The Actuality of Imperialism

Abstract

Hardt and Negri's Empire is to welcomed for, among other things, introducing a distinctive Marxist voice into the debate about globalisation, but it is seriously weakened by its claim that interstate conflict is being supplanted by the impersonal, decentred network of Empire. Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey in `Retrieving the Imperial' rightly criticise the apologetic tendencies in Hardt and Negri's analysis, though they argue that International Relations as a discipline fails sufficiently to attend the imperial, conceived as a transnational dimension of domination and competition. The point is well-taken, but they are mistaken in claiming that an American-dominated `international state' is in process of constitution. The world of imperialism, as it was portrayed by Lenin and Bukharin during the First World War—an anarchic struggle of unequal rivals—still exists, with the United States as first among unequals.