Revisiting the debate on open Marxist perspectives

Abstract

This article seeks to review the recent incarnation of a long-standing engagement in international political economy (IPE)

International Political Economy of Labour and Gramsci’s methodology of the subaltern

“… 1. Open Marxists have also been critical of neo-Gramscian literature for tending to reify social structures of domination and underplaying instability. It has generated long debates that will not be dealt here (for a review, Bieler et al, 2006; Dönmez and Sutton, 2016). It is important to note however that, and in line with neo-Gramscian’s critique, Open-Marxists have tended to totalize the capital-labour relation and to provide a functionalist approach to the capitalist state, thus, limiting our capability to understand the complex and variegated forms in which class relationships unfold (Bruff, 2009).…”

International Political Economy of Labour and Gramsci’s methodology of the subaltern

“… 1. Open-Marxists have also been critical of neo-Gramscian literature for tending to reify social structures of domination and underplaying instability. It has generated long debates that will not be dealt here (for a review Bieler et al, 2006; Dönmez and Sutton, 2016). It is important to note however that, in line with neo-Gramscian’s critique, Open-Marxists have tended to totalise the capital-labour relation and to provide a functionalist approach to the capitalist state, thus, limiting our capability to understand the complex and variegated forms in which class relationships unfold (Bruff, 2009).…”

(Re)politicising ‘the governmental’: Resisting the Industrial Relations Act 1971

“…Debates between advocates of Open Marxism and competing perspectives have contributed a great deal to sharpening our analytical tools (Bieler and Morton, 2003; Bieler et al, 2010; Bruff, 2009; Dönmez and Sutton, 2016; Roberts, 2002; Tsolakis, 2010). Of particular importance is the work of Bieler et al (2010: 30), who argue that Open Marxist contributions presenting depoliticisation as a governing strategy (Burnham, 2001b; Kettell, 2004; Rogers, 2009; Sutton, 2016) betray a latent state-centrism.…”

“…Riddled with contradiction and ever-present contestation, too often we concern ourselves with its ‘institutional expression’, that is, government, civil service, judiciary and so on, when the social relations that constitute the state form are analytically prior (Burnham, 1994: 5–6). Herein lies the strength of Open Marxist perspectives, for ‘the abstract-concrete dialectic continues to assert the strongest resistance against diverse modes of fetishism’ (Dönmez and Sutton, 2016: 701). A critical engagement with capitalist forms grounds the analysis in a broad social theory that necessarily encapsulates the role of domination and resistance in the reproduction and on-going transformation of capitalism.…”