Review of International Studies, Vol. 43, part 3, pp. 389–408. doi:10.1017/S0260210517000079
© British International Studies Association 2017
First published online 7 March 2017
Passive revolution: a universal concept with
geographical seats
Chris Hesketh*
Senior Lecturer, International Political Economy, Oxford Brookes University
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Gramsci; Passive Revolution; Uneven Development; Capitalism; Revolution
Introduction
The title of this article takes its cue from a remark by Antonio Gramsci in the Prison Notebooks
regarding what he calls ‘universal concepts with geographical seats’.
1
In the context of his writing,
Gramsci is discussing Italy and its lack of a fully developed national culture. Instead, he reflected, the
peninsula was influenced by the cosmopolitanism of a small elite who remained detached from the
masses.
2
In this article, I utilise both the generalised method of examining a social formation within
the broader global context of which it is both constitutive and constituted by, but also the specific
class basis for the national developmental projects of countries. I draw attention to how - throughout
* Correspondence to: Chris Hesketh, Oxford Brookes University, Department of Social Sciences, 422a Gibbs
Building, Gipsy Lane, Oxford, OX3 0BP. Author’s email: chesketh@brookes.ac.uk
1
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. and ed. Quentin Hoare and Graham Nowell-Smith
(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), p. 117, Q10II§61. I have followed the international standard for referring
to Gramsci’s work using the notebook (Q) as well as the note number (§). The concordance table for this can be
found of the International Gramsci Society website, available at: {http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org}.
2
Peter Ives and Nicola Short, ‘On Gramsci and the international: a textual analysis’, Review of International
Studies, 39:3 (2013), p. 638.
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