Autonomous or materialist geopolitics?

The body of writing that falls under the label of ‘new imperialism’ proposes a radical and contemporary understanding of post-Cold War international politics that involves a revision and redeployment of the category of inter-imperialist rivalries. Alex Callinicos's ‘Does capitalism need the state system?’ aims at opening a metatheoretical space where it might be possible, within the frame of capitalist mode of production, to meaningfully speak of such an autonomous logic of geopolitical competition, rooted in the essential political fragmentation of the capitalist system along the frontiers of nation-state, but, crucially, not determined by the logic of capitalist competition. This article takes issue with some of Callinicos's conclusions, particularly the possibility of a ‘realist moment’ in our understanding of inter-imperialist rivalries. It also explores the possibility of a non-reductionist, Marxist notion of geopolitical rivalries to be developed through the empirical examination of the state–capital link in foreign policy, and attention to capitalist accumulation and its unfolding in space.