ABSTRACT
This chapter first interrogates the undeserved banishment of Marxism from IR theory, underscores the importance of distinguishing Marxism from deviant socialist state practices responsible for this banishment, and questions the partial and reductionist accommodation of Marxism in IR by culling select elements within historical materialism (as in Critical Theory) or leaving the door slightly ajar for Marxism (as in structuralism). It explores the possibilities of historical materialism (HM) in IR around the four themes of (1) material determination, (2) historicism, (3) the centrality of classes, and (4) the centrality of conflict and its inevitable culmination in social revolution, arguing how application of them does not entail mechanical reduction of everything to economic determinants. Contrarily, even with the inadequate research on HM’s potential for IR theory, it has directly or indirectly inspired some theories that have radically questioned the field’s reigning orthodoxies of liberalism/realism/pluralism during the interparadigm debate. The chapter admits charges about the difficulty of fitting Marxism into problem-solving IR since over-emphasizing economic factors downplays security-related issues of BOP and war, but argues that realization of the possibilities of HM for a really productive approach to IR is achievable through Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and resistance, and the neo-Gramscians’ creative applications of them for a critique of capital and state.
