90 CHAPTER THREE ■ InternatIonal relatIons theorIes
developed. Radicals are concerned most with explaining the relationships among the
means of production, social relations, and power.
Basing their analyses of history on the importance of the production pro cess, most
radical theorists also assume the primacy of economics for explaining virtually all other
phenomena. Along with the theories’ different ideas about the necessity of states, this
clearly differentiates radicalism from either realism or liberalism. For liberals, economic
interdependence is one pos si ble explanation for international cooperation, but only
one among many factors. For realists, economic factors are one of the ingredients of
power, one component of the international structure. In neither theory, though, is
economics the determining factor. Both realists and liberals accept that the state is
the primary unit of analy sis. In radicalism, on the other hand, economic factors (for
Marxists, it is class) assume primary importance.
A diff er ent group of radical beliefs centers on the structure of the global system.
That structure, in Marxist thinking, is hierarchical and is largely the by- product of
imperialism, or the expansion of certain economic forms into other areas of the world.
The British economist John A. Hobson (1858–1940) theorized that expansion occurs
because of three conditions in the more developed states: overproduction of goods and
ser vices, underconsumption by workers and the lower classes because of low wages,
and oversavings by the upper classes and the bourgeoisie. To solve these three economic
prob lems, developed states historically have expanded abroad, and radicals argue that
developed countries still see expansion as a solution. Goods find new markets in under-
developed regions, workers’ wages are kept low because of foreign competition, and
savings are profitably invested in new markets rather than in improving the lot of the
workers. Imperialism leads to rivalry among the developed countries.^22 Critically, for
radicals, the turmoil that follows from worker exploitation is disciplined by state inter-
vention on behalf of the bourgeoisie class. States as such become an obstacle to work-
ers being treated as human beings.
For radicals, imperialism produces the hierarchical international system, which
offers opportunities to some states, organ izations, and individuals, but imposes signifi-
cant constraints on be hav ior for others. Developed countries can expand, enabling
them to sell goods and export surplus wealth that they cannot use at home. Si mul ta-
neously, the developing countries are increasingly constrained by, and dependent on,
the actions of the developed world. Hobson, who condemned imperialism as irra-
tional, risky, and potentially conflictual, did not see it as necessarily inevitable. But,
whereas free- market cap i tal ists maintain that equilibrium will be found through the
market, most radicals drawing on Marx’s analy sis critique capitalism as inevitably leading
to crises.
Radical theorists emphasize the techniques of domination and suppression that arise
from the uneven economic development inherent in the cap i tal ist system. Uneven devel-
opment empowers and enables the dominant states to exploit the underdogs; the