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Gramscis Theorie der passiven Revolution als Ausdruck der politischen Herrschaft des Kapitals ermöglicht ein Verständnis des Staatensystems im internalen Verhältnis zur kapitalistischen Moderne. Diese These ist Gegenstand der Überlegungen des Verfassers. Im ersten Abschnitt wird die Theorie der passiven Revolution als Ausdruck der politischen Herrschaft des Kapitals vorgestellt, womit das Augenmerk auf das Verhältnis zwischen Staatensystem und kapitalistischer Moderne gelegt und dadurch die Anerkennung des welthistorischen Kontextes der ungleichen Entwicklung mit dem prägenden Einfluss von Staaten verbunden wird. Im zweiten Hauptteil wird gezeigt, wie ein methodologisches Verständnis der passiven Revolution dabei helfen kann, gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen in postkolonialen Staaten nachzuzeichnen, wo die Sackgassen der Entwicklung üblicherweise jenen staatlichen Mechanismen zugeschrieben werden, die in der Entstehung des Kapitalismus die sogenannte ursprüngliche Akkumulation unterstützt hatten. Im Fazit wird die Theoretisierung der ungleichen Entwicklung im Allgemeinen und die Zweckmäßigkeit der Theorien Gramscis auf diesem Gebiet im Speziellen reflektiert. (ICE2)

A focus on transformations in social property relations and engagement with historical sociological debates on modern state formation can contribute to an understanding of the social origins of the transition to capitalism in Mexico. The basis for capitalist production there was created by primitive accumulation under the conditions of uneven and combined development. This situation can be understood as a "passive revolution" based on state intervention and mass mobilization from below that shaped capital accumulation and political modernization, resulting in a form of capitalism consistent with authoritarian and hegemonic influence.

'Some aspects of the Southern question' (1926) established a strain of thought in Antonio Gramsci's questioning of conditions of uneven and combined development in Italy, which encompassed complex relations of class stratification, racial domination, colonial rule, the social function of intellectuals, and how best to mobilise against the bourgeois state. This strain of thought was then extended, in his carceral research, through his sustained and wide-ranging historical sociological focus on passive revolution as a condition of modern state formation. This article sets up the importance of passive revolution as a backdrop to approaching passive revolutions of diverse varieties, which is the subject of this wider special issue, stressing 'approaching' (as transitive verb) in terms of setting about the task of assessing the theoretical import of passive revolution; and 'approaching' (as intransitive verb) in terms of the advance of passive revolutions that are contemporary to us, and those that are in the process of becoming. The continuum of passive revolution is thereby asserted in a historically specific sense, capturing transitions to and transformations of the social relations of capitalist production, rather than as some transhistorical affirmation of intersocietal existence.

This article asserts that Antonio Gramsci's account of 'the international' linked to the rise of the modern capitalist states-system remains neglected within debates on the historical sociology of International Relations (IR). It does so by following two main axes of inquiry that assist the aim of unravelling Gramsci's relevance to understanding processes of state formation within the causal conditioning of `the international'. The first axis focuses on Gramsci's historical research on Renaissance Italy and the role of mercantile capital in shaping late medieval and early modern states; the `southern question' concerning the terms of uneven development of the Mezzogiorno in Italy; and the Italian Risorgimento understood as a passive revolution, or the reorganisation of state identity through the reproduction of capitalist property relations. These issues provide a historical backdrop to considering Gramsci's novel contribution to understanding the `national' dimension as a point of in understanding processes of capitalist expansion within `the international' realm. This is pursued in the second axis through his account of the states-system and its relation to the emerging hegemony of Anglo-Saxon capitalism that detailed the European response of fascism to the growing intervention of foreign capital and the conditions of uneven development in terms of the specific contexts of the Russian Revolution and Woodrow Wilson's liberal internationalism. It is argued that a recognition of such, as specific instances of passive revolution, assists in providing an essential contribution to understanding `the international' in conditioning state formation that has been absent from current debates in historical sociology in IR.

This rejoinder to Randall Germain's promotion of a 'non-Marxist' historical materialism focuses on a number of weaknesses revealed by his 'resistance' to the recovery of the concept of class in international political economy. Most notable is the binary line he draws throughout his argument between class identity, on the one hand, and the formation of collective subjectivities on the other, which results in the very effacing of class in IPE that was so central to my original concerns. Flowing from this, my rejoinder reveals a series of unquestioned answers he provides from his philosophically idealist posture as well as a series of unanswered questions that are left hanging for future debate.

This contribution reflects on the current state of 'critical' international political economy (IPE) by contesting the prevailing dominance of liberal pluralist analysis and its overriding commitment to defining the social as an arena of multiple, competing and individuated identities. While ubiquitously invoked, what exactly does the 'critical' prefix represent? My argument is that much 'critical' analysis in IPE is a liberal pluralist flag of convenience, which is anti-historical materialism. By contrast, an historical materialist critical theory of capitalist unfreedom and exploitation is presented through a focus on social class identity, forms of capitalist state and state power, the social function of ideology and the prehistory of the modern international states-system.