Internal relations in global capitalism
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| Author | Bob Jessop |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117821991614 |
| Subject Matter | A Necessarily Historical Materialist Moment? Forum on Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117821991614
International Relations
2021, Vol. 35(1) 153 –157
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117821991614
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Internal relations in global
capitalism
Bob Jessop
University of Lancaster
Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis seeks to overcome ontological and episte-
mological challenges to studying various aspects of the emerging global order in their
interconnection.1 Its authors’ theoretical approach develops the philosophy of internal
relations to understand the interaction of economic, political, military and social institu-
tions, practices, and conflicts from the viewpoint of a comprehensive analysis of the
uneven and combined development of capital relation on the world stage and its connec-
tion to forms of class struggle, broadly interpreted. This stresses the continued impor-
tance of the state form as nodal within global capitalism.2 My critique is based on an
emerging post-disciplinary approach, cultural political economy, to which the Bieler–
Morton approach has strong affinities.
Summarising the argument
The authors reveal the inner connections between global capitalism, global war and
global crises by showing how capital as a social relation involves internal ties among the
relations of production, state-civil society institutions and conditions of class struggle.
They focus on the internal ties that bind exploitation through value, labour, private prop-
erty, class, capital, interest, commodities, the state, nature, religion or ideology.3 Their
approach transcends competing studies on ‘the international’ that resort to the dualisms
of material content and ideational form, agency and structure. They also treat them as
separate elements and they insist on rejecting economism.
These internal relations are explored in three sets of ‘empirical interventions’. First,
global capitalism is constituted through uneven and combined development and the geo-
politics of global war. The authors locate China’s insertion within global capitalism in
this context. Second, global capitalism and a bomb-and-build approach to global war are
Corresponding author:
Bob Jessop, Department of Sociology, Bowland North, University of Lancaster, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YT, UK.
Email: b.jessop@lancaster.ac.uk
991614IRE0010.1177/0047117821991614International RelationsJessop
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