Marxist perspectives and the study of international relations: a rejoinder

Extract

Professor Frankel in his reply to our article ‘A Double Omission’, not only denies the existence of any such omission (let alone double) as we there described, but argues that the perception of such a (non-existent) omission lays the authors open to the charge of being guilty of an omission more glaring than that which we attributed to the more myopic side of Western international theory. Professor Frankel in his rebuttal considers that neither Marx nor the Soviet Marxist-Leninists have anything of import to contribute to Western thinking on international relations and that our article, in other words, had no substance whatsoever. He makes the claim that Marx's writings not only ‘require specialized skills’ in order to be studied but that even when these are brought to bear the intellectual profits are ‘likely to be scanty’. But, in any case, argues Frankel, these (writings) were ‘given full due … in writings on such special areas of international relations as revolution, conflict or imperialism’, — not, that is to say, on international relations in the more general sense.