of