What neo-Gramscians get right (and wrong) about the world
Jonathan Pass reflects upon the collapsing liberal international order and the extent to which neo-Gramscian ideas help us make sense of it.
Mainstream International Relations scholars blame contemporary global turmoil on a collapsing liberal international order (LIO). Neo-Gramscians attribute the turmoil to a ‘global organic crisis’. In this blogpost, I build upon my International Affairs article to critically analyse neo-Gramscian thought. I argue that the collapsing LIO and the ‘global organic crisis’ are actually expressions of a deeper structural crisis afflicting US world hegemony and the neoliberal hegemonic project that it helps underwrite globally.
Neo-Gramscian ideas about the world order
Hegemony, for Antonio Gramsci, is a class power relation, encompassing both consensual and coercive elements. Social change occurs when a dominant class successfully mobilizes subordinate groups around a particular political programme and associated capital accumulation regime, manifested in its state–society complex (a broader concept of ‘the state’ which incorporates civil society). Drawing on Gramsci, Giovanni Arrighi observed that, periodically, a dominant state–society complex — home to the most advanced capitalist production — is able to exercise world hegemony over its counterparts in the inter-state system. To do so, it must credibly claim to be serving the general interest of the ruling class, i.e. lead global capitalism through a new and expansive ‘systemic cycle of accumulation’.
By driving growth, however, the world hegemon unwittingly builds up its competitors’ industries, continuing the final (albeit highly profitable) years of its financial regnum in an increasingly volatile international environment. Coercion and militarism, Gramsci stressed, are intrinsic to any hegemonic relation. As the neo-liberal hegemonic project starts to fall apart, undermined by its own contradictions, a world hegemon like the US finds itself relying increasingly on political and military means to stem uncurable structural change. The contemporary world order, as neo-Gramscians have argued, is engulfed in a ‘global organic crisis’, manifested in widespread social unrest, political disaffection, distrust of institutions, financial speculation, migration crises, heightened geopolitical tensions and war.
Strengths of neo-Gramscian thought
For decades, neo-Gramscians have been carrying out invaluable research on processes of socialization: how hegemonic projects (notably neo-liberal) have been constructed, diffused and internalized around the world. Recent neo-Gramscian enquiry has focused on the ‘global organic crisis’ which they date back to the 2008 financial crisis, (the beginning of the end for the neo-liberal hegemonic project). They offer sophisticated analytical tools to help understand the various dimensions of this period. Importantly, they draw attention to the chronic disconnect between the ‘represented’ and the ‘representatives’ across western democracies. There is also a significant recognition among many neo-Gramscians that right popularism/reactionary nationalism, with its state-centric, zero-sum view of global politics, represents the only hegemonic project seriously contesting neoliberalism’s (albeit ailing) ideological dominance.
Where neo-Gramscian thought falls short
Despite their many strengths, neo-Gramscians are unable to explain what caused the ‘global organic crisis’ or, indeed, structural change itself. This stems from ontological shallowness: a tendency to reduce reality to intersubjectivity and conscious class agency.
Neo-Gramscians also pay insufficient attention to capital accumulation and the compatible mode of regulation at the heart of every hegemonic project; a regime which itself emerges out of a changing global capitalist economy beset by uneven development. As such, neo-Gramscians are at a loss to explain why a particular hegemonic project is successful (and not another), and why it subsequently enters into crisis.
Another key oversight within neo-Gramscian thought is their understanding of hegemony in largely consensual terms: a dominant class exercising intellectual and moral leadership over subordinate groups. First, the transnational hegemony they discuss is actually US ‘world hegemony’. Second, US hegemony over its allies has always involved a significant dose of coercion backed by militarism. Third, dividing the inter-state system between liberal Lockean states and Hobbesian contender states is far too simplistic.
Wider implications of the global crisis
The crisis of the LIO is actually a crisis of US hegemony and the neo-liberal hegemonic project that it helps underwrite globally. Like the Reagan administration in the early 1980s, the Biden administration has exploited ‘external threats’ (replacing the USSR with Russia and China) to reassert its political and military hegemony over the West. With the global South on the rise and neoliberalism being torn apart by its own class contradictions, Europe’s decision to lash itself onto the mast of American hegemony appears short-sighted. This is so especially since Biden or his successor are unlikely to follow Reagan’s template and lead the world economy through a new US-centred systemic cycle of accumulation.
In the short term, the neo-liberal hegemonic project may survive in the West, but it is in terminal crisis mode, manifested in increasingly authoritarian forms of governance. Worryingly for LIO advocates, the only hegemonic project seriously challenging neo-liberalism’s primacy is right popularism, for example Donald Trump, Victor Orbán, Javier Milei and Geert Wilders. American and European leaders frequently remind the world of the West’s exemplary societal models such as Biden’s ‘beacon to the world’ and Borrell’s ‘garden’ declarations. Yet this sits uneasily with the gaping inequality, widespread social unrest, political disaffection and distrust of traditional institutions and media outlets within the political communities they represent. At the bare minimum, before attempting to export its values abroad, any new hegemonic project must reconnect the ‘represented’ with the ‘representatives’ and guarantee a more stable and socially-equitable society at home.
Read more about this topic in the full article ‘(Re)introducing world hegemony into the ‘global organic crisis’. It was published in the January 2024 issue of International Affairs.
Jonathan Pass is a Lecturer in International Relations at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain.
