Morton, Adam David
Waiting for Gramsci: State Formation, Passive Revolution and the International
This article asserts that Antonio Gramsci's account of "the international" linked to the rise of the modern capitalist states-system remains neglected within debates on the historical sociology of International Relations (IR). It does so by following two main axes of enquiry that assist the aim of unravelling Gramsci's relevance to understanding processes of state formation within the causal conditioning of "the international". The first axis focuses on Gramsci's historical research on Renaissance Italy and the role of mercantile capital in shaping late medieval and early modern states; the "southern question" concerning the terms of uneven development of the Mezzogiorno in Italy; and the Italian Risorgimento understood as a passive revolution, or the reorganisation of state identity through the reproduction of capitalist property relations. These issues provide a historical backdrop to considering Gramsci's novel contribution to understanding the "national" dimension as a point of arrival in understanding processes of capitalist expansion within "the international" realm. This is pursued through his account of the states-system and its relation to the emerging hegemony of Anglo-Saxon capitalism that involved detailing the European response of fascism to the growing intervention of foreign capital and the conditions of uneven development in terms of the specific context of the Russian Revolution and the liberal internationalism of Woodrow Wilson. It is argued that a recognition of such, as specific instances of passive revolution, assist in providing an essential contribution to understanding "the international" in conditioning state formation that has been absent from current debates in historical sociology in IR.
| Language | eng |
| Names |
[author] Morton, Adam David |
| Subjects |
Relazioni Internazionali
Stato moderno Rivoluzione Passiva
Modern state
International relations Passive revolution |
