Revisiting the debate on open Marxist perspectives
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Author | Alex Sutton,Pınar E. Dönmez |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148116642724 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2016, Vol. 18(3) 688 –705
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148116642724
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Revisiting the debate on
open Marxist perspectives
Pınar E. Dönmez1 and Alex Sutton2
Abstract
This article seeks to review the recent incarnation of a long-standing engagement in international
political economy (IPE) and critical theory between open Marxist perspectives (OMPs) and their
critics. The article aims to identify the enduring relevance of this debate in order to think about the
possibility and future of critical social inquiry in our time constructively. It criticises elements on
both sides of the debate that no longer serve but rather hinder achieving this objective. We argue
that the recent criticisms make a number of important constructive points that could help enhance
the explanatory power of OMPs yet still portray the latter uncharitably. We propose to take the
emphasis on openness in OMPs seriously as a scholarly and political orientation without immersing
the debate with the charges of reductionism, instrumentalism, determinism and functionalism which
are frequently raised by various versions of Marxism against one another—often to little avail.
Keywords
capitalism, critical political economy, critique, international relations, Marxism, state
Introduction
In this article, our key objective is to revisit a long-standing scholarly debate to explore
and assess the possibility and future of critical social inquiry within politics and interna-
tional studies—an endeavour initiated originally by Bieler and Morton (2003: 467) in the
early 2000s. To this end, we aim to review and critically engage with a number of criti-
cisms (Bieler et al., 2010; Bruff, 2009b; Elden and Morton, 2015; Susen, 2012; Tsolakis,
2010) directed against a heterogeneous body of scholarship which has come to be identi-
fied as open Marxism.1 These criticisms have focused on open Marxist perspectives’
(OMPs) explanation of the dynamics of international political economy (IPE) and the
interaction between globally defined capital and the territorially defined state-form. They
take issue with the ways in which both the object and method of inquiry (Roberts, 2002)
are defined according to OMPs and pose thought-provoking questions with regard to the
possibility of critique and critical theory broadly understood. These critiques, which we
present under four main categories in due course following their proponents’ categorisa-
tion, represent the latest incarnation of an on-going critical engagement (Barker, 1978;
1Central European University, Hungary
2 University of Chichester, UK
Corresponding author:
Pinar E Donmez, Central European University, Budapest 1051, Hungary.
Email: donmezp@ceu.edu, a.sutton@chi.ac.uk
642724BPI0010.1177/1369148116642724The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsDonmez and Sutton
research-article2016
Article
Donmez and Sutton 689
Lacher, 2002) between the two theoretical strands which arguably take their common
starting point in the Marxist critique of social relations and social inquiry.
With particular reference to the more recent wave of criticisms, we argue that they
make a number of important constructive points that could help enhance the explanatory
power of OMPs but portray the latter uncharitably. We further argue that a similar repre-
sentation can also be found in the first wave of criticism. This representation takes the
form of a tendency to equate OMPs to orthodox Marxism. Indeed, this is the red thread
binding these critiques together, impacting on their constructive value which has had
quite a considerable effect on the tone and value of the debate between OMPs and their
critics, not unlike the debates of previous decades in critical social theory.2 It should be
added that responses from open Marxist (OM) scholars have similarly reciprocated this
tone in tackling the criticisms which has ultimately reproduced the previous debates and
led to an unproductive impasse.
Given the current level of the debate between OMPs and their critics, particularly neo-
Gramscian approaches, it seems odd to recall that collaborative work was undertaken by
authors from both perspectives (Bieler et al., 2006). Indeed, the debate has now ossified to
such an extent that not only does collaborative work now seem unlikely but dialogue itself
has broken down. More importantly, the manner in which the debate evolved has forestalled
the further development of critical theory in IPE and international relations (IR) as originally
intended by its proponents. A recent example of this debate can be observed in the exchange
between Greig Charnock (2010: 1283, 1295–1296), who identifies the work of Henri
Lefebvre as compatible with OMPs in challenge of the regulation approach and new state
spatialities literature, and Stuart Elden and Adam Morton (2015: 1f1), who accuse Charnock
of claiming exclusive ‘proprietorship’ over Lefebvre’s work.3 We do not mean to claim that
any and all criticism is unfair but that the nature of the criticism, through uncharitable read-
ings and the conflation of differing perspectives, diminishes the quality of the debate.
This is not to suggest that the debate is no longer meaningful, or that it has been
resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. On the contrary, in this article we intend to emphasise
and draw attention to the importance of this debate for the scholarship as a whole and to
trace the possibilities of how productive dialogue between two important strands of radi-
cal thought may resume on this basis.
To achieve this objective, we emphasise which criticisms in fact address the chal-
lenges of Marxist theorising, critical theory and empirical inquiry as a whole and which
are specifically aimed at OMPs. We intend to position the OM critique of mainstream and
other Marxist approaches while clarifying its purpose and boundaries. In doing so, we
hope that the nature of this critical engagement can move away from a pattern where each
side pulls the other towards the contours of their frameworks of reference and pushes
back when these efforts fail. Instead, the two vantage points can be acknowledged and
delineated in a manner which would enrich rather than undermine one another. Finally,
we conclude with the implications of this critical dialogue between these critical IR/IPE
theories on the possibility and the future of critical theory and social empirical inquiry. It
is deemed particularly important as related to the analyses of the recent and on-going
global crisis, which present theoretical and methodological challenges and should pro-
voke new forms of thinking within the study of critical political economy.
The article begins by outlining the current critiques of OMPs which is followed by
an account of open Marxism that responds to these criticisms in a constructive fashion
before outlining the significance of this debate more broadly. The goal of this article is
to emphasise the importance of openness and historical enquiry to critical social theory,
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