Capitalism, modernity and the nation state: a critique of Hannes Lacher.

Summary

---

Critical essay

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Capitalism, modernity and the nation state: a critique of Hannes Lacher.

Introduction

Hannes Lacher's Beyond Globalization: Capitalism, Territoriality and the International Relations of Modernity (2006) is a significant work, and one that raises a number of important issues for students of Marxism who have an interest in questions of international relations. Whilst reading it, my attitude throughout was ambivalent. On the one hand, I found it immensely stimulating. It encourages the reader to think about certain issues which, until taking up the book, she or he might not have thought about at all. On the other hand, I found myself in fundamental disagreement with a number of the book's central theses. It is for that reason that I have decided to write a critique of it. Doing so was an opportunity, for which I am grateful to Hannes Lacher, to clarify my own thoughts about the issues he raises by engaging with what he says about them. Since my response is critical, I should say at the outset that this critique is in no way intended to be a personal one. I have never met Hannes Lacher. Nor is it overtly political. I am not a polemicist for any political party. It is intended primarily as an intellectual critique; although I am of course aware that no criticism is entirely without political implications.

Beyond Glabalization examines the relationship that exists between historical materialism and international relations, a proper understanding of each of which, in Lacher's view, is a necessary precondition for a proper understanding of the other. Indeed, Lacher considers his book to be a contribution to the development of a 'historical materialist theory of international relations', (pp. 109; x, 16, 22, 25) or to a 'historical materialist theory of IR/IPE' (p. 14). More specifically, his book has three main themes. The first of these has to do with the methodological approach one ought to employ when writing about history generally, and about the history of international relations in particular. The second, encapsulated in the book's title, has to do with the relationship that exists between capitalism and the nation state, or between capitalism and what Lacher refers to as 'territoriality'. The third, also given in the book's title, has to do with the relationship between capitalism and 'modernity'. I shall discuss these three themes in turn in Sections 1-3. The final section of this paper, which discusses whether capitalism could have existed in the ancient world, is an elaboration of the argument of Section 3.

1. Methodology: Marxism and historical materialism

So far as its methodology is concerned, Beyond Globalization has a great deal to say about our understanding of historical materialism, of Marxism, and of the relationship between the two. Until very recently, there was a consensus that, if they are not synonymous in meaning, the terms 'historical materialism' and 'Marxism' are nevertheless very closely related to one another. Given the conventional use of these expressions, it would have been most unusual, throughout the greater part of the 20th century, to find someone who claimed to be a Marxist but denied that s/he was a historical materialist. It would also have been unusual to find someone who claimed to be a historical materialist but who nevertheless rejected Marxism. However, times are changing. Randall D. Germain, for example, has argued recently that 'if historical materialism (or "critical" political economy) is to take seriously the question of subjectivity, then it must range wider and deeper than Marxist historiography allows' (Germain, 2007: 129). Germain insists that we should not 'conflate historical materialism with its Marxist variant', because if we do, we run the risk of 'obscuring or ignoring the many contributions of pre-, post- and non-Marxist historical materialists' (Germain, 2...

See the full content of this document

---