This article addresses what it identifies as the over-extension of the concept of passive revolution in recent writing on international political economy. It traces the evolution of the concept in the Prison Notebooks, where it is rooted in Antonio Gramsci’s development of the Marxist theory of bourgeois revolutions to account for episodes of what he called ‘revolution/restoration’ such as the Italian Risorgimento. But, in his attempt to offer a comprehensive alternative to the great liberal philosopher Benedetto Croce, Gramsci extends the concept to cases such as Mussolini’s fascism. The core meaning common to these uses is that of socio-political processes in which revolution-inducing strains are at once displaced and at least partially fulfilled. In more recent Marxist work, even this meaning is in danger of being lost. The article concludes by seeking to relocate passive revolution within Gramsci’s non-determinist, but still firmly materialist, understanding of Marx’s theory of history.

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Contemporary Marxist students of international relations, like their mainstream counterparts, disagree over whether geopolitics has a future. Many believe that it has none, either because globalized capitalism has overcome the nation-state or because the 'informal empire' of the United States has overridden inter-state conflict. This article supports those who argue that significant economic and political conflicts persist among the main capitalist states. It does so by exploring the question of whether, in Marxist theory, the capitalist economic system and the international system of states are necessarily or contingently related. Marx's method in Capital offers, it is argued, a way of non-reductively incorporating the state system within the capitalist mode of production. This argument provides the basis for a partial reconciliation of Marxism and realism. More importantly, it offers a theoretical framework in which to explore the scope for inter-state conflict in the 21 st century.

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