Modes of Foreign Relations Between and Within Alienated Societies
* Book: Nomads, Empires, States: Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy. Kees van der Pijl, London: Pluto Press, 2007, p. 241+xiv
Review
- by Orsan Senalp
"Many streams within Western Marxism treat the totality of modern societies as if they are mere products of capitalism, and often consider relations among those societies within the context of the already-established capitalist world system. Neither so-called classical Marxists nor world system theorists have, so far, developed a perspective that overcomes this problem. Classical Marxist accounts especially tend to see world societies as a totality of ‘modes of production relations’, which are historically differentiated from each other because of the law(or tendency) of ‘uneven and combined development’ (Bond, 1999). Recently, on the other hand, significant efforts have been made to re-formulate Trotsky’s thesis on the uneven and combined nature of capitalist development in order to offer a better understanding of contemporary inter-national relations and inter-societal relations in general. While these modes of production relations-based efforts are currently in a developmental stage (see a recent discussions on how to overcome the limitations of modes of production relations-focused analysis; Callinicos and Rosenberg, 2008), the argument set forth by Kees van der Pijl in his latest book presents a challenging alternative. It is the first volume of a larger project that introduces modes of foreign relations to the field of political economy. Through this project, Van der Pijl aims to re-formulate the field of ‘foreign relations’ by discarding the disciplinary boundaries imposed by IR/realist mainstream accounts. In re-studying his subject, he rejects the idea of a flow of history pre-determined by any meta-structure, which mainstream realist IR theorists usually think of as a world of dead structures (states) and relations between those dead structures (state-system). To this end, Van der Pijl starts to consider what he calls an ‘absolute humanist’ understanding of history and social change. Drawing on Gramsci, he stresses the central role of collective human/class action for any social change to be realized – be it at national, international, or global levels – of course, in a dialectical relation with the structural forces currently at work. At the same time, the book is a challenge to those theorists who adopt the key abstraction of ‘modes of production relations’, developed by Marx in Capital , to analyse almost every aspects of social/societal life. Claiming the possibility of substantially
applying Marx’s method of abstraction to other dimensions of social relations, and actually applying it to one one of those aspects (relations between different communities/societies), Van der Pijl breaks not only with the realist understanding of mainstream international relations, but also with those classical Marxist accounts. This break enables the author to re-think and re-analyse, in a radically different way, ‘alienated’ social relations between societies, including modern inter-national relations. Van der Pijl begins with community [inspired by Marx’s attempt to begin with population in Grundrisse (p.14)] instead of commodity [unlike Marx did in
Capital] in substantially applying Marx’s practical method to foreign relations. He then builds on Marx’s and Engels’ own writings on inter-societal or foreign relations. According to Van der Pijl, Marx’s method is central to understanding inner community relations: “based on over-determination of productive forces we must analyse social relations within society” (p. vii). He also claims, however, that to look only at social relations in one society in order to analyse, i.e. class formation or rising state forms, misses other essential determinants at work – other societies. Foreign relations between alienated societies, according to Van der Pijl, thus need to be re-thought independently and re-historicized accordingly. This volume is an impressive first step for such challenging work. Insights that have been collected and developed throughout at least three decades (Van der Pijl 1984, 1998 and 2006) bear fruit in this volume as ‘modes of foreign relations’. Modes of foreign relations, according to Van der Pijl, are historical structures that come about and are transformed in parallel to changes in “world historical structures”. They are, like modes of production relations, over-determined by productive forces. Starting from community, as a unit of socialization, and abstracting it to a higher level, Van der Pijl is able to identify three principle patterns for each foreign relations mode: occupation of space by societies, protection of occupied space, and exchange between separate societies. These patterns change in time, parallel to the changing world historical structures, giving rise to qualitatively different modes. The modes established in the book are: tribal mode, empire-nomad mode, sovereign equality mode and the global governance mode of foreign relations. Van der Pijl clarifies that earlier patterns may re-emerge within future modes, even though they are historically specific. For instance, it is possible to observe tribal patterns of occupation, protection, and exchange within the empires/nomad mode, especially between communities located in the imperial peripheries or in the ghettos of modern metropolitan cities. The same is true for empire/nomad patterns – they manifest again in the present foreign relations mode of global governance (p.24). Outlining his ontology, methodology, and analytical framework in the first chapter, the author dedicates the rest of the book to an historical narrative that sets the content of every mode and identifies each pattern that belongs to those modes. He also discusses, in detail, the re-emerging of previous patterns within future modes. By uncovering those patterns of social relations between societies and formulating ‘modes of foreign relations’ in the way Marx formulated the ‘modes of production relations’, Van der Pijl implicitly suggests that these two analytical tools should be incorporated dialectically into one analysis when theorising state and class formation processes. This is an important proposition with important implications, particularly for Marxist theories. Marxists have traditionally seen relations between different capitalist societies through the lenses of the ‘uneven (and combined) development’ law/tendency thesis. As is well known, this thesis was originally developed by Marx and Engels, but was politically valorised by Trotsky in his formulation of permanent revolution (Bond, 1999). It has been rearticulated since the 1970s and remained influential through the work of Marxist thinkers like Harvey, Freeman, Smith, Lówy and so on. The original version of the thesis has a strong explanatory power regarding the systemic futures of those conditions in which modern societies find themselves at present. The recent work of Harvey (2006), Rosenberg (2006 and 2007) and Morton (2007), however, make significant attempts to re-formulate this Trotskyst analytical tool in order to understand and explain international and inter-societal relations through variants of a ‘mode of production’ focused analysis. It seems Van der Pijl does find this a reliable option, preferring to pose a sharp alternative. "
Discussion
Orsan Senalp:
"The second volume on Foreign Relations in Myth and Religion is amazingly detailed on how 'different' societies influence each other as well as general system, we call inter-state system or global capitalism today. There is historical empirical demonstration of how and what role inter-societal interactions played in historical change- for local and global levels. Why I find Kees' work so important is because it provides simple concrete concepts for understanding and solving the complex equation of transnational solidarity between labour, social movements and other political forms. Being: occupation of space by communities, protection of that space, and exchange. To think and see the changes of these In tandem with the changes in the relations of production it becomes easier to see current configuration and tendency in the class structures and the agencies."