ROBERT GILPIN

I was certain that I was not a Marxist, but I did believe firmly that a connection between economics and politics existed

The opposing tendencies of concentration and spread are of little consequence in the liberal model of political economy.

Through exploitation of its influence over global financial affairs, the United States has been able to cover the costs of its hegemonic position, preserve a false domestic prosperity, and mask the consequences of its relative political and economic decline.

These two opposed forms of social organization, the modern state and the market, have evolved together through recent centuries, and their mutual interactions have become increasingly crucial to the character and dynamics of international relations in our world.

The multinational corporation and international production reflect a world in which capital and technology have become increasingly mobile, while labor has remained relatively immobile.

The economic success of the Reagan Administration was largely dependent upon the pyramiding of massive debt and the siphoning of capital from the rest of the world.

There is a pressing need to integrate the study of international economics with the study of international politics to deepen our comprehension of the forces at work in the world.

The historical record suggests that the transition to to a new hegemon has always been attended by what I have elsewhere called hegemonic war.

One reason for the primacy of the market in shaping the modern world is that it forces a reorganization of society in order to make the market work properly . When a market comes into existence, as Marx fully appreciated, it becomes a potent force driving social change.

A market is not politically neutral; its existence creates economic power which one actor can use against another.

The dreams of "leaving it up to the market" or of returning to a politically neutral gold standard cannot succeed because the nature of the monetary system has a profound impact on the interests of powerful groups and states. Affected groups and states will always try to intervene in the operation of the system to make it serve their interests.

A prolonged and massive increase in aggregate wealth per capita has taken place over several centuries.

The competitive nation-state system, with all its capacity for good and evil, is spreading in the Third World and is transforming that world.

The world economy diffuses rather than concentrates wealth.

The clustering of technological innovation in time and space helps explain both the uneven growth among nations and the rise and decline of hegemonic powers.

Despite its increased dependence on the international economy, America continues to behave as if it were either a closed economy or the leader whom everyone else should automatically follow.

In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed.

Many critics see international trade as a form of cultural imperialism that must be strictly controlled.

In many societies the domestic social costs of adjustment to changing patterns of comparative advantage are believed to outweigh the advantages of further trade liberalization.

Liberal economists conceive of societies as black boxes connected by exchange rates; as long as exchange rates are correct, what goes on inside the black box is regarded as not very important.

Among the many factors that make a return to halcyon days of the first decades of the postwar era virtually impossible is the decline of clearly defined political leadership.

Structuralism argues that a liberal capitalist world economy tends to preserve or actually increase inequalities between developed and less developed economies.

Trade is the oldest and most important economic nexus among nations. Indeed, trade along with war ha been central to the evolution of international relations.

The core of the Marxist critique of capitalism is that although the individual capitalist is rational (as liberals assume), the capitalist system itself is irrational.

Specialization makes the welfare of the society vulnerable to the market and to political forces beyond national control.