Author Description

Marx was wrong in expecting that the class struggle itself would absorb nationalism and eclipse the international system as the main element of world politics. Marxists ever since have been concerned with showing how networks of social relations, including international relations, are produced by underlying economic structures, and it is these, and never international relations alone, which are the primary subjects of their analysis. Thus in the study of international relations in the West, Marxism is not regarded as one of its philosophical traditions, and a wealth of Marxist thought is ignored. This book reconstructs the theories of the generation of the Second International concerning imperialism and the nation. The authors also examine theories advanced by Marxist diplomats and intellectuals in more recent years. Soviet, Chinese, Yugoslav, dissident East European, Cuban, and Vietnamese Marxists have adapted their doctrines to the needs of their presence and active participation in the international system. Western and Third World Marxists, from the Frankfurt School onwards, have tended to play down international relations regardless of the fact that, as Bernstein predicted, international relations has become 'the supreme and central issue of the age'.