Debate‘Critical’ Political Economy, HistoricalMaterialism and Adam MortonRandall D. GermainCarleton UniversityIn response to Adam Morton’s survey of ‘critical’ IPE in the January 2006 issue of this journal, Iargue that we should resist the call to privilege the question of class struggle when considering thepolitical economy of world order. This question, although not unimportant, draws upon an overlynarrow and austere conception of historical materialism. Instead, I consider a more fulsome – butdecidedly non-Marxist – tradition of historical materialism in order to move beyond the mono-logical tendency that continues to mar much Marxist historiography, especially when the questionof class struggle is elevated as the principal lens through which our understanding of capitalism isorganised. I do this by considering the importance of historical idealism in the work of Robert W.Cox, a key interlocutor of much so-called ‘critical’ IPE. Although I agree with Morton that classstruggle should not be effaced, I make the counter-claim that understanding the political economyof world order demands an attention to the formation of collective human subjectivities if we areadequately to grasp its contemporary dynamics.‘Critical’ political economy and historical materialismAdam Morton has written a lively and provocative account of the current state of‘critical’ political economy within the UK. He worries that what passes for ‘critical’political economy should more properly be understood as ‘liberal pluralist idealism’,and that it systematically refuses to recognise and explore the class structureand dynamics that collectively constitute capitalist ‘unfreedom and exploitation’(Morton, 2006, p. 63). To correct this deficiency he directs us to consider thequestion ‘where is class struggle?’, for this question exposes most starkly thedynamics of capitalist social formations. Morton thus advances a variant of mono-logical Marxism, and in this short response I cast doubt on the attractiveness of thisdirective, even considered on its own terms. At one level, the question of classstruggle is self-referential: it assumes the form (although not the precise content) ofits answer without being able to account for why this question itself should beasked. But more importantly, it may not even be the most pointed question to asktoday, in part because it assumes that the social structure of global order is pre-dominantly organised around and through capitalism, understood primarily interms of class struggle. To do this, I draw on a richer tradition of historical materi-alism than Morton allows to indicate how we might better frame our inquiryaround questions concerning the formation of subjectivities rather than classes.Morton organises much of his discussion around the work of himself and Robert W.Cox. I focus here on Cox’s work, because it illustrates a cardinal weakness ofPOLITICS: 2007 VOL 27(2), 127–131© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies AssociationMorton’s position. Cox has of course written some of the most insightful andprovocative accounts of world order available within the tradition of politicaleconomy, but interestingly, when pushed to identify the label under which hiswork might be considered, he has been reluctant to settle on any one version.Rather, he accepts Susan Strange’s (1988, pp. 269–270) description of his work aseclectic, that of a ‘loner, a fugitive from the intellectual camps of victory, both Marxistand liberal’ (cf. Cox, 2002, p. 26). Now, if we want to consider Cox as an ‘historicalmaterialist’ – Morton’s preferred inclination – we must acknowledge the very deepambivalence he maintains towards the kind of monological Marxism advanced byMorton.For Cox, critical political economy (aka historical materialism) is centrally con-cerned with developing a ‘historical mode of thought’ to investigate the structuraland agential modalities characteristic of any particular period of history (Cox, 1996[1981], p. 91). Class struggle can certainly insert itself into such a mode of thought,but it is not a privileged analytical lens, nor – judging by Cox’s own work – anoverly privileged question. For example, his most recent work focuses on civilisa-tional change, and the intersubjective understandings which frame, shape, promoteor impede it. By piecing together the evolving nature of our collective humanconsciousness, his work exposes the necessary but not sufficient relationshipbetween material practices and competing collective mentalitiés. What marks outCox’s historical materialism in this sense is its infusion with a form of philosophicalidealism – or, more properly, historical idealism – that takes seriously the interrela-tionship of forms of subjectivity with the actual human practices that sustain andchallenge them. This particular fusion of idealism with materialism is the key to hiscareful distinction between synchronic and diachronic understandings of historicalstructures: the difference between the material practices which uphold or challengea historical structure can be found in the subjectivities (and intersubjectivities)which inform the actual practices of historical agents at specific points in time; it isthese subjectivities that generate contradictions in established institutions and pat-terns of behaviour. In other words, the mode of subjectivity is key to understandingmaterial structures.Here the value of historical materialism as an approach to understanding politicaleconomy is precisely that it allows us to prise open the intersubjective conscious-ness of historical agents to reconstruct their mentalitiés. But to arrive at this position,Cox builds on the work of thinkers without an intellectual debt to Marx andMarxism. For example, he begins with Vico’s brilliant insight that the human worldcan only be understood through the modifications of our own human mind (Vico,1970 [1744], p. 62), and then follows R.G. Collingwood’s (1946, p. 242) injunctionto construct webs of meaning that enable us to enter into the minds of historicalparticipants and rebuild the world as they see it. It is fidelity to such a ‘historicalmode of thought’ that signals Cox’s most mature work, whether exploring concreteinstitutions or civilisational encounters (Cox, 1996 [1977] and 2002). His work isthus historical because it insists on conceiving consciousness as integral to
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