What should Marxism propose to International Relations?

Abstract

To argue for the acknowledgment of the importance of historical materialism today when the cold-war and communism have for more than two decades ceased to exist it might create the perception of appearing dejected. Yet such a task which we attempt to take in this work is possible, if only because of the way that our actuality has depicted itself. One can argue for example that the significance of historical materialism as an elucidating method was never reliant on the success of the authoritarian regimes of communism that gave it a face of their own, any more than has traditional conservatism been dependent on social Darwinism, racist or/and aggressive regimes. Beyond this indication we argue of the possibility that historical materialism can be recognised as explanatory system, as one that in derivation and maturity has as its focus of analysis and particularly lays emphasis on what more than ever before governs our social world today, capitalism. The cold war proved the ground or rather the fit for concealing the social and economic divide and made that division namely in competing strategic interest: with the failure of communism and the freeing of historical materialism itself, IR might as well accept the degree to which socio-economic issues determined its agenda and policy of the west.