Hegemony and the Unfashionable Problematic of `Primitive Accumulation'

Abstract

This article proposes that the neo-Gramscian tradition in IR forbids a direct enquiry into the international dimension of processes of social transformation. Rather, neo-Gramscians deploy the concept of hegemony to the level of world order by implicitly universalising the specific structural qualities of capitalist social relations. This article asserts that the transformation towards capitalist sociality, a process that has been termed “primitive accumulation”, has possessed an international dimension. Specifically, when the imperatives foisted by the capital relation were imported into differentially developed socio-political orders to that of the English `heartland', such different correlations of social forces gave rise to different forms of social transformation. Hegemony was the concept appropriated by Marxists outside of the `heartland' through which to problematise the constitutive nature of this international dimension. The development of this problematic of primitive accumulation is investigated through the articulations of hegemony offered by Gramsci, Trotsky, and the neo-Gramscians. This article concludes that the neo-Gramscians cannot account for the historical record of, and complexities involved in, the importation of capitalist sociality across the international milieu.