A Neo-Gramscian/Postcolonial Engagement with Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire

University of Chicago political theorist Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire has arrived at a propitious time in the historical development of international theory. In what follows, I critically engage key arguments and contributions of the book. Emphasis is placed on those aspects of the general arguments that are either ambiguous, or that require further elaboration. Let me say, forthwith, that this is a significant contribution to the political theory of international relations.

Worldmaking after Empire argues that for a number of ‘figures’, ‘Ghanaian independence . . .constituted the beginnings of a struggle for racial equality across the world’. ¹ The ‘figures’ named are Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, A. Philip Randolph, Ralph Bunche, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, George Padmore, W. Arthur Lewis, Julius Nyerere, and W.E.B. Du Bois. In a rather peculiar historiographical move here, we are told that Ghana’s independence took special meaning because it arrived ‘just months after the successful conclusion of the Montgomery bus boycott’. ² The suturing of the struggle for racial equality in the United States, Africa, and Caribbean does indeed make sense in terms of an analytical construct, in this case the Black Atlantic. If, however, we follow the same trajectory of historical developments, namely the global struggle for racial equality, then the parameters of the framework of analysis symbolised in the ‘figures’ named, need further justification in order to avoid falling into the trap of proclaiming an ‘originary voice, a foundational source of truth and meaning’. ³

The fight for racial equality in the era of empire and in the postcolonial world order, almost always had a transnational character. The separation of this epic struggle into discreet components limits the more expansive transnationality of decolonisation, self-determination, and non-domination. The same problems exist with some dimensions of decolonial theory that unnecessarily cut off subaltern postcolonialism from the same emancipatory struggles. ⁴ From the days of the Pan-African Congresses, and well into the struggle to end apartheid, progressive social forces from the United States, the Caribbean, and African states developed strong bonds of solidarity and acted in concert in their respective localities, regions, and at international organisations. The Jamaican born Marcus Garvey, for instance, came to the United States where he formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) with Amy Jacques Garvey, and was an activist in Europe and beyond, including at the Paris Conference in 1919. ⁵ All of this is well and good.

But if Worldmaking could draw a straight line between Montgomery, Alabama, and Accra, Ghana, because they were historic events in the struggle for racial equality, so were a number of other historical events. Think, for instance of the following countries that ‘recovered’ their sovereignty in the few years preceding March 1957 – Indonesia 1945, Philippines 1898/1946, Jordan 1946, India 1947, Sri Lanka 1948, Vietnam 1952, Cambodia 1953, Laos 1954, Sudan 1956, and Malaysia just months after Ghana’s independence. ⁶ And what about historic armed struggles like Dien Bien Phu (1954); and the wars of national liberation in Kenya, Malaysia, and Algeria, among others?

Getachew’s parameters must be subjected to interrogation because of the claim in Worldmaking that the ‘central actors’ ‘reinvented self-determination’ with a ‘distinctive trajectory in the Black Atlantic, where imagining a world after empire drew on an anticolonial critique that began from the foundational role of New World Slavery’. ⁷ In my own view, while the American figures named above indeed played a pivotal role for racial equality, it is hard to see the distinctiveness of their practice for a ‘reinvented self-determination’ that is substantively different and disjointed from other anti-colonial struggles in the wider world. No doubt there was a common bond among African leaders (from the continent and in the diaspora) who, along with native Americans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas (and elsewhere), had suffered the worst of imperial racism. But African Americans were also fighting their own fight, against institutions and ideologies that were indeed peculiarly American. Jim Crow, for instance, was a particularly complicated infrastructure of political disenfranchisement, coercive discipline, and outright violence with lynching being the dastardliest form.

While the Asians were far removed in geography and culture, among other things, the anti-colonial struggle that re-invented self-determination cannot be removed from the horizontal solidarities that existed among the ‘figures’ in Getachew’s Worldmaking, and all the other figures and movements for racial equality, and a more just world order. A cursory look at the voting patterns on apartheid, decolonisation, global human rights, and other related issues at the UN will quickly point to a near indivisible solidarity among practically all of those subjected to imperial domination. Moreover, the limitations of Ghanaian independence as the founding moment of the global struggle for a world of non-domination become clear when one examines the record on almost all human rights struggles up to 1957, and then beyond. In particular, I contend that though Bandung is mentioned, Worldmaking after Empire does not sufficiently locate its historical and symbolic value in the dynamic of decolonisation and the remaking of the post-war world order. Allow me to explain.

Bandung which took place two years before Ghana’s independence was a more far-reaching enunciation of global decolonisation, with an emphasis on racial equality, international peace, multilateralism, and economic and social justice. Although critics such as Robert Vitalis argue that Bandung has been overplayed in its connections to the transformation of global politics after the Second World War, and that colour and notions of racial freedom were not among the most significant reasons for solidarity, there is still adequate grounds to systematically incorporate Bandung as an indispensable moment for any narrative of self-determination where decolonisation is concerned. ⁸

Siba Grovogui is rather more to the point by insisting that Bandung was an ‘estuary’ for a renegotiation of world order. ⁹ More than that, it was a ‘tidal wave’ against extant colonialism, the emergence of neocolonialism, and various other forms of foreign intervention in the Third World. For Grovogui, the impetus of Bandung inspired ‘postcolonial entities – and not merely states –[that]emerged as new subjects to inject new species of sovereignty, rights and ethics into global politics that will permanently stand in opposition to any attempt to reinvent old imperial orders’. ¹⁰ And further, ‘Bandung forever delegitimized the language, institutions and techniques of empire and imperialism’. ¹¹

Amitav Acharya who has studied Bandung carefully based on extensive primary sources, is insistent that Bandung is a definitive moment in the struggle for racial equality, decolonisation, and a new world order. For him, Nkrumah was not simply influenced by Bandung, but was of Bandung, and this notwithstanding his absence due to external pressure. Acharya notes that ‘Kwame Nkrumah led the formulation of the subsidiarity norms of an African regional order which would stress nonintervention by outside powers in African affairs, and the abstention of Africans in superpower-led collective defense pact’. ¹² While these ideas were no doubt internal to Nkrumah’s philosophy, they were all adumbrated in Indonesia. Acharya insists that the main declarations of The Conference of Independent African States (1958) convened by Nkrumah, was a continuation of Bandung positions. ¹³

Another central argument in Worldmaking after Empire concerns the structural relationship between the centre of empire and its peripheries. Getachew is particularly insistent that colonialism, and the corresponding international order, was not simply domination through ‘alien rule’, with – so to speak, the coloniser over there, and the colonised over here. She rejects the position that colonialism was based on exclusion of the periphery from the inside of the international order. Rather, international society was based on ‘a logic of exclusion-inclusion’. ¹⁴ In this relational structure, ‘non-European nations were excluded from the full rights of membership but remained subject to the obligations of inclusion’. ¹⁵ She is clear that the inclusion is based on a logic of ‘dispossession’. The systematic institutionalisation of this ‘unequal integration’, was done by embedding a logic of racial difference into the logic of exclusion-inclusion. Drawing on the work of Anthony Anghie, the process of racialisation is understood as a ‘dynamic of difference’. ¹⁶ For Getachew, this ‘dynamic of difference’ combined with exploitative global capitalism, and a political and juridical system of discipline embedded in the institutions and practices of the dominant states, set up a world order based on hierarchy.

In Getachew’s thinking, the existing literature on anti-colonialism, decolonisation, and global governance after the Second World War, is rife with misunderstandings. If scholars think of colonial domination as ‘alien rule’, that is, domination from without, then self-determination implies separation from empire. She puts it thus – ‘with this bilateral account of imperial domination and a bifurcated view of international society, the alien rule thesis understands self-determination as a double move of overcoming alien rule and achieving inclusion in international society. ¹⁷ No doubt some approaches to imperial rule and the anti-colonial quest for self-determination have followed the path just specified. A significant body of the realist, liberal, and liberal institutionalist literature in international theory do fit into the bilateral trap. At the same time, there is a body of postcolonial and neo-Gramscian theory that have not fallen into that explanatory quagmire. The concept of hegemony deserves detailed attention because of its central role in theoretical problematique of Worldmaking after Empire.

To avoid misunderstanding, allow me to quote at length the author’s take on hegemony. She writes:

hierarchy designates not hegemony, but processes of integration and interaction that produce unevenly distributed rights, obligations, and burdens. These processes of unequal integration are structural and embedded in the institutional arrangements of the international order. They create the international conditions of ongoing imperial domination. ¹⁸

My contention is that hierarchy, although not necessarily so, does designate hegemony, but not where hegemony is seen only as ‘power over’. ¹⁹ Moreover, the problem is that Worldmaking after Empire has multiple uses of the concept of hegemony – including but not restricted to hegemony as an aspect of a ‘rule-based world order’; ²⁰ as overt use of economic and military power; ²¹ hegemony as dominance; ²² and more vaguely, hegemony linked to American exceptionalism. ²³ The several references to hegemony in Worldmaking reflect different theoretical approaches in the political theory of international relations. There are a few clear locations in the IR literature, where hegemony basically means dominance that relies on coercion. In this case, economic power is deployed in the form of sanctions, and military power is the fulcrum of raison d’état. ²⁴ Getachew is right in pointing to the limitations of this understanding of hegemony.

The other major employment of hegemony has been through neoliberal institutionalism where, in contradistinction to dominance based on coercion, hegemony refers to ‘leadership’ and ‘cooperation’, or even some combination of dominance, global policing, and intervener of last resort. The neoliberal institutionalist idea of hegemony is best expressed in the concept and practice of regimes, where ‘explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures converge in a given area’ such as trade, international finance, and multilateral actions in the field of security such as humanitarian intervention. ²⁵ This version of hegemony is what Robert W. Cox called problem-solving, an important point for consideration in Getachew’s critique. ²⁶ These last examples are considered desirable by neoliberal institutionalists because they supposedly provide a global public good.

Robert Keohane, one of the chief architects of hegemony as leadership, systematically addressed the ways in which the dominant states produce ideas, foster institutions, and manage global resources. Third World states can opt in and reap the benefits of global multilateralism, or opt out and be barred from the said benefits. Here is Keohane:

The value of this conception of hegemony is that it helps us understand the willingness of the partners of a hegemon to defer to hegemonic leadership. Hegemons require deference to enable them to construct a structure of world capitalist order. It is too expensive, and perhaps self-defeating, to achieve this by force; after all, the key distinction between hegemony and imperialism is that a hegemon, unlike an empire, does not dominate societies through cumbersome political superstructure, but rather supervises the relationships between politically independent societies through a combination of hierarchies of control and the operation of markets. ²⁷

Neo-liberal institutionalists, and before them hegemonic stability theorists, have argued that this kind of leadership has always anchored world order, and without it, there will be chaos, ending up in anarchy. What we see here is, though for different reasons and different possible outcomes, there is actually a body of international political theory that concurs with Getachew’s exclusion-inclusion thesis. Worldmaking after Empire is directly on the mark with the charge of burdened inclusion. But ironically, the neoliberal institutionalists theorists openly admit that form of inclusion. Structural neorealism also openly admits that the international system (in abstraction), and world order (specific conjunctures of historical development, such Pax Britannica and Pax Americana) are dominated by the Great Powers, and that small or weak states do not matter.

The approaches to hegemony discussed above are the ones that Worldmaking after Empire indirectly critiques at the level of general theory. But the argument would have been even stronger had the neo-Gramscian, and especially the postcolonial versions of neo-Gramscian theory that specifically, and at great length, have shown colonialism is part of an integrated world system of exploitation. ²⁸ And even more importantly, that the postcolonial world order is based on a historical structure of inclusion, albeit inclusion through domination. In 1988, Enrico Augelli and Craig Murphy systematically demonstrated how global liberalism, foreign aid, and American dominance, constituted the basis for hegemonic interpellation (inclusion) of the Third World. As they put it, ‘peripherally-connected to the American hegemonic bloc were members of the ruling classes in the Third World. . .’ ²⁹

Permit me to quote at length from a later attempt at theorising the relationship between the making of world order and hegemonic inclusion. In Counter-Hegemony and Foreign Policy, I stated the problem as follows:

the Third World does not merely respond to the actions of Great Powers, or the hegemonic power. To conceive of global politics thus would have no other consequence than relegate the great mass of humanity to mere appendages in the making of history. A more innovative approach might focus on capturing the historical dialectic of world order through what Antonio Gramsci called absolute historicism. . . ³⁰

Counter-Hegemony and Foreign Policy only focused on one of Getachew’s archives, Jamaica, but the role of the Third World in the co-constitution of world order was systematically examined. Counter-Hegemony and Foreign Policy also ‘shows that Jamaican foreign policy, and forces within civil society of that country, figured a great deal in the making of the post-war order. ³¹ And even further, ‘a hegemonic order is the result of a process of hegemonization, and correspondingly, hegemony is a relational encounter with followers. ³²

The emphasis on hegemonisation, as against mere hegemony, was to insist on the imbrication of the Third World in the making of the post-World War II world order. Several points must be addressed with the use of hegemonisation in relation to, or in contradistinction to Worldmaking after Empire.

Firstly, world order is never, at any point, a finished set of ideas, institutions and material capabilities. ³³ There is considerable push-and-pull not only among states (interstate), but also between state leaders and domestic social forces (intra-state). Failing this method, we are basically back to the great figure theory of history. I fully agree with Professor Getachew that Michael Manley made a real effort to introduce some transformative realignments in the global political economy in the fight for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). But Manley’s commitment to the NIEO can be more fully understood only if the domestic social forces that exerted popular pressure from below are taken into consideration. In many ways, Michael Manley was a quintessential expression of ‘brownmanism’ in Jamaica. Were it not for an amalgam of counterhegemonic social forces including but not restricted to the Rude Boys, Abeng, the Rastafari movement, Young Social League, Unemployed Workers Council, and the University of the West Indies (UWI) intellectuals among others, it is doubtful Michael Manley would have ever entertained Democratic Socialism, or embark on the spirited international activism for which he became justifiably recognised. This is why I insisted that ‘the “marginalized within the marginalized” became relevant in questions relating to such diverse international issues such as the liberation of southern Africa; the policies of the IMF; the suitability of American world leadership; strategies of economic development; the NIEO; institutionalized global racism. . .” ³⁴

The marginalised within the marginalised here refers to Jamaica’s peripheral location within the international system, and those in Jamaica who were not only precariously included in Jamaican society (excepting the UWI intellectuals), but who had developed the forms of consciousness aimed at challenging the then much touted ‘Jamaican exceptionalism’. Michael Manley had called on the Jamaican people to revolt against domestic and global injustice, and for Jamaica to be the vanguard of socialism and racial equality. The Jamaican people listened, and after exhaustive national consultation, a People’s Plan emerged. Michael (as he was loving called by his supporters), had a choice between embarking on the transformative path of Democratic Socialism, of responding to the call of the ‘sufferers’, of making Jamaica the vanguard, or go in the opposite direction by turning to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He chose the IMF. It is important to note that the People’s National Party Women’s Movement (within Manley’s own party) joined other progressive forces, and especially the Worker’s Party of Jamaica, in protests against the IMF gambit. ³⁵

It would be wrong to simply suggest the Jamaican leader succumbed to ‘the politics of mendicancy’ he had routinely trashed. And without doubt, the turn to the IMF was also partly due to the intense mobilisation of the Jamaican elite, who not only weaponised the Daily Gleaner and other media sources, but also acted in concert with notable instruments of coercive intervention from overseas. There are indeed grounds to defend Manley’s international activism for a more just world order. Yet, the story must be told in direct relation to what was transpiring on the ground. Manley stayed within the hegemonic paradigm, when in fact he had a choice.

In the case of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere led Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) to numerous successes, but a focus on the internal dynamics of the society ought to be looked at in greater detail for us to get an understanding of the connections to the practice of worldmaking. In particular, we need to ask – who bore the cost of self-reliance and African Socialism as formulated in the Arusha Declaration? The transfer of masses of people from the urban to the rural areas involved coercion. The same goes for the rural areas where peasant farmers, and even those with more land and capital were forced to form production cells. The anti-urban ideology had local roots no doubt, but China under Mao also had a rural bias, to put it mildly. What we end up with was an admixture of (economic) borrowing from the West to implement ideas that principally came from the East, albeit with a distinctive African dimension. In Tanzania the party (Tanganyika African National Union or TANU), and the state were constitutionally fused, a fact which made democracy through an electoral process almost impossible. Where does the institution of a one-party state figure in transformative worldmaking?

Secondly, a hegemonic world order as theorised in the neo-Gramscian oeuvre, is indeed a strategy by the dominant states to preserve as much privileges in the international system that had accumulated during empire, and by the new postcolonial states to consolidate state power through access to resources for industrialisation and modernisation.

In The Myth of International Order, Arjun Chowdhury explains why the new postcolonial states could not follow the method of state building through war and colonial conquest, as was the case with older Westphalian nation-states and empires. The economic resources in civil society were just not available for the postcolonial state to draw on, in the form of taxation. Moreover, the postcolonial states had to provide all of the services consistent with modernity, something better known today as biopolitical governmentality. Since the demand for care and protection by the newly liberated peoples could not be met either by war, conquest, or by autarky, the postcolonial state had to bargain with the dominant states in the system to extract foreign aid, development loans, and foreign investments. In Jamaica, for instance, it was not only the more conservative Jamaican Labor Party that vigorously pursued foreign resources through these avenues, but also the same Michael Manley who had previously made numerous well-articulated critiques the Bretton Woods institutions.

Passive revolution is a central concept in theorising hegemonic domination through peripheral inclusion and is relevant in our discussion. As articulated by Gramsci, it is useful in describing and understanding the process of decolonisation, and subsequent state-building, and even worldmaking in the sense used by Getachew. Passive revolution refers to modernisation through industrialisation which involves transformation of key ideas, institutions, and productive forces within society as a whole. Further, passive revolution for the postcolonial state is based on a historic bloc which includes the local dominant classes, internationally mobile capital, the local state apparatuses, and the key international institutions tasked with securing the long-term structural interest of global capitalism.

As used here, hegemony in the neo-Gramscian sense refers to the reluctantly accepted condition of continuity by the new states, within the extant international order. Put differently, hegemonic theory is consistent with the thesis of ‘burdened inclusion’ in Worldmaking after Empire. A key difference is whereas Getachew sees inclusion as based on structural weakness combined with the will for change (by key leaders), passive revolution explains the same inclusion as a kind of negotiated settlement between the national elites on the one hand, and the hegemonic states and institutions of the global system. The aim of passive revolution is to bring about rapid economic development without the democratic mobilisation of the domestic population in whose name this development is justified. Incidentally, this version of hegemony makes the linkages among the Third World leaders more appropriate. The African American figures noted in Worldmaking after Empire, while linked to the struggle for global racial equality, were not connected to the project of global transformismo of Third World figures.

Thirdly, Getachew is absolutely correct in the arguments that anti-colonial nationalism was not restricted to merely pushing back against the coloniality of power. There were also definitive instances of carving out a path of forward movement defined by leaders such as Williams, Nkrumah, Manley, and Nyerere. The idea of developing substantive autonomy (delinking in today’s decoloniality) from a world order built around Euro-American interests took different forms. Worldmaking after Empire pays attention to the efforts at federation, especially in the case of the West Indies and West Africa. While these are indeed instances of Third World agency, they are not without problems.

The idea of federation in the Caribbean was not an original West Indian idea. Federation was a goal hatched with neo-colonial intent in London, something intended to simplify the hegemonic governance of the Caribbean. But even if we grant that the origins should not mitigate the soundness of the strategy, there were real internal problems within the Caribbean itself which called into question the idea of federation. Among the more important ones were the antipathy of the Jamaican people towards any form of federation, the distrust of Trinidad, and the refusal of then British Guiana to be a part of the deal. Worldmaking after Empire perhaps takes too much for granted, namely, that a common history of colonial domination would have led the Caribbean, or West Africa, to a politics of regional unity.

At the time when Prime Minister Winston Churchill had suspended the British Guiana constitution in 1953, orchestrated a split of PPP in 1955, and embarked on a diabolical plot to remove the sitting administration, other Caribbean countries were not up in arms against what was veritable imperial abuse of a neighbour, and fellow sufferer. Should not the collapse of the West Indies Federation remind us that even partial national sovereignty, for even the smallest of states, is something valued in a deep ontological sense, valued beyond the conviviality that comes through historical trauma? But there is another dimension of both nation-state-making and federation. At the national level, sovereignty almost automatically led to centralisation, bringing people of disparate tribal communities, customs, cultures, and worst yet – ethnic affinities, into structured but contradictory totalities that produced intense internal conflicts, or otherwise became subsumed under precocious Leviathans which are still trying to fulfill Weber’s dictum on the monopoly of arms. The fact is the new postcolonial states chose to continue with the Westphalian system rather than with federation, on their own accord. Was it because they were mindful of the precariousness of a grand deductive identity rubbing up against the organic institutions of ontological security?

Conclusion

Worldmaking after Empire is a refreshing work of political theory with considerable significance for international relations theory. The principal claims regarding alien rule, burdened inclusion, and the transnational character of the struggle for racial equality and a reconstructed world order, will be well received not only by postcolonial scholars and those who work in critical IR, but by those who are willing to engage in a debate about the place of the Third World in the making of global history. If anything, Getachew has shown how the marginalised have democratised democracy. Worldmaking after Empire goes well beyond previous treatments of hegemonic domination and the role of the Third World in the framing of the post-1945 world order.