Revision summary
Both approaches deny that trade and law automatically pacify world politics. Carr’s critique of utopia feeds realist and Marxist readings. Morgenthau and Waltz stress State power; Lenin and Wallerstein stress capital and hierarchy. Institutions are treated as masks or tools, not as a world government in waiting. The commonality is conflictual materialism; the split is State versus class.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Marxism and realism are rival maps of International Politics. They still share a hard core: conflict, material power, and distrust of liberal harmony. E. H. Carr already stood near that overlap.
Body
Shared starting points
- Both reject Wilsonian and commercial-liberal claims that law, trade, or public opinion by themselves produce peace.
- E. H. Carr’s Twenty Years’ Crisis attacked utopianism. Realists read him as power politics. Marxists read him as a critique of liberal ideology.
- Politics is conflictual. For Hans Morgenthau it is interest defined as power. For V. I. Lenin it is imperialism as monopoly capitalism.
- Material capability matters. Kenneth Waltz counts poles of power. Marxists count class and the world-economy, as in Wallerstein’s later system.
Shared scepticism
- The State is not a moral person. Realists treat it as a security actor. Marxists treat it as tied to class and capital, yet still as a unit of war and law.
- International institutions can mask hierarchy. Realists see them as tools of the strong. Robert Cox’s critical theory, drawing on Marx, asks whose order a regime serves.
- History is struggle, not a smooth legal community.
The remaining divide
- The unit of analysis differs: State versus class and capital. The commonality is the refusal of a harmony-of-interests story.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD L[Liberal harmony] --> X[Rejected by both] R[Realism Carr Morgenthau Waltz] --> P[Conflict and power] M[Marx Lenin Wallerstein] --> P P --> I[International Politics as struggle]
Conclusion
Marxist and realist approaches meet in conflict, material power, and suspicion of liberal peace. They part on whether the motor is anarchy among States or capitalism and class. Carr is the hinge writer for that overlap.
Quick related
Students also ask
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"Marxist approach to the study of international relations has lost its relevance in the post-cold war era." Comment.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2021 · Q1(c)). View answer →
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Did Marx write a theory of anarchy like Waltz?
No. Classical Marxism starts from modes of production. The overlap is conflict and power, not the same unit of analysis.
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Is Keohane on this common ground?
No. Robert Keohane’s neoliberal institutionalism keeps egoist States but argues that regimes can still produce cooperation. That is the liberal-institutionalist reply to both.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2021 · Q1(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
"Marxist approach to the study of international relations has lost its relevance in the post-cold war era." Comment.
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