(Re)introducing world hegemony into the ‘global organic crisis’

Abstract

Neo-Gramscians have drawn on the concept of interregnum and connected terms to shed light on the ‘global organic crisis’ they claim we have been living through since 2008. I examine their ideas, highlighting the important contributions they have made in this terrain. In doing so, however, certain oversights are detected in the neo-Gramscian theoretical framework, leaving them unable to explain fully the dynamics of the contemporary international system or, more pointedly, structural change itself. Ultimately this stems from ontological shallowness: a tendency to reduce reality to intersubjectivity and conscious class agency. Rooted in critical realism, and drawing on Gramsci and Gramsci-inspired scholars such as world-systems analyst Giovanni Arrighi, this article aims to offer a more convincing account of the present conjuncture. In contrast to the neo-Gramscian transnational perspective, I recognize the continuing relevance of ‘world hegemony’, arguing that the global organic crisis is actually an expression of a systemic crisis afflicting American world hegemony and the neoliberal accumulation regime it helps underwrite. Hegemony has never been solely based on consensus—coercion and militarism are integral to it. Nonetheless, this article questions the sustainability of a world hegemon (the United States) increasingly reliant on political and military means to overcome ‘incurable structural conditions’ in a changing global scenario.