1. Francesco Cavatorta School of Law and Government DCU
LG117: Introduction to International Relations Lecture 8: Critical Theory and the New Marxism
Francesco Cavatorta
School of Law and Government
DCU

2. IPE: The postwar system
Immediately after the Second World War international institutions were created to facilitate co-operation and trade in the world economy (IBRD & IMF 1946)
The onset of the Cold War postponed the operation of these institutions
The United States stepped in directly to manage the reconstruction of Europe and the international monetary system based on the dollar.
Bretton-Woods collapsed in 1971

3. Criticisms of the International Economic Order
Developing countries’ dissatisfaction with the international system came to a head in the 1970s when they pushed unsuccessfully for a new international economic order.
The debt crisis in the 1980s thrust the IMF into a new role, causing its work to overlap with that of the World Bank.
Trade negotiations in the 1980s produced a new world trade organization – WTO 1995

4. Traditional approaches to IPE: liberal, mercantilist, and Marxian
The liberal (or neo-liberal) perspective presents global economic order as the result of the relatively unfettered operation of markets, guided by rational individual policy-makers.
Mercantilists describe the world economy as an arena for inter-state competition for power.

5. Traditional approaches to IPE: liberal, mercantilist, and Marxian
Marxian analyses focus on the structure of the world capitalist economy, proposing that state and government choices simply reflect the preferences of those who own the means of production.
The three traditional perspectives usefully highlight different actors, different processes, and different ‘levels of analysis’ in the study of IPE.
The importance of IPE has increased with the rise of globalisation

6. Globalization and IPE
Globalization has changed forms of money with the spread of transborder currencies, distinctly supraterritorial denominations, digital cash, and global credit cards.
Globalization has reshaped banking with the growth of supraterritorial deposits, loans, branch networks, and fund transfers.
Securities markets have gained a global dimension through the development of transborder bonds and stocks, transworld portfolios, and electronic round-the-world trading.
Globalization has likewise affected the instruments and modes of trading on derivatives markets.

7. Continuity and change in economic globalization
Global trade and finance have spread unevenly between different regions and different circles of people.
Transborder commerce has to date often widened material inequalities within and between countries.
Territorial geography continues to be important in the contemporary globalizing economy.

8. Marxist theories of International Relations and globalization
Marxists are rather sceptical about the emphasis currently being placed on the notion of globalization.
Rather than being a recent phenomenon they see the recent manifestations of globalization as being part of long-term trends in the development of capitalism.
Furthermore the notion of globalization is increasingly being used as an ideological tool to justify reductions in workers rights and welfare provision.

9. Development, Globalization and Inequality
Progress was achieved up to the 1980s according to the orthodox development criteria of GDP per capita, economic growth, and industrialization.
Yet despite apparent success in conventional terms, there has been an explosive widening of the gap between the richest and poorest 20 per cent of the world's population
The developing countries as a group entered the 1990s more indebted than the 1980s.

10. Development
Trickle-down has been discredited, and it has been recognized that economic growth only reduces poverty if accompanied by specific economic and social policies.
In recognition of the failure of economic growth-based indices of development, the UNDP Human Development Index was designed in 1990 to measure development in terms of longevity, education, and average purchasing power.

11. Development
National Poverty Reduction Strategies, a response to perceived shortcomings in the development orthodoxy, are criticized on issues of national ownership and policy content.
Dependency theorists see the current predicament of the Third World as predictable, arguing that export-oriented, free-market development promoted in the Third World has increased the wealth of the West and of Southern elites.

12. Critical theory
Critical theory has its roots in the work of the Frankfurt School, a group of thinkers including Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas.
Among the key concerns of critical theorists is emancipation
In particular, the human capacities and capabilities appealed to in calls for emancipatory action.

13. Critical theory
Several different understandings of emancipation have emerged from the critical theory tradition.
The first generation of the Frankfurt School equated emancipation with a reconciliation with nature.
Habermas has argued that emancipatory potential lies in the realm of communication and that radical democracy is the way in which that potential can be unlocked.
The idea of the Public Sphere and communicative action

14. Critical theory
Andrew Linklater has developed critical theory themes to argue in favour of the expansion of the moral boundaries of the political community,
The European Union as an example of a post-Westphalian institution of governance.
The creation of alternative spaces for political action – a Global Public Sphere

15. A critical alternative view of development
The last two decades of the twentieth century saw increasing debate about what constitutes development, with NGOs and grassroots activists playing a significant role.
An alternative view of development emerged
Based on the transformation of existing power structures which uphold the status quo.
Such structures vary in scope from the global to the local, and these are often interlinked
For example, the global economy severely disadvantages the poorest 20 per cent of the global population, whilst at a local level access to common resources affects the ability of people to provide for themselves.

16. A critical alternative view of development
Grass-roots organizations challenge entrenched power structures
People defend their rights, as they define them, seeking local control and empowerment.
Development in this alternative view can be seen as facilitating a community’s progress on its own terms.
The Alternative Declarations of NGOs at global conferences have stressed community participation, empowerment, equity, self-reliance, and sustainability.

17. New Marxism
New Marxism is characterized by a direct (re)appropriation of the concepts and categories developed by Marx.
Warren deploys Marx’s analysis of capitalism and colonialism to criticize some of the central ideas of dependency and world-system theorists.
Rosenberg uses Marx’s ideas to criticize realist theories of international relations, and globalization theory.
He seeks to develop an alternative approach which understands historical change in world politics as a reflection of transformations in the prevailing relations of production

18. Conclusion: Marxism and IR – Insights and problems
Focus on inequality and justice
Effects of economic interests
Valid alternative viewpoint
Critical Theory
Problems:
Overly deterministic and materialist
Intellectual baggage