ABSTRACT
Marxian class analysis of social relationships within or among nations begins by specifying as precisely as possible the fundamental and subsumed class processes involved. From that beginning the analysis proceeds to work out the complex linkages between these class processes and all the nonclass processes that comprise the national and international relationships being analysed. Individuals who participate in class and nonclass processes comprising relations within a nation may also participate in processes comprising relationships between nations. The orthodox and the radical paradigms share certain key features, although they differ in other important ways. The radical paradigm understands the international capitalist economy as a mechanism for stabilizing the capitalist social order of the core or center nations, primarily through a process of transferring to the center the surplus produced in the nations of the periphery.
