This article draws on Antonio Gramsci’s key concepts of passive revolution and hegemony to explore how specific scalar and spatial configurations have been historically produced in Mexico, within the conditions of worldwide capitalist development. It argues that passive revolution—understood as the state-led reorganisation of social relations that seeks to maintain or restore class domination—can be seen as a recurring theme of Mexican history in the 20th century. In order to make this case, the author examines the Mexican Revolution and elaborates the case for labelling it as a ‘passive revolution’. Following this, the contradictory character of Mexico’s development trajectory is explored, and the resulting restructuring of the economy along neoliberal lines is interpreted as a second phase of passive revolution. Through an analysis of changing state formation and the spaces and scales associated with it, the article thereby highlights the key antinomies of capitalist development that have augured the recurrence of passive revolutions.
In this article, I argue that Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution makes a foundational contribution to International Relations (IR), yet has been relatively under appreciated by the broader discipline. Within the Historical Sociology of International Relations, uneven and combined development has recently been postulated as a key trans-historical law that provides a social theory of the ‘international’. Drawing from, but moving beyond these debates, I will argue that passive revolution is a key conditioning factor of capitalist modernity. I will demonstrate how the concept of passive revolution is the element that explains the connection between the universal process of uneven development and the manner in which specific combinations occur within the capitalist era as geopolitical pressures, in tandem with domestic social forces become internalised into geographically specific state forms. It therefore offers a corrective to the frequently aspatial view that is found in much of the literature in IR regarding uneven and combined development. Additionally, passive revolution provides a more politicised understanding of the present as well as an important theoretical lesson in relation to what needs to be done to affect alternative trajectories of development.
This article addresses whether the concepts of Antonio Gramsci still "travel" to Latin America. During the 20 th century, Gramsci was one of the most important social theorists invoked to understand forms of social order in Latin America, as well as providing resources to reflect upon subaltern culture, resistance and the construction of alternatives. However, over the past two decades there have been several theoretical and practical challenges to the hegemony of Gramsci. These challenges are multifarious, but can be reduced to several important contentions that are explored in this article. These include the enduring role of violence, the alleged decline of ideology and finally the challenge of state-centrism in the face of geographical difference. In the current regional conjuncture, marked by the return to power of right-wing social forces, I therefore examine whether Gramscian concepts are still apposite for understanding the political economy of Latin America in the 21 st century.Resumen: Este art ıculo aborda si los conceptos de Antonio Gramsci todav ıa "viajan" a Am erica Latina. Durante el siglo veinte, Gramsci fue uno de los te oricos sociales m as importantes que se ha invocado para entender las formas de orden social en Am erica Latina, as ı como un proveedor de recursos que reflexiona sobre la cultura subalterna, la resistencia y la construci on de alternativas. Sin embargo, durante las ultimas dos d ecadas, han habido algunos desaf ıos te oricos y pr acticos del concepto de hegemon ıa de Gramsci. Esos desaf ıos son m ultiples, pero pueden ser reducidos a varias discusiones importantes que son investigadas en este art ıculo. Estas incluyen el papel duradero de la violencia, la supuesta decadencia de la ideolog ıa y finalmente el reto del estado-centrismo frente a las diferencias geograficas. Por lo tanto, en la actual coyuntura regional, marcada por el regreso al poder de las fuerzas sociales de la derecha, yo analizo si los conceptos de Gramsci todav ıa son apropiados para entender la econom ıa pol ıtica de Am erica Latin en el siglo veintiuno.
This article engages with the politics of class struggle and state formation in modern Bolivia. It examines how current forms of political contestation are shaped by the legacy of the Revolution of 1952 and the subsequent path of development. In so doing, we therefore explore spaces of uneven and combined development in relation to ongoing transformations in Bolivia linked to emergent class strategies of passive revolution, meaning processes of historical development marked by the overall exclusion of subaltern classes. With this in mind we argue that state formation in Bolivia can be read as part of the history of passive revolution in Latin America within the spatial conditions of uneven and combined development shaping the geopolitics of the region. However, the expansion of passive revolution as a mode of historical development has been and continues to be rigorously contested by subaltern forces creating further spaces of class struggle.
This article explores the importance of non-capitalist space within the global political economy. The issue of how to categorise and understand space in so-called peripheral regions such as Latin America has been a contentious one. Whilst many radical analyses have focused on the dynamics of capitalism in relation to the geography of development, explaining how it has been able to survive and grow, this article makes the case for a more multi-linear theoretical framework with which to view the socio-economic landscape. This is inspired not only by the later writings of Marx but also the specific Marxian class analysis of those involved in Rethinking Marxism. Via a focus on Oaxaca in southern Mexico, this article highlights both the survival and the recreation of spaces of non-capitalism, and provides an argument for why we should consider these to be important for transformative action more broadly, whilst also discussing their potential limitations.
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