From the Neoclassical Diversion to Geopolitical Economy: A Review of Radhika Desai’s Introduction to Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy.

The introduction part written by Radhika Desai aims at the unveiling and explaining of the new approach in the social sciences that should not be neglected and has the full right to take its place next to the disciplines of International Relations and International Political Economy. The Realist approach of the discipline of International Relations takes no account of economy, including capitalist one, and seems to be atavistic- states absolves capitalism from any form in international conflict. The IPE, which came into being as reaction to the limitations of Realism in IR was to explain, as Susan Strange puts it, the international economics. As Desai claims, geopolitical approach “returns to the conception of capitalism embodied in the culmination of classical political economy, Marxism” and its historical, non-contradictory and economically cosmopolitan nature.

The analysis starts with the statement that capitalism has caused more wars and violent actions than any other form of social production. Wars for independence, wars between colonial powers and colonization wars, state-formation wars, world wars and cold wars; wars and struggle for democratization, rights, humanitarianism and against terrorism,- all of those have the imprint of capitalism in them. However, it is generally refused to accept any linkage between war and capitalism, thus, giving rise to a problem which Desai calls “the absence of any understanding of the causes, nature and dynamics of capitalist international relations”. The only way to address this problem is to return to the historical approach of classical political economy, particularly, Marxism, literally marginalized by the theoretical currents of social science in the post-war period. As an outcome, the capitalism as a form of social production and engine of the history was rejected in its historicity. Here is where the geopolitical economy enters in to provide a better understanding of capitalist international relations between capitalist states within themselves and capitalist states and other nations, either pre-capitalist or communist ones.

Many theories and approaches in the discipline of International Relations criticize Marxism for failure to theorize the state and, thus, the international relations as a whole. Although, Desai claims that Marxism has all necessary conceptual tools to explain the nation-state in its capitalist form, combining internal and external developments of its evolution within the international system.

The idea of uneven and combined development took a major place in Desai’s introduction to geopolitical economy. The idea, despite having its roots even before Marx and Engels’ understanding and explanations of struggle between nations and classes, reached its eclipse in works of Leon Trotsky and his concept of permanent revolution. Uneven and combined development refers to two distinct processes, which come together in a state. The first process is usually the one of long transition period towards the capitalism in the states, where the pre-capitalistic powers and institutions prevail. Those pre-capitalist forces and factor determine the complexity of class struggle, which could lay down the foundation for what Trotsky called permanent revolution of the working class. This course of the UCD defines character and nature of state as well as its ability to cultivate the capitalism and manage its contradictions, thus, determining the features of its international relations.

On the another hand, the second process of UCD is the uneven development of capitalism and its impact on the rest of the world, which, in fact, brings the societies to choose between subordination to more advanced capitalist states through formal or informal colonization and economic complementarity of productive structures or undertake the combined development and establish similarity of productive structure with more advanced capitalist states.

As Radhika Desai states, social sciences, by eclipsing the classical political economy, replaced a historical approach with an ahistorical one. Although, there is no future without history, and no end without beginning, similarly, without understanding of how capitalism came into being and developed in its specific forms, there cannot be a conception of its end. None of structures and processes cannot be understood separately from their historically specific forms. Stagism (idea that transition to capitalism have the same stages and had to be repeated in all countries in the same order) is completely rejected and value of production is seen differentia specifica of historically distinct form of social production-capitalism, which drives the history of capitalism forward and makes capitalism historical. Capitalism is not seen as stable due to the double contradictive nature: intra-class and inter-class struggles, determined by competition and class struggle respectively. Moreover, capitalism is more than a simple system of exploitation, it is a productive structure creating problems, which economy, agents, states and classes should address and by doing so, they change dynamic and context of capitalism. Besides that, the value of production makes the states principal to capitalism’s historical plot: capitalist states are seen as those which are controlled by capitalist classes, which provides the historicity to the state and capitalism- “there has been sufficient development to give rise not only to a substantial capitalist class but one capable of controlling the state”.

The aforementioned arguments laid down the foundation for development of ideas geopolitical economy. Van der Pijl states that geopolitical economy “must understand capitalism as a historically specific form of social production with its own form of state and its own mode of foreign relations. Unlike other approaches to the studies of international relations, geopolitical economy will not see state as pre-given, but will examine processes of development of capitalist states and international system, as a result of class and national struggles, paralleled to the analysis of processes of development of capitalism and UCD. Moreover, geopolitical economy would tend to understand and analyze “capitalist imperatives generated by the requirements of value production for the international system” in establishment of institutions of capitalism and management of its contradictions. Finally, geopolitical economy views capitalist international relations based on the capitalism contradiction, thus, characterizes those as lacking order and contradictory themselves. Geopolitical economy and its understanding of UCD sees states as material products of capitalism development. The struggle of classes in capitalist society domestically correspond the division of world economy into “struggling and competing, imperial, contender and competing states”. Capitalism being historical form of social production and its contradictions determine the domestic and international in geopolitical economy. The materiality of nations (centrality of states and their imbrication in the economy) makes geopolitical economy to move away from IR Realism, where state but not economy matters and neoclassical approach of IPE, where state has no role in. Thus, geopolitical economy provides us a way to understand capitalist international relations- the result of “intertwined dynamics of national class struggles and international struggles” matching the phases in the development of national capitalisms.