The Marxist approach to International Relations (IR) represents one of the most significant theoretical departures from the mainstream traditions of realism and liberalism. Emerging as a critical theory, it challenges the underlying assumptions of power politics, state-centrism, and market-driven cooperation. Marxism offers a radically different understanding of the international system by linking global political structures to the dynamics of capitalism, class struggle, and economic exploitation. In doing so, it seeks to reveal the hidden economic foundations of international order, exposing how global inequality, imperialism, and dependency are not incidental phenomena but systemic outcomes of capitalist development. The Marxist approach to IR thus constitutes a profound critique of both the material basis of international politics and the ideological superstructures that sustain it.

At its core, the Marxist theory of IR draws from the historical materialism developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For Marx, the material conditions of production determine the nature of social relations, political institutions, and even ideas. The mode of production—that is, how goods are produced and distributed—constitutes the foundation upon which the superstructure of politics, law, and ideology is built. Applying this insight to international relations, Marxists argue that the global system cannot be understood by focusing solely on states or diplomatic relations; instead, it must be analyzed in terms of the global capitalist economy and the class relations it generates across borders. International relations, therefore, are not a collection of interactions among sovereign states, but rather a reflection of the global class structure emerging from capitalism’s uneven development. This perspective situates Marxism within the broader category of structural theories, but with a distinct emphasis on economic structures rather than anarchic ones.

One of the earliest Marxist interpretations of global politics can be found in Marx and Engels’ writings on imperialism, particularly in the Communist Manifesto (1848), where they observed that the bourgeoisie, driven by the need to expand markets, “must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.” This insight foreshadowed what later Marxists such as Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Nikolai Bukharin would theorize as imperialism—the final stage of capitalism. Lenin’s seminal work, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), remains foundational for Marxist IR theory. Lenin argued that capitalism, having developed productive forces beyond the capacity of domestic markets, was compelled to expand internationally through the export of capital, colonization, and the division of the world among imperialist powers. The rivalries among capitalist states, he maintained, were not primarily the result of national interests or power politics, but of inter-imperialist competition for markets, raw materials, and investment opportunities. Thus, wars, according to Lenin, were the political expressions of economic contradictions within global capitalism.

Rosa Luxemburg, in her work The Accumulation of Capital (1913), advanced a complementary but distinct analysis. She argued that capitalism’s survival depended on its continuous expansion into non-capitalist territories, which provided both markets for surplus goods and sources of cheap labor and raw materials. Once the world became fully integrated into capitalism, she predicted, the system would face a structural crisis. Luxemburg’s contribution is vital for IR because it illuminates how the process of global expansion—what we today call globalization—was inherently linked to exploitation and domination rather than mutual benefit. Her work underscores that economic globalization is not a neutral or progressive phenomenon but a continuation of capitalist accumulation through new forms of dependency.

The Marxist understanding of international relations was further elaborated by Nikolai Bukharin, who in Imperialism and the World Economy (1915), emphasized the dual character of capitalism’s development: while production became increasingly internationalized, the state apparatus remained national. This contradiction between the global nature of economic processes and the national organization of political authority lies at the heart of many international conflicts. Bukharin foresaw that the internationalization of production would deepen interdependence while simultaneously intensifying competition among national capitals, leading to crises and wars. This insight remains strikingly relevant in the contemporary globalized economy, where transnational corporations operate across borders but remain anchored in state-based regulatory frameworks.

The interwar and post-war periods witnessed further evolution of Marxist thought within IR, particularly through Antonio Gramsci’s and Karl Polanyi’s analyses of capitalism and hegemony. Gramsci, writing from an Italian prison in the 1930s, introduced the concept of hegemony, which became crucial for later Neo-Gramscian approaches to IR. Gramsci argued that capitalist domination is not maintained by coercion alone but through consent, secured via cultural and ideological means. The bourgeoisie shapes common sense, norms, and institutions to legitimize its leadership over society. Applied to the international system, this implies that global order is sustained not merely through military power but through the hegemonic influence of dominant capitalist states, which embed their interests and values in international institutions, norms, and discourses. For example, Robert Cox and Stephen Gill, the leading Neo-Gramscians in IR, later used Gramsci’s insights to analyze the hegemony of global capitalism under U.S. leadership. Cox famously stated, “Theory is always for someone and for some purpose,” meaning that even IR theories themselves are part of the ideological apparatus reinforcing certain power structures.

Cox’s Neo-Gramscian framework introduced a tripartite model connecting material capabilities, ideas, and institutions, which together form the historical structures of global order. He applied this model to understand the post-World War II order and the rise of neoliberal globalization. According to Cox, institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and WTO serve not neutral economic functions but reinforce the dominance of transnational capitalist classes by shaping the rules of trade, finance, and investment in their favor. The “Washington Consensus”, for instance, reflects a form of global hegemony—not just of the U.S. state, but of a transnational capitalist ideology legitimized through international institutions. Thus, the Neo-Gramscian school reframes IR not as inter-state relations, but as relations of production and consent on a global scale.

Parallel to the Neo-Gramscian developments, the Dependency School and the World-Systems Theory expanded the Marxist framework into the realm of global political economy. Scholars like Raúl Prebisch, Andre Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, and Immanuel Wallerstein argued that the international system is divided between the core and the periphery, reproducing structural inequality through trade, investment, and technology. According to Dependency Theory, the periphery (comprising developing nations) remains underdeveloped because of its dependent relationship with the capitalist core. This dependency is perpetuated through unequal exchange, where raw materials and labor from the periphery are exchanged for high-value manufactured goods from the core. Frank famously declared that “the development of underdevelopment” is intrinsic to the global capitalist system. Similarly, Immanuel Wallerstein’s World-Systems Theory conceptualized the world as a single capitalist economy with a hierarchical division of labor among core, semi-periphery, and periphery. The core extracts surplus from the periphery, while the semi-periphery plays an intermediate stabilizing role. Wallerstein’s contribution is particularly relevant for understanding global inequality, the political economy of international trade, and the cyclical crises of capitalism.

The analytical power of Marxist approaches lies in their ability to connect domestic class structures with global power relations. While realism emphasizes state survival under anarchy, and liberalism highlights cooperation under interdependence, Marxism reveals how both are conditioned by the imperatives of capital accumulation. For Marxists, the state itself is not an autonomous actor but a “committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie,” as Marx and Engels put it. The state acts to maintain the conditions necessary for capital accumulation—protecting private property, enforcing contracts, and suppressing working-class movements. On the international plane, this translates into imperialist behavior, military interventions, and the creation of international institutions that secure favorable conditions for global capital. For example, the establishment of the Bretton Woods system in 1944 can be seen as a capitalist project to stabilize global markets after the crises of the interwar years, ensuring a framework conducive to U.S. economic expansion.

However, Marxist approaches are not without criticism. One of the most common critiques is that classical Marxism’s focus on economic determinism tends to neglect the autonomy of political and cultural factors. Critics argue that not all conflicts and alliances can be reduced to capitalist competition or class struggle. Furthermore, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline of communist movements in the late twentieth century led some to question Marxism’s explanatory relevance in a post-Cold War world. Yet, the persistence of global inequality, financial crises, and neoliberal restructuring has revitalized Marxist analysis under new forms such as critical political economy, feminist Marxism, and eco-Marxism. Scholars like David Harvey, Susan Strange, and Robert W. Cox have shown that the globalization of capital continues to shape patterns of power, labor, and production. Harvey’s concept of “accumulation by dispossession” demonstrates how neoliberal globalization perpetuates the logic of primitive accumulation through privatization, financialization, and dispossession of public assets and natural resources.

Marxist approaches have also been enriched by their dialogue with postcolonial theory. Thinkers like Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, and Frantz Fanon integrated Marxist insights with the lived realities of colonial exploitation. They revealed how capitalism and imperialism are historically co-constituted: colonialism provided not only cheap labor and raw materials but also new markets and ideological justification for capitalist expansion. Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, for instance, illustrates how colonial capitalism extracted surplus from African economies while destroying indigenous systems of production and governance. This postcolonial Marxism continues to inform analyses of neo-imperialism, debt dependency, and resource extraction in the Global South.

A crucial analytical contribution of Marxist IR is its understanding of crisis and transformation. Unlike liberalism, which assumes progress through interdependence, or realism, which assumes perpetual conflict, Marxism views history as driven by contradictions within the mode of production. Capitalism’s expansion creates its own crises—of overproduction, unemployment, and ecological degradation—which in turn generate resistance and possibilities for transformation. This dialectical understanding of history underpins world-systems analysis and critical theory in IR, where change is not seen as linear reform but as a qualitative transformation of social relations. Marxists thus interpret movements such as anti-globalization protests, labor internationalism, and climate justice activism as manifestations of global class struggle.

Despite its analytical strengths, Marxist IR faces methodological challenges. Its tendency to view international phenomena primarily through the lens of capitalism sometimes underplays non-economic dimensions of power, such as identity, culture, and gender. However, recent efforts to synthesize Marxism with feminist and ecological perspectives have expanded its scope. Feminist Marxists, for example, highlight how social reproduction, often performed by women and unpaid labor, is integral to capitalist accumulation yet systematically devalued. Similarly, eco-Marxists such as John Bellamy Foster argue that capitalism’s relentless drive for accumulation leads to an “ecological rift,” making global environmental crisis an intrinsic feature of the system rather than an externality.

In conclusion, the Marxist approach to International Relations offers a penetrating and enduring critique of global capitalism and its political manifestations. By focusing on class relations, modes of production, and the dynamics of imperialism, Marxism exposes the material foundations of international order often obscured by mainstream theories. From Lenin’s theory of imperialism to Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis, and from Gramsci’s hegemony to Cox’s critical theory, Marxist scholars have continually expanded the framework to account for changing historical realities. While it may not provide immediate policy prescriptions, Marxism remains indispensable for understanding the structural inequalities, crises, and hegemonic ideologies that define the modern international system.

The Marxist approach to International Relations (IR) emerged as a powerful critique of the dominant realist and liberal paradigms, focusing on the role of economic structures, class relations, and global capitalism in shaping world politics. Rooted in the works of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and later Immanuel Wallerstein, the approach emphasized that the international system is not merely an arena of sovereign states but a hierarchical structure of economic exploitation and unequal development. However, with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Marxist approach appeared to lose traction in both academic and policy circles, giving rise to the claim that it has lost its relevance in the post-Cold War era. Yet, a closer analysis reveals that while orthodox Marxism declined, its analytical tools and neo-Marxist offshoots continue to illuminate global inequalities and capitalist contradictions.

Classical Marxist theory viewed international relations through the lens of economic determinism, arguing that the global order is an extension of capitalist modes of production. Lenin, in his work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, posited that imperialism is the inevitable outcome of capitalism’s search for new markets, resources, and cheap labor. This framework explained the colonial expansion of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and later shaped the dependency theory and world-systems analysis of the 1960s and 1970s. Scholars such as Andre Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, and Immanuel Wallerstein expanded this critique, contending that the core-periphery structure of the global economy perpetuates underdevelopment in the Global South and sustains the dominance of the industrialized North. Thus, Marxist IR offered a powerful lens to interpret global inequalities during the Cold War, aligning with the Third Worldist and anti-imperialist movements of the era.

The post-Cold War context, however, significantly altered the global landscape. The collapse of the Soviet Union discredited Marxism as a political project, and neo-liberal globalization became the dominant paradigm. The emergence of institutions like the WTO, IMF, and World Bank entrenched a liberal international economic order, emphasizing market integration and privatization. Critics argued that Marxism’s class-based analysis failed to explain the new dynamics of interdependence, technological globalization, and non-state actors. Furthermore, the decline of traditional class politics and the rise of issues like identity, environment, gender, and human rights appeared to push Marxist analysis to the margins of IR scholarship.

However, dismissing Marxism as irrelevant would be an oversimplification. The global financial crises, rising inequalities, and the North–South divide have renewed interest in Marxist and neo-Marxist perspectives. Scholars such as Robert Cox, Justin Rosenberg, and Stephen Gill have reformulated Marxism within the critical theory tradition, arguing that global capitalism continues to structure international power relations. Cox’s famous assertion that “theory is always for someone and for some purpose” underscores the need to see IR theories as embedded in material and ideological power. The neo-Gramscian approach, drawing from Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, further highlights how consent and ideology sustain capitalist domination through global institutions and norms rather than coercion alone. Thus, rather than being obsolete, Marxism has evolved to interrogate the hegemony of global capitalism, transnational class formations, and the structural power of finance.

Moreover, contemporary global developments vindicate Marxist insights. The 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ecological crises have exposed the contradictions of global capitalism and the vulnerability of neoliberal globalization. The growing inequality between and within states, concentration of wealth among multinational corporations, and the precariousness of labor all reflect the continued relevance of Marxist concerns about exploitation and accumulation. Even in global political economy debates, Marxist tools help explain phenomena such as debt dependency, resource extraction, and the neocolonial tendencies of global supply chains.

In conclusion, while the orthodox Marxist approach may have declined with the end of the Cold War and the fall of socialist regimes, its analytical core remains deeply relevant to understanding the political economy of the international system. The persistence of global inequality, capitalist crises, and structural domination underscores that Marxist thought, far from being obsolete, continues to offer a critical and dynamic framework for studying international relations. As Susan Strange observed, “the power of capital has replaced the power of states as the central issue in world politics,” reaffirming that Marxist analysis remains indispensable to comprehending the realities of the post-Cold War world order.