Chapter 2 PowerPoint Slides

Ravenhill: Global Political Economy 6e
Ravenhill: Global Political Economy 6e
Chapter 2: The Nineteenth-Century Roots of

Theoretical Traditions in Global Political Economy
Chapter by Mathew Watson

Lecture Outline
• The importance of the intellectual history of

GPE
• Rational Choice Theory and its relationship to
this history
• Realism
• Liberalism
• Marxism
• Feminist GPE
Introduction
• Reading the history of ideas the right way

round
• Questioning the mainstream, tripartite
distinction between realism, liberalism, and
Marxism
• Challenging the sidelining of feminist GPE
Introduction (2)
• Understanding how modern-day articulations of realism, liberalism,
and Marxism have become detached from their originating
arguments
• The problem of considering these as "ideologies"
• The importance of GPE's origins in the 1970s, and the fallacy of 1970
as GPE’s Year Zero
• new economic conditions diminished the perceived importance of
the history of political economy
• contesting normative views on stability
• the predominance of rational choice theory as the basis of realism,
liberalism, and Marxism (and the challenge of this predominance by
feminism)
Rational Choice Theory
• Based on assumptions about utility maximizing

behavior
– presumes human action can be analyzed solely in
terms of self interest
• This assumption constrains space for critique,
and can reinforce normative and ideological
claims about economics which were not part of
GPE's intellectual heritage, thus obscuring the
historical trajectory of ideas
Realist GPE (1)
• A problematic descendent of Realist IR

theories
• Focus is on how one state seeks to impose its
national interest over other state's interests
• Realistic GPE is not synonymous with 19th-
century political economic nationalism
Realist GPE (2)
• A richer understanding: Realist GPE vs

Friedrich List
– importance of trade-offs in the short and long-
term
– a more complex notion of "the" national economic
interest
– the nation vs. the state
Realist GPE (3)
List vs. Adam Smith

• List was anti-market (in the context of competing
British and German interests)
• List caricatured Adam Smith as a diehard free-
marketeer and laissez-faire proponent
• List’s ideas continue to resonate for those reacting
to neoliberalism and are still echoed in the
distorted view of Adam Smith as a hyper-rationalist
champion of market forces
Adam Smith and Liberalism
• Just as List caricatured Smith, Smith caricatured the

"Mercantilists"
• It is questionable whether Smith is rightly considered a
"liberal" at all
• Smith's particular view of governments' relation to
markets
• Smith's moral critique of self-interest
• Self-command and the "bourgeois virtue"
• How the reading of Smith has been made to fit current,
predominant rational choice theories
Marxism (1)
• There are many routes through the writings of

Marx, all to the same destination: the critique
of the social basis of capitalism
• Concerned with the nature of capitalism, not
with managing the expansion of capitalism
• Departed directly from Smith, but
incorporated the historical materialism of the
Left Hegelians
Marxism (2)
• For Marx, capitalism was a machine that required for

its functioning the subordination of true human needs
• Surplus Value Extraction: Workers must impart more
economic value to the things they produce than they
are paid for
• From this analytical position comes the normative
position: For Marx, capitalism required exploitation of
one class (the proletariat) by another (the
bourgeoisie)
Marxism Today
• Critique of multinational corporations and the

transnational capitalist class (vis-à-vis the state
and domestic labour forces)
• "Structuralist" Marxist GPE and the influence of
Lenin in "internationalizing" Marx's analysis
– World System Theory
– Dependency Theory
• Normative, as opposed to analytical, Marxism
prevails today
GPE Feminism (1)
• The earlier history of feminist GPE includes

the work of women who struggled to make
education in political economy opened all
• They also wrote popular accounts of economic
theory, making the topic more widely
accessible
• Their work, however, was politically quite
different than current feminist GPE
GPE Feminism (2)
• Two prominent writers, Jane Marcet (1769–

1858), and Harriet Martineau (1802–1876), for
example, though radical in the way they
challenged the male-dominated field of
economics, were both inherently conservative
in their politics.
Conclusion
• GPE realism, liberalism, Marxism, and in a different way, feminism,
have all greatly shifted away from the originators of these theories
• Comparing the modern-day version of the theory to its original
articulation helps reveal the (perhaps novel) assumptions
embedded in the modern-day versions
• It also encourages inquiry into where these novel assumptions
came from
• All of this should call into question how most introductory GPE
textbooks treat the intellectual lineage of the field
• GPE's theoretical traditions cannot be considered self-contained,
coherent ideologies

Chapter 2 PowerPoint Slides

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Chapter 2 PowerPoint Slides

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Chapter 2 PowerPoint Slides

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ravenhill: Global Political Economy 6e

Ravenhill: Global Political Economy 6e

Chapter 2: The Nineteenth-Century Roots of

Chapter by Mathew Watson

• The importance of the intellectual history of

• Reading the history of ideas the right way

• Based on assumptions about utility maximizing

• A problematic descendent of Realist IR

• A richer understanding: Realist GPE vs

List vs. Adam Smith

• Just as List caricatured Smith, Smith caricatured the

• There are many routes through the writings of

• For Marx, capitalism was a machine that required for

• Critique of multinational corporations and the

• The earlier history of feminist GPE includes

• Two prominent writers, Jane Marcet (1769–

You might also like