Realism, Liberalism, Marxism and ... Current Events

. Unity of analysis. One word on the unit of analysis in each of the three schools of thought. Realism: the nation-state (example: Charles de Gaulle – a very interesting character to whom we may come back later in the program: Je suis la France!). Liberalism: the individual (John Stuart Mill). Marxism: classes – bourgeois vs. proletarians.

. Crisis in MENA! (Middle-East/North Africa). We are lucky, in a sense. Some students tend to perceive the theoretical approaches in IPE as a somewhat useless “abstraction”. But look at the crisis in North Africa! It seems that every country (or union of countries) that considers itself a great power is torn between realist and liberal impulses.

. A word on Marxism. We will come back to that issue shortly. Let me first make a couple of observations on Marxism, the “forgotten” school of thought. Marxism does have something to say about recent events. First, if you read Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto (1848), you will note that the authors did admire the sheer creative energy of capitalism. Another point: Marx rightly saw that capitalism was prone to suffer from periodic crisis. Is it not what happened with the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008?

. [DOCUMENT - NOT required reading!] Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto (1848). "The bourgeoisie, during its scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers..."