socio-political base for change through the creation of new historic blocs.The national context remains the only place where an historic bloc can be founded, although world-eccnomy and world-political conditions materially influence the prospects for such an enterprise. The prolonged crisis in the world economy (the beginning of which can be traced to the late 1960s and early 1970s)is propitious for some developments which could lead to a counter-hegemonic challenge.In the core countries,those policies which cut into transfer payments to deprived social groups and generate high unemployment open the prospects of a broad alliance of the disadvantaged against the sectors of capital and labour which find common ground in interna- tional production and the monopoly-liberal world order.The policy basis for this alliance would most likely be post-Keynesian and neo-mercantilist.In peripheral countries,some states are vulnerable to revolutionary action,as events from Iran to Central America suggest.Political preparation of the population in sufficient depth may not,however,be able to keep pace with revolutionary opportunity and this diminishes the prospect for a new historic bloc.An effective political organisation(Gramsci's Modern Prince)would be required in order to rally the new working classes generated by international production and build a bridge to peasants and urban marginals.Without this,we can only envisage a process where local political elites,even some which are the product of abortively revol- utionary upheavals,would entrench their power within a monopoly-liberal world order.A reconstructed monopoly-liberal hegemony would be quite capable of practicing trasformismo by adjusting to many varieties of national institutions and practices,including nationalisation of industries.The rhetoric of nationalism and of socialism could then be brought into line with the restoration of passive revolution under new guise in the periphery. In short,the task of changing world order begins with the long,laborious effort to build new historic blocs within national boundaries. Robert W.Cox is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at York University,Toronto,Canada REFERENCES *An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Panel on Hegemony and International Relations,convened by the Caucus for a New Political Science at the 1981 annual mceting of the American Political Science Association,New York,September 1981. 1.For citation here,I refer where possible to Antonio Gramsci,Selections from the Prison Notebooks,edited and trans.by Quinton Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York:International Publishers,1971),hereafter cited as Selections.The full critical edition.Quaderni del carcere (Torino:Einaudi editore,1975)is cited as Quaderni. 2.This seems to be the problem underlying Perry Anderson's The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci',New Left Review (No.100,November 1976-January 1977)which purports to find incon- sistencies in Gramsci's use of concepts. 3.On this point see E.P.Thompson,The Poverty of Theory'in The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays(London:Merlin Press,1978)which represents an historicist position analogous to that of Gramsci in opposition to the abstract philosophical marxism of Louis Althusser.For Althusser's position see,'Marxism is not Historicism',in Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar,Reading Capisal trans.by Ben Brewster (London:New Left Books,1979). 174 Downloaded from mil.sagepub.com at LIB SHANGHA JIAOTONG UNIV on Oclober 10,2010Downloaded from mil.sagepub.com at LIB SHANGHAI JIAOTONG UNIV on October 10, 2010