A Chinese Heartland is an altogether different question. If we recognize China as bearing the status of a Heartland, then we are emphasizing the conservative aspect of China - China as Land Power. But if China declares itself to be a Heartland against Russia, just as Hitler’s Germany declared itself to be Eurasia against Russia, then conflict will immediately arise. But in the case of an apportioned (distributed) Heartland, this acquires a completely different meaning.

Then it is possible to consider such Heartlands as a Russian Heartland, a European Heartland, a Chinese Heartland, and an Islamic Heartland (at least 3-4 empires from Turkey to Pakistan). The concept of an apportioned Heartland can be expanded to India, and projected onto Latin America and Africa as well.

All those who are sanctioned and banned today, all those who are blamed as rogue countries or “Putinists”, all those who are marginalized and criminalized — whites, populists, males, religious, social justice defenders, traditionalists, conservatives and so on — will most likely be the first to come up in the post-liberal period. But that is not sure and there is no plan or strategy for the future. It can be a Pyrrhic victory.

It may be that our instinctive rejection of liberalism is quite sane and logical but it is a kind of the reaction against pure evil that becomes too evident. When their rule ends nobody will be prepared for the next step. They have no future. But it may be that we also don’t have one as well.

We are too engaged in the struggle with the draining of the liberal global Swamp which is still huge and powerful, and we can discern nothing beyond that.

Many aspects of Herman Wirth’s unjustly forgotten works deserve attention in the study of plural anthropology. First of all, his extremely fertile hypothesis of the cultural circle of Thule, which is usually discarded from the outset without any careful analysis of his argumentation, is so rich that it deserves serious attention in itself. If such an hypothesis allows for the resolution of such numerous historical and archaeological problems associated with the history of symbols, signs, myths, rituals, hieroglyphs, the calendar, writing, and the most ancient views of the structure of space and time, then this alone is enough to warrant thorough inquiry. Even though Wirth’s works contain many claims which seem either unequivocally wrong or highly controversial, we can set them aside and try to understand the essence of his theory which, in our opinion, is an extraordinarily constructive version that expands our understanding of the archaic epochs of the ancient history of mankind. The theory of the cultural circle of Thule need not be unconditionally accepted, but an assessment of its interpretive potential is necessary.

Chaos strategy does not suggest creation or a new political system or order instead of the destroyed political systems. It is manipulated, moderated chaos - a new way of strategic thinking. If we carefully read Brzezinski’s book, The Grand Chessboard, it is written that they need a balkanized Eurasia, to transform it into a zone of permanent conflict between different groups - between Muslims, between ethnic groups, between Russians and Ukrainians, for example. This was Brzezinski’s idea. Chaos is already sown in Africa, so they don’t have to bother too much about that, while now the Russians and Chinese are coming here to bring another order, maybe not the best, but not bloody chaos as is the current situation. There are different points - smaller proxies, partly India, partly some pro-Western little states, and Israel for aggravating and make the chaos bigger. Smaller proxies, like Ukraine for example, are not allies in this concept, but just points in order to make chaos bigger. That is more or less how they understand the situation.

International Relations deals with the State as such. This is very important. In the very name of this science, this discipline, there is the concept of “nation.” In the Western understanding, the nation is a political value. The West thinks of politics in terms of the “national State” that is normative since the Westphalian peace, and is the normative attitude. The Nation is the national State (Etat-Nation), it is not the people or an ethnic group. International Relations are relations between these States. What kind of State? Modern, Western States. This is the first, very important principle. When we are dealing with the concept of the State, we are dealing with historically Western concepts about how political reality should be organized and studied.

This is a modern paradigm. “Modern paradigm” means Western, but not in all the history of the “West”, but only in modernity. Modernity has transformed the Western mentality and has taken only part of the traditional Western mentality of the middle ages or antiquity and transformed it into a new kind, a new version. International Relations was born as a discipline in the beginning of the 20th century. It is Western and modern. Western modernity is different from Western pre-modernity. This is very important from an historical point of view.

This is also where some of his most useful observations are found—his discussion of potlatch, for example, the ethnic destruction of property to demonstrate power, can be very useful in understanding the tendency of certain demographics to riot as a means of demonstrating or celebrating power. Civilized societies, of course, consider such riots as counter-productive because when a fully realised narod riots, it is usually an expression of frustrated powerlessness, not a demonstration of social power. Dugin enables us to draw qualitative distinctions having nothing to do with environment or circumstance between the bread riots preceding the French Revolution and the Ferguson and Baltimore riots following the death of Black criminals in the United States or the more recent riots in places like Johannesburg. Another interesting observation is his understanding of slavery as a function that only higher civilization, the narod, is truly capable, since slavery creates irreconcilable contradictions within the structure of the ethnos. The primitive ethnos has no category for a slave, since the balance of the ethnos requires the “other” to be an absolute evil to be destroyed, while a slave is allowed to exist and remain “other” to the ethnos (he observes that the Egyptians referred to slaves as “living dead” for this reason – those who by all right should have been deprived of life but instead were kept alive to become tools for ethnic labour). The necessary connexion of slavery with complex societies and higher thought is rich fodder for Reactionary thought in particular.

We are playing the same melody, if we`re not happy, we can`t say `stop` here, it`s impossible. We should go this route to the beginning – to the first note of this symphony. We should ask now: who is the author and began this process of urbanization, who has created trains, liberalism, democracy, progress, missile, computer, nuclear synthesis. Who is the real author? And that is essential: because it was human decision, that wasn`t kind of `natural process`. In one moment of the history we`ve decided to go that way, and now we can just slow it down or accelerate. But why we don`t ask ourselves: are we going the right direction from the beginning? Was this decision right one? We should go back to this moment, to the beginning of this melody – that is my idea. It could be too late, to wake up with robots around, perfect tax-payers, making democratic decisions, sending each other SMS messages from robot to robot... The conversation between robots is already possible, in neuro-network the special language is possible, during the conversation two computer have recently created the language without knowledge of the operator. So, they will replace us easily.

Man, as the cosmic mediator, is situated on the border between both worlds, between Tradition (above) and modernity (below). He is always straddling this border, eternally, in both the era of Tradition’s predominance, and in the periods in which modernity temporarily wins. In his eidetic, eternal dimension, man himself is this border, and the movement of his spirit, his thought, his ways and methods of philosophizing, outline the content of that which lies on either side. Through his choice of orientation, spiritual or corporeal, man constitutes the time, the epoch, the age in which he lives.

Thus, residing in the “dark age”, the Kali-Yuga, is neither a fatality, a punishment, nor something arbitrary, but the Night’s testing of the grain of eternity, of the divine center that comprises the essence of man. In other words, no matter how far away the Golden Age might be, a kernel of it remains within man as hope, as opportunity, as a fulcrum, which can always be found in refusing to unconditionally and fatalistically (or unconsciously) accept the conditions of the Iron Age. Time is an illusion. The historial is no more than a sign, a metaphor that can be deciphered in different ways and appealed to freely. We ourselves choose the time in which we live. And if man is born in the modern world and in the West’s zone of influence, this means that he is included in the profound plans of eternity, and this reflects his mission and fate. Modernity is in Tradition, and Tradition is in modernity. But in different sections of the vertical world, their proportions adjust to being polar: in Heaven (Tradition) there is only a drop of hell (the Biblical serpent that first appeared in paradise), and in hell there is a drop of Heaven. But this is enough to stretch a semantic thread of sacred history, or hiérohistoire (in Henry Corbin’s formulation) between these drops.

The title of Noomakhia, which literally means “war of the mind” (Noomachy) [4] – and which can also be conceived of as “war within the mind”, “war of minds”, or even “war against the mind” – is intended to emphasize the conflictual nature of logoi structures as well as the multiplicity of noetic fields in each of which surprises, conflicts, aporias, struggles, contradictions, and opposition lie in wait for us. The field of thinking is the field of warfare [5]: thoughts wage ceaseless wars not only against phenomenality, matter, and their own reorganization into elements (whether existing or not is an open question), natural law, dispersion, non-structurality escaping the “control” of multiplicity, etc., but also against other types of thoughts, other thoughts, and the complex diversity of vertical and horizontal, noetic and noeric chains which permeate the reality of the world on different planes and different geometries. Wars between people, including even the most cruel and bloody, are but pale comparisons to the wars of the gods, titans, giants, elements, demons, and angels. And these, in turn, are but figures illustrating even more formidable and profound wars unfolding in the Mind, in the sphere of the Nous and its limits in which the Mind itself borders the zone of Madness. Thus, everything is Noomachy, even that which is bigger and came first of all – ϋπερπαντα. War, according to Heraclitus, is the father of all (πολεμος πατηρ παντων). Indeed, it is about this, the “father of all”, that Noomakhia is written.

In this monograph, Dugin provides an overview of the primary foreign and Russian sources and schools that influenced the establishment of ethnosociology as an independent and original scientific discipline. Dugin offers a profoundly philosophical approach to the categories of the “ethnos,” “narod,” “nation” and “society,” providing clear definitions of these concepts, and expounding a broader ethnosociological taxonomy. For the first time in the field, this work brings a consistent approach to a broad spectrum of knowledge, as well as elucidating various methodologies of ethnosociological analysis, bringing everything together into a single, easily applicable system.

This volume is an invaluable manual for those specializing in sociology, philosophy, political science, cultural studies, ethnology, international relations, state, and law, as well as being of interest to those who follow the current developments in the humanities.

This volume is an invaluable manual for those specializing in sociology, philosophy, political science, cultural studies, ethnology, international relations, state, and law, as well as being of interest to those who follow the current developments in the humanities.

If one takes the third position on religion and modern science, life will become difficult (perhaps even unbearable). In this case, we must not only distrust the ideology of the modern (definitely non-Christian, often directly anti-Christian) society, but also the world itself, which, if we think about it, is pushed onto so heavily onto us by the entire structure of upbringing, education, study, and culture that we are convinced that it is reality, nature, existence, truth. Once can debate an ideology (although this is difficult, if it is a totalitarian one like all Modern ideologies: communism, fascism, and the most totalitarian one of all, liberalism!), but to distrust one’s own sensory organs, to see that which ‘isn’t’ behind ‘natural’ phenomena (as was said to us by our parents and teachers), i.e. the cosmological power of angels and demons is a direct road to insanity.

I do not know the answer to this question, as it can neither be easy nor understood. I can only express certain assumptions without being confident in neither their effectivity nor their ability to change anything.

First, we must give ourselves the task of fundamentally researching the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. This demands effort, but it is the foundation of Christian thought. Without Plato, the fundamental theological theses of the Cappadocian school, or even the most fundamental teachings about the Trinity, creation, etc., to say nothing of the Aeropagites, asceticism, or hesychasm would have no foundation at all. The fundamentals of Christian theology were developed by the Platonists. And it is Platonic cosmology (with Christian corrections) that was patched into this philosophy. In the Christian context, this corpus is most clearly represented by the Aeropagites, in the West by Scotus Eriugena.

The pure individual must be a carrier of physical immortality, as there will be nothing in him that could die. There should be no hint of structure or filiation in him. He should be fully liberated of all forms of collective identity and also of existence. This is the ‘end of economics’, the ‘death of the person’, while at the same time being the flowering of chrematistics and the immortality of the (post-human) individual.

The seed of the human rots, but in its place there is no resurrected life, but a simulacrum, an electronic Antichrist. Capital is etymologically related to head (the Latin caput), i.e. capital has historically been a preparation for the coming of artificial intelligence.

So what does the economic aspect of the Fourth Political Theory, which challenges liberalism in its final (terminal) stage, consist of?
We must theoretically affirm a radical return to the integral worker, to the economic person against the disintegrated capitalist ‘order’ (organized chaos to be more precise) and the chrematistic individual. This means radical de-urbanisation and a return to agricultural practice, to the creation of sovereign farmer’s communities. This is the 4PT economic program: the resurrection of economics after the dark night of chrematistics, the rebirth of the economic person from the abyss of individualism.

The sequel to the bestseller The Fourth Political Theory, expanding further on the fourth political theory. All the political systems of the modern age have been the products of three distinct ideologies: the first, and oldest, is liberal democracy; the second is Marxism; and the third is fascism. The latter two have long since failed and passed out of the pages of history, and the first no longer operates as an ideology, but rather as something taken for granted. The world today finds itself on the brink of a post-political reality — one in which the values of liberalism are so deeply embedded that the average person is not aware that there is an ideology at work around him. As a result, liberalism is threatening to monopolise political discourse and drown the world in a universal sameness, destroying everything that makes the various cultures and peoples unique. According to Alexander Dugin, what is needed to break through this morass is a fourth ideology — one that will sift through the debris of the first three to look for elements that might be useful, but that remains innovative and unique in itself.

Unlike Dugin, for Freedland there is only one truth in the world, which cannot be questioned at all. The British journalist completely ignores the so-called autonomy of the political, such as the fact that politics is not based on rationality, but on irrationality. As we learn from the German jurist Carl Schmitt, politics means acting to defend or impose a particular type of collective existence, beyond what is morally right or wrong and what is objectively true or false. Freedland is very surprised by the actual trend towards a «deeper and more bitter partisanship», but this fact only means that what is happening in countries like his own it’s simply the return of politics in contexts from which it was almost gone. Politics divides people into different groups, which are aggregated around a particular “speech”, or a particular “narration”, or, as Dugin teaches us, around a particular “truth”. To Trump’s supporters (like those of any other political leader) doesn’t matter if what their leader says is true or false; they only identify themselves in him and in his political view. So politicians like Trump are neither “engaging in post-truth politics” nor lying, but they are only making politics. Furthermore, Freedland should understand that in  politics there are indeed no  referees, but only players.  In fact, there are referees only when there is someone who commands on all the others and who has the monopoly of the truth.

The Ways of the Absolute was written in 1989. Its main task was presenting the foundations of Traditionalism, exhibiting how Tradition understands the most important metaphysical problems, and on what philosophical principles the sacred worldview is built. We considered the present work to be a kind of introduction to Traditionalism, as transmitting into the Russian context the main lines of such eminent modern Traditionalists as René Guénon (the founding father of this tendency), Julius Evola, etc. We pursued an altogether definite purpose, and it predetermined the topics selected, the methods of presentation, and the emphases. It was extremely important for us to at once put Traditionalist through in its proper context, and show its radical non-conformism, its rigid alternity to academic, “humanitarian” and profane philosophical trends in modern culture. Traditionalism is not a history of religions, not a philosophy, not a structural sociological analysis. It is more of an ideology or meta-ideology that is totalitarian to a considerable extent and places rather harsh demands before those who accept and profess it. Either man breaks with the totality of the worldview cliches of modernity diffused throughout his environment, completely revises his views and positions, investigates the profane genesis and then rejects them all at once in order to accept the norms of Tradition with perfect confidence and strict conviction, or he will remain essentially outside of it, outside the sacred fence, in the Eleusinian swamps of the modern world in which there is no fundamental difference between highbrow professors, philosophers, and the obedient, absolutely unreflective mass of laymen, including even those intellectuals who for “academic” reasons are interested in various “extravagant” subjects, such as theology, rituals, symbolism, traditional societies, etc.

The most important point is that 4PT is based on the fact that the choice of paradigm is not within the three political ideologies (the Logos of the Great Mother), but within the three Logoi of the political philosophies of the Father (Platonism), the Son (Aristotelianism), and the Mother (materialism). This is a free choice in which modernity is nothing more than one option, and far from all.

The political philosophies of the Father and the Son (or their alliance) are objects of free choice. This is a task, not a given. It appears that we ended up in modernity because we forgot that the political philosophy of the Father and the political philosophy of the Son need to be constantly affirmed anew with each new generation and new person. We took them for something guaranteed, something taken for granted.

As soon as even a vertically-oriented political system becomes inertia or something ready-made and given, then it begins to fall, to collapse. If instead of as a free establishment we take the monarchical, imperial, traditional, and caste vertical to be a fact, something given, and once we no longer re-affirm such at each stage, then sooner or later we will fall into the dustbin of modernity and its last logical accord - the political philosophy of the Mother.

Characteristic of “servants of Magical Matter” is pure agnosticism, i.e., a third way between Gnosis and Faith. The agnosticism of mystical materialism is conditioned by the inadmissibility of the subject questioning knowledge, since the subject, as part and parcel of the cosmos, is merely one of the facts of this cosmos and nothing more, thus the subject’s reflective capacity (its mind) cannot add or subtract anything from the flow of the cosmos. In this view, knowledge is identical with cosmic fact, but insofar as the cosmos is in motion, knowledge is identified with practice, i.e., it is simply discarded. In other words, agnosticism is the result of the absence of the pair of “knower” and “known” which is necessary for knowledge itself. For the proponents of Magical Matter, the absolute surface of the world coincides with its absolute depth. Here it would be interesting to recall Nietzsche’s aphorism regarding how “a woman needs to find depth in her superficiality.” Such an analogy is no accident, since the ideology of Magical Matter bears an openly gyneocratic, matriarchal character, in some sense being a projection of the female subconscious closed to itself.

A concrete (phenomenal) society always consists of two parts - the aboveground and underground. The aboveground part is what we normally term “society", meaning a sphere of rational activity where logos (λόγος) prevails. This is the domain of the “diurnal". The underground part is the dark, underwater island of the collective unconscious, the region of the social night (the “nocturne”), where myth (μύθος) rules.

For some time, progressivist science believed that these two parts were situated in diachronic order. In ancient times (and among “primitive” peoples, the unfortunate “residue” of ancient times), myth was predominant. But the progress of civilization gradually supplanted the mythological order and replaced it with an order based on logos. The community, or Gemeinschaft, is superseded by society, or Gesellschaft (F. Tönnies). But this optimistic exaltation did not last long. Whereas blind faith in purported progress reigned almost unquestionably in 18th-19th century Western Europe, the subconscious, where the eternal and unchanging laws of myth predominate, was discovered by the beginning of the 20th century.

The problem is where can we find the fulcrum? The Modernity and Post-Modernity - precisely by means of Third Totalitarianism (this time liberal one) - have destroyed already the humanity and replaced it by the assembly of individuals (human rights doctrine). Refusing normative subject of all-pervading liberalism (individual and - in the near future - post-human species) we are in the void because liberalism doesn’t accept institutionally (!) any form of non-individual onthology and anthropology. And the pre-modern version of subject, of human nature are considered to be obsolete and miserable – in the extreme case criminal. If we insist nevertheless they will qualify as the residui and treat us in the same manner as in the first stage of Enlightenment - simply killing us as Jacobins and bolsheviks killed the Christians priests and princes. May be it is an option for certain men and women. The way of martyrdom is great path.
But there is other solution. Not being able to certify our own existence in the conceptual field of totalitarian liberalism we can make appeal to Heideger's concept of Dasein. When the concept of human being is obligatory fake and the liberal totalitarian culture splits the human figure more and more depriving it of any order or unity as well as of any collective identity (more than that --depriving it of any identity at all) Dasein nevertheless is here - it is always here or rather t/here. It is here - existing in authentic or inauthentic way, but it is here! So 4PT invites to take Dasein as the axial fulcrum when everything else is missing. The return to the Tradition and to the Eternity can be accomplished neither by individual nor by class or nation. Dasein is the ontological root of the human being, the nucleus of Being. Dasein can be put in the wrong way of functioning but still it is present. So it is our final argument and the main feature of 4PT. Fourth Political theory is existential. And starting from Dasein we can make the eschatological leap to the Tradition. Else we would lack the foothold. Traditionalism is to be existential otherwise it will be but one simulacrum more.

The classical realists use the term “hegemony” in a relative sense and understand it as the “actual and substantial superiority of the potential power of any state over the potential of another one, often neighboring countries.” Hegemony might be understood as a regional phenomenon, as the determination of whether one or another political entity is considered a “hegemon” depends on scale. Thucydides introduced the term itself when he spoke of Athens and Sparta as the hegemons of the Peloponnesian War, and classical realism employs this term in the same way to this day. Such an understanding of hegemony can be described as “strategic” or “relative.”

In neo-realism, “hegemony” is understood in a global (structural) context. The main difference from classical realism lies in that “hegemony” cannot be regarded as a regional phenomenon. It is always a global one. The neorealism of K. Waltz, for example, insists that the balance of two hegemons (in a bipolar world) is the optimal structure of power balance on a world scale. R. Gilpin believes that hegemony can be combined only with unipolarity, i.e., it is possible for only a single hegemon to exist, this function today being played by the USA.

The West believes that only its path of development, only its logic, and only its values are universal and common to all of mankind, and that all other peoples have simply not yet understood this. This means that the West, albeit temporarily (until they understand this), can and is even obliged to rule others. With such a blatant agenda, the West has in practice managed to colonize the East. This is no easy feat, but it managed to. But the West faltered in the face of Russia, Eurasia. We, Russians, opposed the West with something that stopped it in its tracks. It repeatedly tried to take us by force and ruse, but we held on. The East fell, but we didn’t. And we are holding out to this day. This is Eurasia as an idea.

Eurasia means not succumbing to the West’s claims to universality, rejecting its hegemony, and insisting that no one has a monopoly on truth, especially not the West. Eurasia is the possibility for peoples and civilizations to follow their own path and, if the logic of the path demands such, not only a non-Western one, but even an anti-Western path. This is Eurasia. This idea was understood by the first Eurasianists, Trubetzkoy, Savitsky, and Alekseev in the 1920’s. We too understand it. And Vladimir Putin understands it, since there is no other meaning of Eurasia.

The people as a political concept is appearing today in opposition to liberalism. The liberals are hollering about a fascist or communist-fascist threat, and they are incapable of understanding the essence of the populist moment, which they interpret through old clichés. Hence why they are losing. Hence why they are doomed.

And yet both left and right are unanimous in thinking that this is only a moment, a limited period of time, a kind of quantum in historical movement. Probably no one can say whether the People and consequently populism is a system, program, strategy, or merely a temporary correction on the path of liberal globalization. The globalists had their moment in the early ’90’s – the unipolar moment. They ruined everything they could over thirty years, turning globalization and the unipolar world into a hideous caricature. The reformers in Russia in the ’90’s did the same with democracy. Now a different moment is arriving. The people is appearing on the stage of world history. This is a chance, a risk, a responsibility, and a challenge. But it is our moment. Not utilizing it would be a real crime. 

Yes, that’s right, not taking advantage of such a populist moment would be foolish and even criminal. But is there such a crime that we have not yet committed? Alas, everything rests on our shoulders. Nevertheless, this is a wonderful, open opportunity for a true alternative, a Russian alternative.

In order to escape this coded field of coded thinking, we need to deconstruct all of modernity. If we transcend the borders of modernity, we see a different society, a different notion of man, a different view of the world, a different notion of politics and the state. First of all, we finish the Cartesian subject and see something else. Let’s search for what there is in this other world. In sociology, this is called the transition from modern society to traditional society. The notions of tradition, religion, and pre-modernity already offer us an undoubtedly broader spectrum of alternatives. If we reject the laws of modernity such as progress, development, equality, justice, freedom, nationalism, and all of this legacy of the three centuries of philosophy and political history, then there is a choice. And it is in fact very broad in the least. This is what I have been saying. This is traditional society.

One of the first, simplest movements in the direction of the Fourth Political Theory is the global rehabilitation of Tradition, the sacred, the religious, the caste-related, if you prefer, the hierarchical, and not equality, justice, or freedom. Everything that we reject together with modernity and everything that we completely rework…

Elite of Fourth Way will collide with demagogues and hysterical "leaders", that a wave of new nationalism inevitably will bring to the front as the foam on the surface of fermenting sea. And the battle begins now. It would be better that neo-nationalist monster would be strangled in the cradle. But it is about to appear.

Therefore, now - after Trump's great succes - is relevant as never before the general plan for fundamental conservatives and traditionalists all over the world - at least of America, Europe, Russia, Iran, Turkey and the rest of Eurasia (and the others who will join us). We need a common front aimed not only at the rest of the Liberals (finish to drain liberal Swamp is technical task now), but as well to prevent and neutralize new nationalism.

We need to return to the Being, to the Logos, to the foundamental- ontology (of Heidegger), to the Sacred, to the New Middle Ages - and thus to the Empire, religion, and the institutions of traditional society (hierarchy, cult, domination of spirit over matter and so on). All content of Modernity - is Satanism and degeneration. Nothing is worth, everything is to be cleansed off. The Modernity is absolutely wrong -- science, values, philosophy, art, society, modes, patterns, "truths", understanding of Being, time and space. All is dead with Modernity. So it should end. We are going to end it.

Although the concept of hegemony in Critical Theory is based on Antonio Gramsci’s theory, it is necessary to distinguish this concept’s position on Gramscianism and neo-Gramscianism from how it is understood in the realist and neo-realist schools of IR.

The classical realists use the term “hegemony” in a relative sense and understand it as the “actual and substantial superiority of the potential power of any state over the potential of another one, often neighboring countries.” Hegemony might be understood as a regional phenomenon, as the determination of whether one or another political entity is considered a “hegemon” depends on scale. Thucydides introduced the term itself when he spoke of Athens and Sparta as the hegemons of the Peloponnesian War, and classical realism employs this term in the same way to this day. Such an understanding of hegemony can be described as “strategic” or “relative.”

In neo-realism, “hegemony” is understood in a global (structural) context. The main difference from classical realism lies in that “hegemony” cannot be regarded as a regional phenomenon. It is always a global one. The neorealism of K. Waltz, for example, insists that the balance of two hegemons (in a bipolar world) is the optimal structure of power balance on a world scale[ii]. R. Gilpin believes that hegemony can be combined only with unipolarity, i.e., it is possible for only a single hegemon to exist, this function today being played by the USA.

In both cases, the realists comprehend hegemony as a means of potential correlation between the potentials of different state powers. 

Gramsci's understanding of hegemony is completely different and finds itself in a completely opposite theoretical field. To avoid the misuse of this term in IR, and especially in the TMW, it is necessary to pay attention to Gramsci’s political theory, the context of which is regarded as a major priority in Critical Theory and TMW. Moreover, such an analysis will allows us to more clearly see the conceptual gap between Critical Theory and TMW.